Friday, May 11, 2012

I feel safe declaring this as one of the most epic nights of my life. Eli and I decided we were going to have an amazing and adventurous summer. We have named the Summer of 2012 "La Gran Aventura" meaning The Great Adventure in Spanish. Our motto is YOLO (You Only Live Once). So this post will be a little long, but I have many pictures and stuff to share :)

Ok, so the night started off with me wanting an Arby's Beef Sandwich- Medium size, with plenty of Horsey (sp?) and Arby's sauce. Favorite fast-food thing ever. I could already tell it was going to be a good night.

Then, we met up with a bunch of Eli's friends at a park at like 10 or so. We decked ourselves out in glow-sticks and started walking along a dirt trail.

Along the way, we found a little river. Chase, Eli and Chris wanted to show their ninja skills balancing on some poles sticking out of the river. They were successful! Although, I was kind of hoping someone would fall in, because that would have been hilarious :)

 Here is the same picture as the one above, just without the flash. Glow-sticks. Notice Chase's beautiful flower on the left.

Someone broke their glow-stick and sprayed it all over Chris's back... hahaha

Adventure buddies!

So after a long and adventurous walk, we got to this random closed-off mine or something. I have no idea what it was exactly, but it was dark and as you can see, there was plenty of graffiti on the walls. Here's the group:

It was pretty sketch.

We left that little mine-cove-whatever-it-was and went further up the dirt trail until we found this creepy tunnel. We ran through it blind (no lights) for a while until we reached  a place where the tunnel went from horizontal to almost vertically up and down. Hanging down the tunnel was this skimpy old rope we could use to climb up it. Some of the guys talked about how it would be cool to get all the way up to the end of the tunnel. So Chris scoped it out, as seen below, with Chase keeping the rope steady:

We could only go up the rope one at a time, because it couldn't really be trusted. But by then, the majority of the group wanted to turn back and go to the park. Not gonna lie, it was a pretty sketch tunnel. But it was an obvious adventure! So while the rest of the group turned back, Chris Eli and I pressed forward! Eli climbed up the rope and got to the next part where the rope plateaued out. Then I went, followed by Chris. Here is a view from the top:

Who the heck thought of this genius idea?? Oh well... :P So we kept going through this tunnel. We passed a random cove in the tunnel where it looked like a hobo had been living. Weird. Then, we reached a part of the tunnel where it had an even steeper incline than before! But we climbed up one-by-one until we finally reached the top! This was the view:

Those bushes are bushes along the side of a mountain right next to the freeway. The park we started at was way on the other side of the freeway, in that big dark space between the freeway and the lights. The tunnel went up the hill, under the freeway, and up the side of the mountain. What a climb!

We survived!

Ok, so we are stranded on the side of a steep mountain right next to the freeway. And we weren't going to go back the way we came (because the tunnel was sketch, and going back down the way we came would be terrifying). So we made our way down the side of the rock face. Sweet:

Then, we walked a couple miles to a parking lot where the chickens of the group could pick us up.

What an adventure!