Monkey Canyon

Sometimes I like to convince myself that I am adventurous.

I full on believe that I would love to go camping, randomly decide to go skydiving, or wrestle alligators for fun.

And then I realize something.

I'm not adventurous.

Exhibit A: Monkey Canyon.

My totally awesome friend Ryan is adventurous.  Like the real kind of adventurous.  He gathered up some of our friends {Kevin, Taylor, Kaelie, and I} last Saturday to go on this hike in "Monkey Canyon".  It's in the Angeles National Forest but if you didn't have a handy sticky note with directions like "Turn left at the Jack in the Box" like we did, you'd never find it.  No joke, this is how we knew we had made it:

An "X" in the dirt.

And a stick with a sock on it.

Yes.  I'm serious.

So after a quick stop at Rite Aid to buy Aquasocks {which ended up saving our lives} we trekked to the middle of the forest.  Then we left our car on the side of the road with our out of service cell phones inside.  

The non-adventurous worry wart inside of me was freaking out.

Especially when we started down the side of this stinking mountain.

You'd think that being a gymnast for almost 15 years of my life would give me balance or basically any kind of athleticism at all but no-o-o.  I am always the one to fall, trip, or run into something in the first five minutes.  Which happened.  Of course.  I ended up flat on my back with a scraped up knee laughing so hard that I couldn't even speak to tell them I was okay.  Luckily Kevin fell about five minutes after me  which helped the awkward factor.  Once we finally got down the hill we proceeded to climb boulders, swim through ice baths, and each fall a couple more times.  

I had to ditch my camera pretty early on when I realized our backpacks would not be dry for long so unfortunately we didn't get a group victory picture {or last picture together before we were left for dead in the middle of the forest ... whichever}.

It really was a fun day after our feet thawed out and we picked the gravel out of our wounds {okay, that was just me}.  

What I really realized on this adventure though was that it didn't matter that I'm not truly adventurous.  Having fun, adventurous friends makes me do stuff that I would never do alone!  I think that's why I'm loving college so much.  I live in a beautiful city with great friends who help me enjoy life to its fullest.

What more could a girl ask for!?

Here's to many more adventures ... and hopefully surviving them.