Waterfall Falls

It's not so bad sitting on the balcony and seeing nothing but trees. I've been out here for an hour and the only noise so far has been my daughter coming out of the condo to join me for a few minutes before she slipped back inside in search of breakfast. I'm not cooking this morning. It's my vacation too.

The guys are all still sleeping, exhausted from a full day of paintball and two hours of racquetball. I imagine my husband is going to wake up feeling several years older than his actual self this morning since his body was riddled with paintball welts when he got back yesterday. The boys say he gave as good as he got though. They all counted their paintball welts to see who had the most. Like counting battle scars. I might never understand the male mentality.

Despite coming back from the paintball odyssey grimy, tired and achy, the boys agreed that as much fun as that was, they would prefer to spend another day at the waterfall jumping into the river. Who knew it would be so easy to please and exhaust three sixteen year old boys by providing a waterfall and some cliff jumping?

We hiked out to this waterfall called Hawk Falls the other day. A beautiful two tiered waterfall with deep pools at the base of each level. The recent rains in the area had the falls flowing nicely. I don't know if it was because we got there early in the afternoon but we had the falls to ourselves for well over two hours. That gave the boys time to jump from every available ledge they could reach. Each time higher and higher up the falls. 

Ace was the first to go and the look on his face when he emerged from the water was priceless. That water was cold cold cold and he wasn't anticpating that level of mountain stream chilly. Despite that discovery, he immediately clamored up the rocks for another dive. His two buddies followed suit, taking the jump and coming up gasping at the impact of the cold water. They loved every minute of it.

Giggles jumped in from the lower ledges but the cold was a  little much for her and she decided to explore the river and surrounding area rather than jump in again.

I took pictures and videos for everyone while the boys found higher points to jump from the face of the waterfalls. I'm estimating that the highest jump point for them was about 20 feet. There was no way I was going to jump from that height ever, into water I knew was frigid but there was also no way I was leaving without at least jumping in from the lower levels. That jump was about 6 feet. Just my limit. Despite that it looked awfully far down into the water from the top of that ledge and it took me a good five minutes of contemplating before stepping off the ledge.

Holy hell the water hits you like a brain freeze on steroids! For a moment you don't really feel anything but then it's like this smacking impact of frigid and then your lungs contract and your heart pounds from the shock of cold. The only think I could think off was get the hell out now nownownow..... But it was such a cool experience, I did it again.

The boys, and I include my husband in that group, jumped from the watrefalls for a good three hours.  They were exhausted driving back to the resort, flat out worn out from the thrill, the cold, the physical effort of climbing the rocks time and again. When we hauled our tired selves inside, and they collapsed on the first handy surface, the boys wanted to know when we could go back to the falls and do it all again.

Probably today. If the weather holds.