Not so dilly dally

Hello to all of my varied readers, old and new!

Today I nearly died. Several times. You see, I signed up for a rather innocent looking "Dilly Dally All-Day Hike", an optional activity for first-year Regent students during this first week of orientation. I imagined dillying and dallying around with a few other students, enjoying the fresh air and whatnot. I was a little off in that estimate.

We arrived at the foot of Dilly Dally peak. It was only upon reading the brochure at the bottom that we discovered that Dilly Dally is quite a serious misnomer. In fact, it may have been named sarcastically, or even as a cruel trick to dupe unsuspecting over-eager hikers. The brochure said, "for experienced and fit hikers only". We did no dillying or dallying. What we did was more like rock climbing. The incline was betwen 60-80 degrees the whole way, and it took us 4.5 hours to ascend 1150 m onto the peak. It's the hardest physical thing I've ever done. I can't believe the lactic acid build-up in my legs did not poison my entire body. There were some perks, like this waterfall, Swan Falls (many of you know of my waterfall obsession!) - sorry, you'll have to look at it sideways because I don't know how to flip it. But there was no view from the top. We hiked another three hours back down the same way. I have muscles in my legs I never knew I had until they all started hurting. Rachel and Sarah, I'm glad I didn't inherit your knees, because I would never have made it down. Anyway, the mountain has been re-named by us Regent students: "Dilly Dally Death March".

Haha. The hike was actually gorgeous, and I'm glad I went, because there was so much green, and so much tall. Green and tall. Here are some more pictures I took. We also stumbled upon the set of Smallville, the TV show, taping at the foot of the mountain - they're filming a stunt where Aquaman bursts out of the lake, with a crane pulling him of course. It was pretty cool to see, even though there were no famous actors around.

Well, I have more to say but I don't want to exhaust you. To be continued...