I wanted to go hiking somewhere new, that was a bit further than the usual haunt, so after deliberating with Jackson for a bit via discord, I decided on the West Woods, which looked to have some nice chunky geography.
Due to Jackson's predicted hangover, and Wally's usual sleep deprivation, we made plans to meet up for dinner, and go hiking afterward.
After meeting up at Wally's house and admiring his new table, we piled into my freshly cleaned car and set out for west Cleveland, where the park was unexpectedly located. I originally planned to get dinner at the Original Pancake House, which was a terrible idea right before a hike, but thankfully we were saved from my poor decision making my the restaurant being closed. Instead, we went to a Thai restaurant nearby.
The food was very tasty, and the conversation was fun. We talked about fighting games, such as the latest street fighter game where you actually fight people in the street.
After eating, we grabbed some mints and headed out for the park.
The park was pretty big, and whilc I was originally planning on heading to a nice looking waterfall, the trail to get there was pretty long, so we decided instead to just do the cave loop and then drive to the parking lot closer to the waterfall on the way out.
We had some fun talking about how evolution as a mechanic in games had not yet met it's full potential in games like spore, and brainstormed some ideas for how it coule be used in new games, such as a game where you design a new species like spore, but evolve it over time with the goal of destroying the human race, like in Pandemic.
We also got our first glimpse of the exciting geology.
Seeing the empty creekbed activated the adventure neurons in Jackson's brain, so we decided to walk along the creekbed for a bit.
We encountered a frog, which activated the frog neurons in Wally's brain. He tried to catch it, but it managed to escape under a rock.
We reached a point where the creekbed was a bit too chaotic, and decided to rejoin the main trail. Also, due to the complete lack of water, we decided to skip the waterfall for today, with plans to come back when there is slightly more moisture.
After resting for a bit on a conveniently bench shaped rock, we continued along the path which soon brought us to the main attraction of the path: more big rocks.
they sure were some nice rocks though. I would like to go back someday, when there is a bit more water flowing.
As we continued on, there was a small accessible cave, which activated the caveman neurons in all of our brains.
After resting for a bit to dicsuss big rocks and the nuances of social anxiety, we started making our way back to the car.
Along the way while discussing when we would begin making plans for our next big adventure, Wally casually revealed that he had recently had a colon tumor removed, and he spent some time talking about how that had come about, and the process of getting it removed. Apparently it was a similar kind of cancer as a mole, so there wasn't too much concern of it becoming a more serious issue.