Rock Fall!

CRRAAACK!

A plane zooming over? Thunder? What was that?

As we were coming off the mist trail and heading back to where we left the car, after taking a break at the hotdog truck, we heard this loud noise. Sounding like a military jet zooming over, but we saw nothing in the sky. Thunder? No clouds, no rain.

And then we remembered where we where.

It was a rock fall. In the direction of the parking lot. Uh oh.

We didn't see the actual fall itself. Now that would have been cool. But we did see the dust rising form where it landed, as you can see in the two images above, taken seconds after we heard the fall.

We were only half joking with our fellow travelers walking toward the parking lot, hoping that our cars were not crushed. They weren't.

I took this shot while where we entered the parking lot. The trees mark the far end. And as you can see the dust was rising just on the other side. A group of kids out hiking were huddled behind the remnants of a prior rock fall, their leader instructing them on how to hide behind boulders, trees, anything that could shield from falling debris.

While we heard what we thought was gravel continuing to slide down the mountain, we couldn't see any. Tired from the hike, we didn't feel like doing much exploring. Nor did we want to be around should any more of the mountainside come tumbling down.  So we headed back to our hotel, to enjoy another of those cold drinks on the big porch.