A Mission at Last!

I got a call late last night from Captain ILL. He told me that he had a hot tip that Professor Perfidy was building some sort of doomsday device in his secret headquarters in the mountains out near Big Four. Unfortunately, the ILLmobile was low on anti-matter, so he needed a lift. Always willing to lend a hand in the fight against injustice, we hopped in my Honda this morning and headed east.

After about an hour of driving during which we occupied ourselves by singing various Neil Diamond songs, we arrived at the trail base:

We applied sunscreen and bug repellent, and started up the trail. Unfortunately, we didn't get far. Professor Perfidy must have gotten wind of our arrival, because the bridge had been blow out:

I wanted to keep going on, but Captain ILL insisted that the park rangers certainly wouldn't approve of us going off the trail and fording the river. The Captain is a real stickler for the rules, but I could see his point, so we came back down and found this nice warning that the kind rangers had left for us:

Apparently, you're not allowed to go tramping about in the woods for free, and they now want me to send them $5 even though the bridge was out and we were unable to complete our mission.

While we were driving back down the mountain (singing more Neil Diamond songs), Captain ILL thought he spotted a giant robot rampaging around up on Mount Pilchuck, so we may be headed up there next. If so, I'll be buying a yearly pass to keep the rangers off our backs.