Citta del Mare - Memorial Day Weekend

Fri. May 26 - I worked at ITT all morning trying to get all the final details for this trip ready. I had to run home and pack in the afternoon and I filled Kat and I's cooler with ice, beer, and snacks when I got back to ITT. Michelle (the woman escorting the trip with me) helped me separate all the prizes and get all the luggage and extra things into a pile. Th 53-passenger van arrived around 2:30pm and I started to load it up with our stuff. That van was so overpacked, I honestly didnt think a few final bags were gonna fit. Everyone was one time and we left NAS I at 3pm on our way to Citta del Mare, which is in the city of Terrasini. There was an accident in Palermo (like always) which made our trip take 4 1/2 hours to get there. At the beginning of the trip, we played trivia (I hosted it over the microphone) and gave out prizes. The families were all having a great time, but once the trivia was over, they were ready to relax and nap for the rest of the drive. We pulled into Citta Del Mare and Michelle and I went to the reception desk to get all the rooms and keys settled. We had a few problems with the families who have been coming here for years with their rooms and their requests they made prior to the trip. We asked the resort to put the regular families next to each other so they could all share balconies and share babysitters during the weekend. We also made sure to request that they were all on the 3rd or 4th floors so they could have a guaranteed beach view. Well.....the resort didn't give us any of those things so I spent about 2 hours trying to calm down the families and put the weekend into perspective. I knew they'd all be fine by the end of the night or tomorrow, they really wont be in their rooms much for this all to be a big deal. It was fine though. We all went to dinner together and by then the few complainers chilled out and said VA BENE! (Sicilian for "its okay", "whatever", "cool"). Dinner was excellent. THere are a few places to eat the resort, so went ate at the Superior dining room tonight. After dinner, a bunch of us went to the disco and danced all night long until it closed. Kat, Joe and I were staying in a triple room and man was the view wonderful. The balconies for this resort are really cool, they all connect and our building had an excellent beach view. I felt kinda bad for the families who didn't get a good view, but we made sure to get full usage outta our balcony.

Sat & Sun - The weekend was great and relazing. The days consisted of lying out on our patio, playing in the ocean, going down the 3-tiered slides at the resort, swimming in the pools, snorkeling, goofying around, and just being on vacation. Kat and Joe and I hung out weekend and had an awesome time. We bought rafts for Sunday and spent a few hours chillin out in the bay. The waves were pretty rough, so we ended up just swimming in the pool for the later half of the day. The restaurants were so good and they fed you like you were starving. I haven't eaten that much in a long time, but it was all so good and their house wine that they served at all the meals was tasty. Each night we went and danced at the disco to hang out with a bunch of the people from our trip. I stayed in contact with all the families throughout the weekend just making sure I could help them if they needed anything. It was a lot of fun and most of the group bonded really well. Sunday night at a really funny comedy/karaoke show with the Italian staff. It was so entertaining and hilarious because you would never see idiots like this in America or other big resorts in other countries. We had a short day the next day, so after the show, we went "swimming" in the pool and headed to bed.

Mon. May 29 - We had to load the bus by 2pm, so we decided to wake up early, head to the beach, and have some last minute fun. I woke up early to pay the hotel and check out of our room and then headed out to our balcony to do some tanning while Joe and Kat got ready. Kat wasn't moving to fast so I got quite a but of sun in before headin down to the beach. Once everyone was ready, we did a few more trips down the slide and went cliff jumping with the other families that were already doing it. We got over there and everyone was having an awesome time jumping off the 15 foot ledge. Joe and I wanted something a little higher and traversed the rock wall to jump from about 25 feet. It was cool, the water was crystal clear and I bought goggles the day before so I could swim around the bottom. It was a lot of fun. We all headed back up to one of the rooms that the resort let us use for last minute showers and we were cleaned up and ready to go by 2pm. I got to the bus and a few people were there already loading their bags and everyone else was shortly behind. We pulled away from Citta del Mare at 2:15pm and everyone sounded like they had a great time even though some of the rooms weren't what they expected. The ride home was quiet because everyone slept, including myself. There was no traffic and we only did one bathroom break so we amazingly got home in a record time of 3 hours exactly. It took about a half hour for everyone to unload the bus and load up their cars. We had many compliments and thanks, so it felt really good when I got home. The second I walked in the door, I laid down on my bed and fell asleep for a few hours. The rest of the night once I woke up, I just relaxed and watched a movie.

The slides that Citta del Mare are known for

Kat, Joe, and I chillin in the sea on our rafts

The balconies at this resort were really cool and the ocean view from our room was AMAZING!

This is the oblong pool that we did most of our non-ocean swimming in. It was nice to get out of the salt water every once in awhile. The bluffs in the background outline the northern and northwestern coast of Sicily.

Our balcony at sunset in the bay

Triple cliff jumping near the resort with some of the families on the trip

Chill-axin on my balcony watching the sun about to start setting with ma-ma-ma-my Corona

Last SCUBA class and a normal week

Sun. May 21 - We had a BBQ at Take 5 this afternoon and I cooked all day since the guy that works with me is a vegetarian and won't touch meat. It was fun to cook for all the guys. Not too many people showed up, but I knew most of the ones that did. I played sand volleyball with 3 of my Public Works buddies, but the sand was scolding hot. It was so funny. We'd run on the court as soon as the ball was about to be served and ran off it as soon as someone scored. After the BBQ, we cleaned up and I had to work the rest of the day and night at Take 5. I got off around 11:30pm. I really hate working weekends, I worked 24 hours total this weekend here.

Mon. May 22 - I was off work at Take 5, so I went over to ITT to help out. Most of my time was spent in Gear-N-Go helping clean up the camping gear from previous weeks. I cleaned tents and put them all away. I also did some work with filling the SCUBA tanks for paintball. Leslie started helping me get ready for my Citta Del Mare trip that I would be escorting on Friday. After work, I invited Juli to come to a small BBQ that I was gonna cook. Joe and I brought her to the commissary because she still hadn't bought groceries and we got the food for the cookout tonight. It was real small, but I was so in the mood for some steak and mac-n-cheese. Our friend Erika and her boyfriend Ray came up and hung out for awhile.

Tues. May 23 - Today was the last day of confined diving in the swimming pool on NAS II. We had our final tests in the water and then also took a 75 question written test. I had read and retained everything from the past 2 1/2 weeks so I flew through the test. I felt really good after my dive. Everything went great and I definitely got a 100% on the test. I even got the hard question that no one ever gets right about the pressure groups and underwater times. Right after my test, I had to get to work at Take 5 for the rest of the night. I am now just 3 open water dives closer to my certification! WOOHOO!!

Open Water Dive #1 & Pro Skateboarder (Greg Lutzka)

Sat. May 20 - I had my first open water dive today in Aci Trezza, which is about 30 minutes north of Catania. Sylvie and Giuseppe's (our SCUBA instructors) dive shop is in that town and their boat is docked at a small port in Aci Trezza. Aci Trezza is where the famous Greek mythological "Cyclopes Rocks" reside. They are beautiful and huge just sitting there right in the ocean. There's a bunch of pics on the internet if you look up Cyclopes Rocks. I rode with some kids from the class and we needed to be at the dive shop by 8:45am. We got the gear ready and packed all of our equipment into their truck and headed to the pier. Once we got there, we loaded the tanks and gear onto the boat, got our BCDs ready, and got into our lovely, tight, wedgy giving wetsuits. It was about 9:30am when we got to the dive spot, which was in Aci Castello at the castle. We were underwater for a total of 54 minutes and dove to about 4 meters. We had a large group working on the skills and learning how to adjust for our buoyancy in salt water, so it took awhile down there. After we were finished with the skills and lessons, Sylvie took us on a short Discovery Dive to see the dive spot. The water was a lot merkier than I thought it would be, but it was still relaxing and beautiful. I saw some cool fish, theres one thats my favorite, its like 20 different colors. There were some sea urchins, little crabs, and a lot of anemones (sp?) and underwater seamoss. It was a lot of fun once I stoppedbeing nervous.

Greek Mythology "Cyclopes Rocks"

Sylvie & Giuseppe's Dive Boat

Aci Castello Dive Spot

I headed back home to Sigonella because the new Interns were coming in today and there was a big Skateboading Contect going on featuring a pro skater. It was called the Extreme Sig Slam Skate Contest and Greg Lutzka was the guest appearance. It was at our skatepark for kids 14 and younger. I love watching the little kids skate. They are so cute. I was supposed to help work it, but I really wanted to get a dive in since I only have a short time left here in Sicily and I need this certification to be complete by the time I leave. I got there and Juli had already went to her room since she got in this afternoon. James told me to find out what room she was in and introduce myself to her. The other intern's parents live here, so he is staying with them in Marinai. I walked around the skatepark for a little bit, but the event was pretty much over. Greg was just signing autographs now. James told me to go out to dinner with everyone tonight to meet everyone that was here with him and meet the new intern. I first went home and took a shower to get the crusty salt water out of my hair and took a nap. It was a long, exhausting week. I woke up and went and got Juli to go stand out in the parking lot to wait for the van to pick us up and bring us to Catania for dinner. We went and picked up Greg Lutzka, Master Chief Hickman (from MWR Headquarters in Millington, TN), and Dave (came along with Master Chief) from the Navy Lodge and we were going to be meeting up with James Baker (MWR Director) and his wife downtown. Juli is really nice, she had extreme jetlag, but we forced her to stay awake to get use to it faster. We parked the van in Catania and first headed to a small bar along Via Entea. It was nice to talk to Master Chief about MWR without feeling any pressure or anything, MC Hickman is hilarious. The good things about Master Chiefs is that they've been in so long and don't really care much anymore. They drink, they smoke, they curse, they just go out to have a good time. It was fun. After the bar, we headed over to the restaurant. It was kinda fancy and a few of us were a little underdressed. Oh well, they put us in the back. Most of the night, I spent talking to Greg. It was probably nice for him to talk to someone his age and a civilian since he's been promo-ing the European Naval Stations recently. He was really cool and didn't come off as arrogant or rude. He is 21 years old, been in the Pro-Circut for about 6 years, from Orange County CA, loves to skate, play his guitar, hang out with his friends and family back home in Milwaukee, and party it us in Las Vegas. The food was really good and I tried a bunch of new things. I had octopus, pan fried swordfish, fried calamari, a bunch of strange sausages, etc. Juli was really tired, but she did really good, especially being around such important people. It was a good night. We headed home and I found out there was a going-away party for two of our friends from the hospital, Merranda & Diana (they came on my Aeolian Islands trip). Joe was designated driver for the night, so he was gonna come pick me up when I got home so I could hang out at the house party for a little bit. I decided to ask Juli and Greg if they wanted to come to the party. Greg Lutzka was totally down for the idea. He probably hasn' t seen people our age in awhile and being under the Navy's eye lately on his tour, he barely has any free time outside of the demos. Once we got back to base, Juli and Greg were gonna come, but the catch was..Master Chief had to come too b/c he is responsible for Greg. That was cool with all of us and Joe came and picked us up and drove us to the party. We were squeezed in a little Fiat, but it was hilarious. We got to the party and it was pretty funny to see an aold guy roll up into the party with all of us. I introduced Greg & Master Chief to all of my friends and told everyone that Juli was the new intern. We didn't stay for very long because they had to catch a flight at 5am. We got them home, Juli went back to her room, and Joe and I went back to the party to help clean up and say our goodbyes. I got home around 3am.

Me, Greg Lutzka (Hot Pro Skateboarder), and the new intern Juli

CHEERS! I think he's had a bit too much to drink. Check out my tan...oh yeah!

ROME ENTRY FINALLY FINISHED!

SCUBA Certification Classes....

Tues. May 16 - SCUBA class went so much better today. I personally worked with Kevin and did a bunch of underwater skills and really worked on relaxing with the regulator and going over a bunch of other things. I've done so much reading in my book and really enjoying learning the theories, science, and info about the equipment details involved in diving. By the end of the pool session, I did the mask clearing, regulator retrieval, and buddy breathing.

Thurs. May 18 - SCUBA was awesome today. Only one more confined pool session left. The group worked in the deep, diving pool today which is 13 ft. I started with Joe, but ended up working with Giueseppe, the master diver helping teach the course with his wife, Sylvie. I did the lesson where you take off your entire BCD and regulator underwater and put it back on just in case you would ever have a problem with your tank. Guiseppe and Sylvie own an underwater video camera so he let me swim around and tape everyone. They are making a video for everyone in the class for us to keep that they've been filming since our first class. After I got comfortable enough, I went over to the entire group and we played around in the pool with torpedos for awhile. It was a lot of fun, but it was getting dark so we had to head home. I was really hungry so we headed home, dropped off my truck, and walked over to Days Inn for some dinner and a Murphy's. When we got there, we saw our friends Pirate, Travis, and Ryan so we sat down with them to eat. I had the grilled chicken and salad. It was a fun night and turned into a much longer one than I expected.

Fri. May 19 - I worked at ITT for the beginning of the day from noon to 4pm and worked on my Citta del Mare trip. I am escorting the trip with another woman, Michelle, who has gone on the trip for the past 2 years. Leslie and I went and bought a bunch of prizes for the trip to give away during the drive there. I have to come up with a bunch of trivia questions for the kids and adults for the trip. There were quite a few people working, so it was kinda boring. At 4pm, I headed over to Take 5 to work from 5-midnight. OH YEH!!! I put on a billiards contest, ordered some pizza, and had 8 contestants play along. It was fun. I searched online for jobs for hours while talking to Crystal, but didn't find anything that really caught my eye. I watched the movie called "The Hills Have Eyes" among the hundred I've watched since I've been working here, and let me warn you all, it was HORRIBLE! I have a super long day tomorrow and getting off at 12:30 at night SUCKED. Oh well. I'm looking really forward to tomorrow.

BBQ & Beach Weekend

Sat. May 13 - I worked for Take 5 again today, but this time, I was in charge of doing a BBQ on NAS I (the base I live on). I had been working out the details with CeCe and I was going to meet the DJ at noon and we'd start the BBQ. The day before, I made flyers and put them all over the barracks on NAS I since that was the crowd we were trying to attract. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, tons of soda and water, a DJ, and lots of people brought their own beer. We couldn't provide beer since it was a Liberty sponsored event. We also played horseshoes and volleyball during the day. It was scheduled to go until 6, but everyone was pretty much gone by 4:30pm. We figured they all wanted to do their own thing since it was a Saturday. Before CeCe and her husband left, they invited me to the beach tomorrow before I had to be at work. I needed some more sun, so we planned for them to pick me up at 8:30 the next morning. It was fun though. I took a nap after the BBQ, but we planned to have a "Tamale Night" in Joe and Pirate's room. Tamale Night consisted of homemade beef and green corn tamales and refried beans that Joe's parents brought for us directly from Arizona. They were so good and we've got enough for one more Tamale Night. As I was eating, I decided to watch Saw 2. It was so good. If you haven't seen that one and you loved the original Saw, this is a great sequel. After the movie, I went to bed since tomorrow was gonna be a long day in the sun and then work.

Sun. May 14 - HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! I left my room for the beach around 8:45 this morning with CeCe, her husband Eric, McGhee, and their daughter Britney. We drove to La Cucharachas since we all really like that beach. Not as many people ended up wanting to come that originally planned, but we figured if they really wanted to come down, they'd get there sometime in the afternoon. We needed to leave around 3 or 3:30 so I could shower and get to work by 5. The beach was pretty empty when we got there, but the weather was perfect. A nice breeze and a nice hot sun. We set up our towels and beach chairs and the tanning began. It was an awesome day. I studied my SCUBA book for awhile, listened to my IPod, and got some nice sun. Around 11, a few of our friends came to join us. A few of us occassionally went to go play in the ocean, and wow...the water has definitely improved over the past few weeks. It was actually bearable today. Once you got in past your waist, it felt really good. I ended up staying in the ocean for awhile just swimming around. The only down side to playin in this ocean is that it is sooooo salty. It's a lot saltier than the water around the States. For the last hour of the day, I ended up playing in the sand and water with their daughter. She's so cute. Britney's 7 years old. We made sand soup and ended up jumping over waves for over an hour. She was lovin the water today. CeCe said usually she doesn't get in since it's so cold. It was a lot of fun though. We packed up and grabbed some lunch around 3:30 and were on our way to drop me back off at my barracks. By the time I got outta my shower, I realized I got a nice amount of sun today. It felt good though, not like last month when I burned the hell outta myself. This was nice. I got to work in my big old ghetto truck and had another typical night at Take 5. I tried calling Mom to wish her a Happy Mother's Day, but she wasn't home. SOOOO...Happy Mother's Day to everyone that it applies to and Mom, Grandma, and Grandma..I love you and thanks for everything.

SCUBA has officially begun...

Tues. May 9 - I worked all day at ITT and had to leave there around 4:00pm to get everything ready for our SCUBA class tonight. Joe was suppose to be getting back into town today with his parents by 1pm, so I had originally planned to just ride over to NAS II with him. He never showed up during the day, so I figured he was running really late coming back home from Sorrento. I left ITT and had to meet with the SCUBA instructors outside of the main security gate on NAS II to sponsor them onto base. People that are not military related or have the special pass to get onto this specific base must be sponsored on by an ID holder to assure that they leave base by 10pm every night. This base is a lot more strict on rules and has some totally other ones than the base I live on and work at for ITT does. I got them on successfully and we headed over to the General Education Building for the first 1-hour section of the class. The class is going to be for the next 2 1/2 weeks, every Tuesday and Thursday for 4 hours. 1 hour classroom and then 2-3 in the pool doing confined dives. After that, we will be required to have 4 open water dives at their company in Aci Trezza (home of the Greek mythological Cyclopes Rocks). The class was full at 16 participants and they started the class by giving out the waivers and having us fill out a bunch of paperwork. I honestly thought Joe wasn't going to make it, but he showed up right before they started the first lesson. He's gonna be my SCUBA partner. Class went well and they wanted us to hurry up and get over to the pool for the "real lesson." I was in charge of getting the pool key, but then after that everyone helped unload their vehicle with all of the equipment we would be needing for the next 2 weeks. It took awhile to get everything underway, but we were soon ready to learn how to put the tanks and BCDs together. After fitting everything, we got into the water for the introduction. I was the only person in the class who could not get the hang of breathing in and out of the regulator. It was such a weird feeling and being nervous on top of that did not help. It was really frustrating, but the instructors promised me they would work with me next class and I would get it. I wanted to cry, but I promised I would come back next class. While I was spending time in the pool trying how to breath into the damn thing, everyone else was working on some basic procedures and hand signals. Oh well, I couldn't even imagine doing any of that yet since I would first need to feel comfortable breathing. The class went well though and I knew I'd get it sooner or later. I would talk to Leslie about it later at work one day to see if she had any problems like that when she first learned how. I figured I couldn't be the only person to not be able to figure it out right away. I was nervous for another reason now, I only had 4 more classes to be able to learn everything and get this down. Sylvie, one of the instructors was really sweet and told me she'd personally work with me on Thursday until I figured it out. That was cool. After class, Joe and I went and picked up Pirate from base and we headed up to Taormina to go see his parents before they left. Pirate hadn't met them yet and he had tomorrow off ( I didn't have to be at work til 3 and Joe was still on leave until Fri) so we figured we'd go up there and hang out with them tomorrow morning and afternoon. We didn't get up there until almost midnight so we decided to go grab some beer before we headed to the hotel. There was only one place open, so we went to it. It was a really cool Irish Pub called Time Out. We ended up having an awesome time, of course, and stayed there until almost 3:30am. We stayed at the Hotel Isobella that his parents rented a room for us all and they were staying at. There was a cute little note on the bed saying they'd meet us after breakfast in the lobby at 9:45am. We all crashed and went to bed so we had a good amount of time in the morning to hang out before I had to get to work.

Wed. May 10 - We all hung out and walked around Taormina all morning and early afternoon. The weather was great, a little on the hot side. We stopped to eat lunch at a trattoria/pizzeria. It was so good and the wine was great. I had to be at work by 2, so we packed up and left the town. There was quite a but of traffic, so I ended up running a little late for work. It was cool though. We brought his parents down with us and Pirate and Joe showed them around both bases after I went to work. Work was alright, I got an email from Dr. Cole finally asking if I could call her so we could talk about my internship stuff and graduation. I gave her a call as soon as I knew she in her office and we talked for about a half hour. It was so nice to finally get ahold of her and talk about everything that's been happening lately over here and back at school. She told me that she was going to be leaving Mizzou because she got offered a job at Indiana University starting next semester. She did get her tenure at Mizzou, but Indiana also offered her husband a job. I told her that I would definitely come visit her, especially now that I can visit Kate and Meg if I go up there. She sounded really happy about it, it will kinda suck not being able to come visit here though when I go back to school. I'll miss her for sure though. I will try my hardest to keep in touch with her since she's been a great reference for me for the past 4 years. When I get back into town, I told her I'd head down to see her before she leaves so I can get my internship manual and other stuff that I've turned in. She also told me that I won the "Senior of the Year Award." I thought that was really cool that all my friends and staff recognized my dedication to the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism department over the past 4 years. She told me I can pick up the award when I get down to school. The rest of the night was same old Take 5. Watched movies, made lots of popcorn, played Ping Pong with Smitty, and so on.

Thurs. May 11 - I woke up at 4:00am to go help pick-up Joe's parents and bring them to the airport. After I got home, I went back to bed and worked at ITT for the day. I just helped them catch-up on some work and helped Leah get the weekend trip ready. She is escorting a trip to a spa in Taormina for the weekend so she needed my help getting all the treatments and times ready. It was kinda hectic, but the day went by really quick considering I had SCUBA tonight again. I left work at 4:30 to go sponsor the instructors onto base and get to class on time. We learned a bunch more today and my lesson in the pool went so much better than Tuesday. I spent time with Sylvie on my own to practice breathing into the regulator and get comfortable with being underwater. I'm glad I didn't give up and really felt much better by the end of the night. By the end of class, I worked on clearing my mask with a few of the guys. I think my next class will go much better and I can start to do the underwater techniques and emergency skills.

Fri. May 12 - I worked at ITT Gear-N-Go all day helping Leah again with the Spa Weekend. She was freakin out all day. Near the end of the day, I helped Leslie with a 10-person birthday party in the Rock-Climbing Wall. It lasted about 2 hours and by the end of that time, I probably belayed those kids over 20 times. I was so sweaty, that gym has practically no circulation in there. The kids loved it though, we're gonna start advertising doing parties more often and maybe start charging a small fee for our labor (it takes about 2 or 3 of our staff to help belay everyone for a few hours). It was fun though, but I was ready to get outta there. I finally got back to my room around 6:30 and Smitty called me seeing if I wanted to go eat with him and his friend at the Hard Rock in Catania. I hadn't been there yet so I took him up on the offer. It ended up just being him, our friend Baumann, his Italian girlfriend, and myself. It was good. A typical Hard Rock Cafe, just a little empty since it was still pretty early for Italians to start eating dinner. I ended up just going home and watching the movie I've heard so much about, Hostel. It was retarded though so I went to bed so I could sleep in in the morning.

Rock Climbing on Mt. Etna

Sun. May 7 - Kat came and picked me up at 9:00am this morning and we drove up to Mt. Etna. They climbed here last week, so she knew where to go. It was to an old waterfall on the south side of Etna about 3 miles from the base camp we usually park at for snowboarding. The location was called Acqua Rocca and it took about a mile hike to get up to. We drove up there with 8 other people so we all helped carry the gear and everything together. We got to the bottom of the waterfall and I immediately knew this was gonna be a good day. The waterfall was about 80 feet tall and the instructor, Pascal, told me we'd be climbing about 50 feet on most of the pitches. We started to set the climbs and he led climbed a few more to get everyone started. Another couple was there that day too, so they set 2 more pitches for us all to use. We eventually had 5 paths and they were each so different. We all took turns belaying each other and climbing throughout the day. I spiderwomaned up some hard ones and everyone was pretty amazed. It was awesome, it had been over a year since I've been climbing, but it all came back so quickly. The day was so much fun and we took a bunch of pictures to be able to put up at ITT. 4 oclock came by really quick and I had no idea we'd be there so late. We hurried up and took down all the routes and cleaned up. I called work to tell them I'd be a little late, but Kat tried to get me back as fast as possible. It all worked out and the day was what I had been craving for awhile now. I'm gonna start using the rock climbing wall in our gym more often with the club on night's that I'm off. I finally got to work at 5:45pm, but the guy on the earlier shift didn't mind. It was a quick shift and I got home around midnight since I had a lot to clean up and drive home in my big ole hoosier truck.
*** I love Mt. Etna for so many more reasons now... she's not just good for snowboarding. I can't wait to go hike up it once all the snow eventually melts.

Acqua Rocca on Mount Etna

Pascal and I climbing the center routes. I beat him on the way up. It was an awesome climb.

If you look in the very center of the picture, you can see the rock waterfall. Its about a mile hike to get to the waterfall from this parking lot. We are about 1/2 mile East from Mt. Etna South base camp where I snowboarded this winter.