Adventure or Epic Fail?

So I entered some photos into the National Parks photo competition and three of my photos won second place. Here are the three that placed...

Not sure why it went all fuzzy when I uploaded, but this photo won second in Sequoia Trees division

 

Won second in the Flower division

Won second in the seasons division

I thought that was pretty cool that three of my photos placed. Now onward to my adventure or epic fail?
It all started a couple hours after our usual service. It went smoothly and like any other, but I had the rest of the day off and it was only noon. Libby and I wanted to do something with the rest of the day. It was soon decided that Crystal Cave would be perfect, except for the fact that we didn't have a car. But hey, we were in shape and we could just walk there. So we looked at a map and made out our route. We would take the bus to the museum and from there walk a little less than 4 miles to the road that would lead us to the dirt road leading to the cave. Our map cut off shortly there after, but we guessed it would only be another mile at most. We would make it just in time for our 3:30 tour. Ha...right.
After hiking the 3 mile used trail (used trails are not maintained) we popped right were we expected to and right on time. Now we just had to hike the last bit, which we had only guessed the distance. I'll spare you the details thereafter, but it turned out it be an additional 4 miles, much more than we had anticipated. Needless to say, we missed our tour.
That wasn't the worst of it though. While hiking the unknown distance we soon realized that even if we were to turn back at that time we were going to miss the last shuttle from the museum. That would mean an additional 7 miles to our trip that we already had 4 miles added onto. We had gotten ourselves into a pickle. We decided our best bet was to continue onward to the cave and try to find a ride back with the employees there. We weren't sure how long we would have to wait for them, nor did we know if they would have room, not did we know how much longer we would have to hike to get there.
The parking lot was a glorious sight to be seen. We had hiked a little more than 7 miles with no break and had gone a steady 3 miles per hour, and to add to it all, it was in the lower 90's. We were kind of tired. It was time for the next challenge. Getting a ride. Luckily it all worked out and after talking to the manager we were able to book a ride with them back to lodgepole. We had to wait an hour, but we were just happy to have a ride back. After figuring it all out, if we were to have had to walk all the way back to lodgepole we would have had to hike 22 miles. We had both done that before, but this time we had not packed accordingly, plus we started this adventure about one in the afternoon, so we would not have made it back to Lodgepole until about 9 or 10 at night.
Adventure or epic fail? I'd say both.