To continue.  We went to the falls.  We did not have raingear, and the mist is so dense that you really need it.  Anyway, when the park ranger set off, there were a lot of Asian tourists ahead of us.  I hadn't even thought about bringing a flashlight so I set off at a fast pace to keep up with them because they had lights.  We walked for a long ways in pitch darkness.  When we finally broke out of the shrubbery and trees so we could see a "moonbow" or the falls or whatever, the mist started.  I got fairly close to the lookout point and was getting quite wet.  Gretchen was right behind me and when it started "raining" she said "I'm going back, I don't want to get any more wet" and turned around.  I went a little farther, like 30 feet and was getting wetter by the minute so I turned around to go back, too.  With the mist, you couldn't see the falls or the sky or anything.  I met others of the group so we walked back together.  It started to rain hard, which was the condensation from the mist.  I couldn't have been wetter if I had stood in the shower for about 20 minutes with my clothes on.  My shoes squished with every step.  I was drenched.  And so was everyone else. 

We sloshed back to the bus.  When we got on, Phil, one of the members of the group, said "where's Gretchen?  I met her going back."  Uh oh.  Gretchen wasn't there.  No one could remember where they saw her last.  Someone said they saw her with Stanley.  He said she went past him.  By this time, Beverly is standing outside the bus to wait for Reid so see what we should do next.  She didn't show up.  After about 15 minutes of this, it was decided that the bus would take the rest of us back to the hotel and then come back to see if she had gotten back to the entrance.

Beverly and two others in the group went back to the park entrance after the rest of us got off at the hotel.  Stella and I went back to our room to get dry clothes on and see about room service for dinner.  I was worried.  I just knew that something really bad had happened to Gretchen.  Others got dry and then went to wait in the lobby.  About 45 minutes later, Beverly called me to say that they found her.  She had gotten turned around in the dark and was at the far end of the Park when the rangers found her.  Luckily, she only had a cut on one knee where she'd fallen, and nothing more serious.  What a relief.  I think she was quite embarrassed about it all and she didn't talk about it much until a couple of days later.  But it gave all of us quite a scare. 

Room service.  Not much to choose from but it got there in about 15 minutes.  They told us to keep the dirty dishes in the room and they would pick them up the next day when they cleaned the room.  Okay, we didn't think much of it.  Until the next morning, when the ants had arrived during the night.  It dawned on us that they probably didn't want leftover food in the corridor to bring the animals in.

It took two days for my shoes to dry.  Needless to day, I think a night visit to the falls will not be on the itinerary for future tours.