These, my friends, are fiddle-head ferns. When there have been enough warm days in one spot, they will unfurl and look like perfectly ordinary little ferns. I think they're pretty neat because even though on my first day here I saw many of them already open, I keep running into batches of them that haven't seen the sun enough yet.
The best part of Saturday's hike was definitely the cold mountain stream that we stopped to rest at on the way back. We had goldfish crackers and cookies for lunch (which tasted amazing when you're hot/tired/sweaty) and stuck our feet in the seriously cold water. Yes, those are my feet in the last pictures, aren't they cute? :-P