Darwin Award Runner-up.. North Rim hiker

[Retrograde]

15. That last one is one of my pet peeves

Squirrels are not cute little Disney critters - they're rodents, and out here in the West they and their kin can be carrying all sorts of interesting diseases. People entering Yosemite are warned not to contact rodents because many of the carry the Hanta virus - and Yersinia pestis (aka bubonic plague) is common in the Southwest. The best you can hope for from those fluffy-tailed tree rats is fleas.

Just because a place is called a park doesn't mean it's all tame and safe. People are killed in the US National Parks every year because they ignore warning signs or think they know better than the people whose jobs it is to keep them safe.

(I've seen high heels and flip-flops on trails. I often hike in sneakers but that's deliberate - if the terrain is too tough for my shoes it's going to be too hard on my aged knees and I had better not do that route.)