Hamsters Amazing Cascade Adventures.

June 18th.

To get familiar with the town of Cascade the Staff put  together a scavenger hunt. We were put in three groups of two and dropped off at different locations throughout the town, we were given a page long list of places to visit, pictures to take and people to complement. starting at 9:30 my partner and I were dropped off at the gas station at the edge of town.

we did the challenge there (locate the Jones soda in the store) and then decided to head out to the lake. I wasn't aware when we started that it was a 20 minute hike uphill the whole way. So that was fun. At the lake the challenge was to take a picture of our feet in the water. I sat down on the loading dock and began to untie my converse when I heard a person shouting at me, "You'll get your feet wet if you do that!" I looked up and after my eyes adjusted to the glare of the water I saw a old man sitting in a fishing boat across from me on the other loading dock, he and his wife were staring at the two of us in confusion so I shouted back "That's the whole idea." and with that they both shook their heads and continued on with their business.

looking back now we did look rather silly.

 The old man turned out to be correct, I did indeed have wet feet by the end, It was a good addition to the days experience. 

While we were at the lake we had one other memory to make, we had to take a picture wearing life jackets, and when it comes to me, life jacket pictures are never a serious matter, as you can see.

I was an explorer, I'm not sure what Eric is doing though.


After we terrorized the Lake dwellers a bit, Eric and I headed out to Cascade dam to meet one of the staff members (we were promised a snack there) I left my shoes off so my feet could dry from their dip earlier. It was a half mile walk to the dam from the lake, and then back of course. I felt so much like a true woodsy, hippie, backpacking guru person walking that far without shoes-seeing as I rarely even walk inside my house without shoes when I'm in Georgia, I guess I'm already becoming a knew creation through Christ Jesus.
Some things never change though. I threw my shoes back on and we headed back into town. We had to discover how many different flavors of ice cream the Cascade Store has. 11 was the diagnosis,  I checked that mission off of our list and went to exit the building when Hamster convinced me to buy him an ice cream cone, he is a little fellow so he couldn't finish the whole thing-and I wasn't going to be wasteful and throw it away. It was scrumptious, Huckleberry flavored with chunks of blueberries. yummy.

Hamster's eyes are bigger then his stomach, in more than one way.

After ice cream we stopped at several other shops and met people. We only had 6 more tasks to complete when we stopped for lunch at 1:00pm. Turns out we left the hardest things for last, which was a bummer because we both were so full and warm and sleepy, but we still had 2 miles to walk before we were done at 4:00pm. Now there is no doubt in my mind that Jesus loves me because the only fast food restaurant in Cascade is Subway! huzzah! it's less then  mile from my base. That's where we all met up for lunch and let me tell you, Hamster was super excited, he could barely decide on what to get!

He takes lunch very seriously.

The buffalo  chicken sub was too spicy for him so I had to eat it. The rest of the afternoon he was pretty tired and was content on riding in my backpack.

After lunch we had a couple more hours before our deadline, so we set off to find the largest tree in Cascade-it was kind of hard to locate with so many trees around town. I just wanted to find a big stack of cut firewood and say that WAS it. That would have saved us so much time. Eventually we came across it in some guys back yard! we asked him about it and he told us that it was one of the three largest trees in Idaho. Hearing that I figured I should get my picture taken with it, just to make me feel more like a tourist. 

There she is! she's a bit larger in person.....it loses some of the majesty in the picture. 

After a long walk and a slight sun burn, we mostly completed our list and headed back to our leaders house for a nice competitive game of Balderdash.