Cascades

After having so much fun on our hike to McAfee's Knob last weekend (see what happened there?  a few days go by and suddenly hiking 9 miles with two not-able-to-walk-9-miles children and a dog seemed like a good time.  ha!), we decided to hike somewhere again this weekend.

My sweet little Squiddly Diddly spent the night with us last night after Harper's softball game (Go, Grizzlies!  Big win last night, and Harper went 3-4 with 3 RBIs), so after the girls got up and ate breakfast, I gave them some options on what we could do for the day. 

A)  Go to Dad's softball game
B)  Go to a park and play
C)  Go for a hike

And then there was a lot of jumping up and down and chanting of "hike! hike! hike!"  Of course, when I gave all those options, it was a beautiful, sunny 65 degree morning.  And it was the entire one hour drive to the Cascades until we pulled into Giles County.  And then it started raining... I asked the girls if they would still be up for hiking, and since they were still enthusiastic, I paid our $3 parking fee, grabbed the backpack and headed up the trail. 

 

 

The girls did SO WELL on the hike up the hill!  There's a sign at the halfway point (one mile in) that Willa was oh-so-thrilled to have made it to.  There were a few times that Syd said, "Can we quit now?" ha! but, she kept on powering through.  I did carry WK for the last half mile or so, but the wide path and fun things to look at made the two mile hike up fairly enjoyable. 

The girls just could not believe it when we got to the falls.  I think they were even more impressed since on the way up, I may have convinced them this was it.  Bahahahaha.  I'm horrible.

Harper described it best when she said, "Whoa, that looks super powerful."  Unfortunately, because of the change in the weather, the area around the waterfall were extra misty and cool, so we were only there for around 15 minutes. 

 

 

On the way up, I didn't let the girls venture too far down the side trails (preserving energy!), but I told them we could go down as many as they'd like and take as much time as they'd like on the way back down.  And those little sweet peas took advantage of that offer.  I thought all the rain seeping through the canopy of the trees would make them cold and wanting to get back to the car, but they thought it'd be more fun to explore the creek and sing on top of rocks. 

 

 

After all that effort, these girlies deserved some ice cream, so we stopped at the Cascade Café for a fun treat.  After the ice cream, we hopped in the car to head back to Salem to try to catch one of Sam's game. Syd was asleep within three minutes of "quiet time", while my girls held out for about thirty minutes, but then finally crashed.  Sydney has been so good for me, and my girls have had so much fun with their cousin, so we asked Mimi if she could stay an extra night.  We'll return her to her family tomorrow morning at FCC since they'll be joining us to watch Harper sing at the Kids Life takeover, but only if we have to!