Horsethief

We headed out of town on Sat. afternoon and drove up north about 2 hours into the mountains of Idaho near Cascade. We decided to try to stay somewhere new and had a couple of different campgrounds in mind.

The first one we tried was recommended by a friend, Crown Point, which is right in town on Cascade Lake. It looked pretty nice, but by the time we arrived in town around 7pm it was completely full. Unfortunately, many of the local camp sites do not take reservations unless you come up in a large group.

So the next option was a campground around on the opposite side of the lake called French Creek that sounded pretty good from my Google search. But when we drove through it we were less than impressed and there was only 1 site open and it really didn't look great.

After a ton of driving around it was getting really late, and finally just before 9pm we decided our best option was to try to get a hotel room for the night and try to find a campsite the next day (Sunday) when most people will be leaving. But as luck would have it the 1 and only hotel in town said they were completely full.

Faced with no other alternatives, and starting to think we'd be spending the night sleeping in the car, I remembered that during my training session last week I told Swede we were planning to go camping somewhere in Cascade and he told me he was going to be up there too doing some mountain biking with friends and staying at his parent's house.

I had been to Swede's parent's house once before a couple of years ago with a big group from family camp to watch fireworks. Their home sits up on a hill and overlooks Cascade Lake with a beautiful view. So we drove over around 9pm and swallowed our pride and asked Swede if he would mind if we crashed with him for the night.

As it turned out, Swede's parents were out of town so he was there with his friends and a ton of really BIG dogs just hanging out, so Swede said of course we could stay and there was plenty of room. So our first night camping we spent in bedrooms at Swede's parent's house.

The next morning we left and decided to drive over to Horsethief which is about 8 miles outside of Cascade on the way to Warm Lake.

As we drove through the area there were several different camp sites, all of which were totally full. It was around 8am, so we kept driving down to the day use area and decided to eat some breakfast and do some fishing as we waited for people to clear out of the campsites.

SD took Monday off so we were hoping to enjoy staying in some pretty empty campgrounds as most everyone leaves on Sunday afternoons.

SD headed down to the dock with the kids while I pulled out everything to make some breakfast.

The view from where I was standing up the hill at a picnic table looking through the trees to SD and the kids way out on the dock. IK was with his friend, TJ, backpacking up at Boulder Creek and joined us later in the afternoon.

A ton of ducks would periodically swim by and come right up to us.

Breakfast...mmmm!!!

Eggs, bacon, cantaloupe, and GF pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. Yummy!!!

Horsethief is simply beautiful, the water is surrounded by mountains, and it feels so peaceful and quiet. Most of the time we had this huge dock all to ourselves and it was such a serene, lovely place to spend a relaxing day. The weather was totally perfect!

LA's first fish! She's an amazing fisherwoman! She puts on her own worms, casts her own line, touches the fish, and everything! She caught a total of 4 fish that morning!

KW's first fish! He caught 2!

Can you see Scarlet sitting in a little shady spot on the dock?

Our campsite. After fishing in the morning, we drove through several campsites and settled on one we liked. I drove into Cascade in the afternoon to meet up with the boys and pick up IK and TJ and bring them over to the camp.

Burger boats for dinner...MMMM!!!!!

I managed to snap some photos of them this time! Place a hamburger patty in the center. Top with 2-3 tablespoons of BBQ sauce. Chop up potatoes and place on top, slice up carrots and place around the hamburger on the outside because they take longer to cook than the potatoes.

Sprinkle with Lawry's season salt and wrap in foil. Flip it over and wrap a second time in foil. Place them down in the fire to cook until done, at least 30 min. Check when done, sprinkle with cheese on top and enjoy! They're sooooo good!!!

Hanging out at camp.

Cooking up LA's fish.

Climbing trees.

LA throwing sticks in the fire.

LA and KW playing hide and seek.

Who is that grown up boy with the awesome sideburns???

Our kids got so filthy! I kept wiping off their faces with wet wipes.

I have no idea why, but I looked over and KW was pulling up Scarlet's mouth and examining her teeth...and she was simply putting up with it. So I told him to stop it and...

...he didn't want to. Such a priceless face!

After dropping off EJ at camp the next morning we headed out for some more fishing.

KW was the lucky winner that day, catching the only fish of the morning. I was up grabbing some items from the car, but managed to walk down to the dock just in time to video him reeling in his fish.

We loaded up the tired crew and headed back through Cascade on our way home.

One of the incredibly popular attractions to this area are the wild huckleberries. It's an extremely popular tourist item in Cascade and all around in the woods you can actually pick wild huckleberries...although none of the locals will tell you where they are because they like to keep them for themselves.

While we were staying at Swede's house he mentioned he was hoping to pick some while he was up there, but ran out of time. So to thank him for his hospitality in letting us crash at his place, we stopped at a gift shop in town and I bought a jar of huckleberry jam, a large bag of huckleberry popcorn, and some huckleberry bark drizzled into white chocolate.

I had never tried huckleberries before and never understood what the huge craze was all about, so we bought some of those same items for us to try. I didn't manage to get a picture of the huckleberry bark because we ate it on the way home...and it was soooo good!!!!

Huckleberries are what I would describe as a mix between a blueberry and a blackberry, they're very sweet and delicious! The popcorn's amazing too! I haven't tried the jam yet, but I'm going to try to make some GF biscuits and try it soon.

It was sooooo nice to get out of town, even if it was just for a little while. We have a big rafting/camping trip coming up and then I think we're going to try to fit in one more camping trip before school starts next month. There's nothing like having that time away from simply everything to unwind and relax with my family.