July 19, 2014

Kevin's View  For over a year now, I've been planning a trip to Rosthern, SK for a geocaching mega event. This was finally the day. Jason was able to join me and we celebrated his 500th find as the mega. Woohoo!! Other than just hanging out at the arena where the event was held, we drove around the town and got all the caches we had loaded (found out later more had been published), saw some neat old architecture and their giant wheat sculpture at the visitor centre. After that, we headed out to the country roads for a bit more caching where we saw the sunset. Unbeknownst to us, shortly after the sunset picture was taken, Rachel and Nathan were driving in from Iowa and they spotted us on the side of the road! Since it was such a busy day, I'll follow Hillary's lead and post a bonus photo too. There's no cheating though, this is our blog and we can make up our own rules. :)   Hello to you Hillary from a bunch of Calgary cachers.  This one was Bernice's idea and she didn't even make it in!

Hillary's View Today was certainly a change from the sitting that is inevitable in a course like this one.  A big group of us headed up to the Menengai Crater just out of town - apparently one of the biggest volcano craters in the world.  It is over 12 km across, and hikers can climb down into it, dropping about 485m.  It was a reverse hike - down first, then up! (and up... and up....! It was STEEP, and highlighted just HOW out of shape I am!)  The views were spectacular, and a highlight was the group gathering at the bottom to sing How Great Thou Art. I was grateful to get to see such stunning beauty - and so different than what I am used to! The top two photos are the from the beginning of our hike, looking out over the crater.  The two bottom photos are from the same part of the crater - one taken from the top, and one from the bottom. Oh, and part of the hill on the bottom left hand photo was on fire when we came back. Nothin' like out-running a grass fire on the side of a crater in Kenya. Ya know, normal Saturday... Bonus photo of the fire (I'm so cheating today!). Our trail ran right along that ridge, so we had to hike through smoke.  You should have heard the crackling sound - it was amazing!