by roving reporter shaun grub
We ate lunch in the Cafe 55 in Cascade and watched through the window as a stern highway patrolman performed a sobriety test on a young physically fit and apparently perfectly sober young woman. This was shortly after the sun had been hidden from us all for over two minutes, but whatever the reason, I enjoyed a perfectly cooked cordon bleu chicken sandwich in the cafe, and afterward we bought commemorative Cascade Eclipse T-shirts from a stand on the side of the road.
We parked on a culdesac while driving around Lake Cascade and followed a trail over the crest of a hill and down into a secluded beach with a nice sandy area and some comfortable rocks. Our boy was happy to wade in and be held in the water there. My wife and I took turns holding him while we swam. He's only four so he might not remember all this but he sure had a great time.
We stayed three nights in a beautiful spacious ranch-style apartment overlooking the owner's 730 pristine acres of Idaho wilderness, along with the elk, wolves, foxes, coyotes, cows, and cats out there under the scintillating Milky Way. On our penultimate day we drove up to Golden Fork Hot Springs and encountered the best smelling and most relaxing hot springs in Idaho yet. That was a vacation my wife and I will never forget.
