glutton for punishment

My body has endured two consecutive nights of self inflicted strains and voluntary abuse. I never knew that when I signed on to be a youth leader, that that included massive amounts of exercise.

Tuesday night we took the high school kids hiking up Canfield Mountain. Ten years ago, such an activity would not have been a problem. But then again, ten years ago I was in high school. The other issue is that little hike (about 35 minutes for healthy/in shape people) is the first hiking I had done since 1999 when I moved away from Seattle. Despite being a short hike, it is fairly steep in spots (most of it) and provides spectacular views of Hayden Lake, Hayden, Dalton Gardens, and Coeur d’Alene.

Last night the junior high had a bigger and better scavenger hunt. This a scavenger hunt without a set list of things to find. Instead each group is given a paper clip then goes from house to house asking to trade our item with the home owner for something bigger and better. My group traded our paper clip for a Gerber baby spoon, traded the spoon for a box of plastic forks, and the forks for a heart shaped wreath. By the time we accomplished that, we were out of time. This whole activity required a lot of walking (and failed attempt to restrain one individual who had this compulsive urge to jump/stomp in every puddle we came across). Normally walking would not have been a problem, except for the fact that I HIKED UP A MOUNTAIN the night before.

Oh yeah, if you’ve been paying attention to the weather forecasts for the inland northwest, it has been unseasonably cool with large quantities of rain. While Spokane and Post Falls got dumped on Tuesday, CDA/Hayden received minimal amounts of rainfall. It did start raining Tuesday night, but not till a half hour after all the kids had gotten off of the mountain. It rained nonstop all night and through the day yesterday. We were worried that we’d be doing the scavenger hunt in the rain. But thankfully it did finally stop ... just before the start of youth group.