Hiking and Monster Mash-ing

The Monster Mash was a perfectly amazing night. But I'll get to that in a minute. First, here are a few pictures from the hike I went on with Molly, Heather and Anthony last Friday:

We hiked out on the Miner's Creek trail. I don't know how far we went but the whole trip out and back took about three hours.

My hiking buddies.

The sun was setting as we walked back, which made for some beautiful skies.

I was exhausted after work but I'm glad I went on the hike; it felt really good to get out in that beautiful nature that is all around me that I haven't been enjoying nearly enough this summer.

Sunday's Monster Mash was a huge hit. A lot of people showed up--theatre and locals alike--and almost everyone came up with a really great costume. It was so good to just let loose and have a great time without any worries or drama or having to get up for work in the morning. The main attraction was the dance floor, so that's where most of the pictures were taken. And boy were there a lot of pictures taken. Here are a few to give you a good idea of the costumes people had:

I was a figure skater, Molly was "Babe-raham" Lincoln, Travis was a viking and Maggie was a boyscout.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

We had been talking about doing this party for a long time and I am so glad we actually made it happen. And just in time before I leave! I only have about five days left, so I am trying to make the most of the rest of my time here. On Monday the company was invited to Red Mountain Ranch and I went for a few hours but I will save that for another post since there is already quite a bit to take in in this one. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and I will be back soon to share more!

Vallecito Lake and Other Adventures

Whew, it has been a while (again...) hasn't it? Well, here I am again with some more stories. In my last post I mentioned that I would be going on the river. Well, we did. About 14 of us. On two rafts. It was great fun, everyone was really cool and we had a good time. The only thing was....it POURED rain the whole time. It was cold and wet and slightly unpleasant, but we all made the most of it and had fun regardless of the unkind weather. It was a lonnnngg trip and naturally, as soon as we got of the water the sky cleared and the sun came out. But like I said, we had a great time anyway and it makes for a better story than just a regular river trip in good weather.

This past Monday Molly and I went to Vallecito Lake, which is near Durango, to visit our friend Eric who is a fishing guide there. He invited us to come down and he would take us out on the lake, so that's what we did. We got there Sunday evening and he took us to the Pura Vida Cafe, a restaurant on the lake by the marina. It is a cool restaurant and the food was absolutely delicious.

The owner loves Costa Rica and there are a lot of decorations from there in the restaurant.

Molly and I split this deadly peanut butter bar dessert. It's not very big but there's no way I could have eaten the whole thing, regardless of how ridiculously delicious it was.

After dinner we went back to Eric's house where we stayed over night. He had to work the next day so Molly and I took our time getting up and getting ready and we went into Durango before we had to meet Eric at the lake around 1:30. We had a yummy lunch at the Pura Vida cafe and then headed out in the boat. The first thing we did was go to one end of the lake where the "typical" Vallecito Lake picture is taken, with the mountains in the background.

Happy ladies on the lake!

We cruised around this end of the lake for a while and then Molly and I asked when we could go swimming. We hadn't been swimming all summer and it was hot and I was dying to jump in the water. So he took us to the other end of the lake where it's about 90 feet deep and we jumped in and swam around for quite a while. It was heavenly. The water was warm and swimming in lakes is one of my favorite things ever, so it definitely made my day.

Finally we decided we were ready to get out and we drove around to this really cool tree that is growing out in the middle of the lake:

Then we headed to shore and we had some time left in the day so Eric took us for a drive around the lake and up to a very cool spot where we stopped to take in the scenery.

It was a little stormy and gloomy looking but still incredibly beautiful and thankfully it never actually rained on us. At this parking spot there were a couple of cowboys loading up their horses. They had been riding and camping out in the mountains for...I can't remember how long, but it was really cool to think about just going out in the wilderness for an extended period of time and just being away from everything.

From here we headed back and stopped at Virginia's Steakhouse, a very cool Cheer's-like bar and restaurant that is by the lake and often has live music. I wish we could have stayed there longer but we only had time for a cup of coffee and then Molly and I had to head back to Durango because we had to go to Home Depot to pick up some things for work. We made it just in time and got the things we needed and went back into town to get something to eat (sushi, yum!!) before we headed back to Creede through a rather ferocious thunder and lightning storm.

It was a great trip and as much as I love it here, it was nice to get out of Creede...something I hadn't really done yet this summer. So that was the great adventure of the week. A few of us went on a really good hike Friday after work, but since this post is already pretty long I'll save those pictures for tomorrow. Tonight we are having a "Halloween in July" party that we're calling a "Monster Mash" and I am super excited. We haven't really had a big party like this for the whole company yet this year so it will be really nice to just hang out and let loose together. So there will definitely be some good pictures of that to show. I can't wait to see everyone's costume. I'll be back tomorrow with a good post for you all, so stay tuned!

Birthday!

Hey! My birthday was on Friday! Yay! It was a great day. Well, mostly it was a great night. I worked during the day but we got done a little early which was nice. The highlight of the day, though was getting my present from the best Mum in the world: a new digital camera! I was so surprised and excited and now all my pictures are so much better! I also got awesome new nail polish from the best sister in the world and cards from grandparents and birthday wishes from friends, it was a happy day!

I had decided the day before that I wanted to go to the Hotel for dinner because it's the one fancy restaurant in town and I hadn't been there yet this summer so I thought it would be a special treat. So I invited the people I wanted to be there with me and we all showed up at 6 and had a delicious dinner. It ended up being me, Molly, Biz, Heather and Ryan. Biz and Ryan left a little early and the rest of us ended up being there for three hours just visiting and enjoying the relaxing environment and good food (and a little wine).

The Hotel.


Pretties Biz and Heather.

Ryan and Molly looking oh so lovely.

The birthday girl making a birthday wish.

The whole crew content after eating a delicious meal.

After dinner a few of us went to Tommy's to see the live music that was playing there. It was a guy named Josh Hart just doing a solo set and he was really good. He even played me a birthday song, which was awesome. The whole night was really fun and I was glad to spend it with people I love...and even people I don't even know who contributed to me having a good time.

Today we are going on the river! Finally! It'll just be a bunch of cool people floating and having a good time. It's the perfect activity for a day off in my opinion, and I haven't been able to do it yet this year, so I'm really excited. I'm sure there will be pictures to show and stories to tell so I will be sure to post those as soon as I get a chance. The next few weeks of work are going to be crazy. But I am going to do my best to enjoy them and have plenty of fun things to share. But for now, Hurray for a day off!!

Fourth of July

Now that it has been almost a week since the Fourth, I guess I'll go ahead and post about it. It was a fabulous day and the highlight was definitely the parade. So, there are these metal "horses" down at the shop that were made for a show a few years ago that Molly and I "ride" on occasion and named Hank and Wilbur. Last year we thought it would be a great idea to ride them in the Fourth of July parade, but for a variety of reasons we didn't make it happen. But this year we were determined, so we discussed how it would be possible to take them on the road. We were thinking about putting new wheels on them but nothing sounded secure or safe enough so finally Pauli came up with the idea of putting them on his motorcycle trailer and he would pull us behind his truck. So that's what we did and we were definitely the hit of the parade.

We set up a whole scenario where Molly was an Indian who had captured Biz (see next picture) and I was the Cowgirl who was going to save her.

We had Biz tied up in the back of the truck. We spent the whole parade whooping and hollering and yeehawing and Biz called for help, it was so much fun. Molly and I were pretty sore the next day, though, from riding those metal horses. But it was all totally worth it.

While we were waiting in the canyon for the parade to start, two planes flew right overhead, it was pretty awesome.

After the parade Molly and I met up with a couple of new acquaintances, one of whom bought us lunch and we headed to the mining competition, our favorite part of the Fourth.

Molly and I content in the sun at the mining competitions.

This is the "Mucking" portion of the competition. The machine is on a track and there's a bucket on the front and they have to fill the big bucket behind.

This is the double jack where two people have to hammer stakes into the rock for a certain length of time and at the end they measure how far they got. I took pictures of this one because it was the only female in the double jack competition and I thought it was pretty cool. I'm pretty sure she was hitting it harder than her husband.

After the mining competitions Molly and I spent the rest of the night hanging out with our friend Cory and some guys from Montana that he was guiding for the week (he's a fishing guide). We went to Kip's for dinner and headed to Tommy's afterward. Overall, it was a great day and night spent with fantastic people. I wish it could have lasted for at least another week. Instead, the next day I got to work from 8am to about 12:30 at night. Such is life. My birthday was great too, but I'll post about that tomorrow. Hurray!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Wow, it has been a long time since my last post. Quite a bit has happened since then. Sorry I haven't been keeping up, work has been a bit crazy lately. But here I am again with some good stuff. I might actually spread out the posts so that this one isn't so gigantic. For now I'll just cover the great day off I had a couple weeks ago. My friend Kat and I had planned on making brunch that Monday morning but we ended up starting the day pretty late so we decided to go to Freemon's for lunch instead. Our friend Chev decided to come along which worked out perfectly because he has a jeep and it was a gorgeous, top-down kind of day. I have heard a lot about Freemon's but had never been there, and I am glad I finally got to eat that delicious chili cheeseburger. Apparently they also have great shakes too but I was not aware of that so I missed out. I'll have to go back again before I leave and try them out.


After we ate we decided it was too nice of a day to just go back home so we drove out to North Clear Creek Falls, which was gorgeous.

A view on the way up.

The Falls!

A pretty spot on 149 on the way back to Creede.

We stayed briefly at the falls and headed back to town and took a little scenic detour on the way. On the ride back Kat was talking about how she wanted to go out and find some kind of log or stump to make a coffee table out of so we stopped at her place to get water and sunscreen and a chainsaw and the three of us headed up the mountain to see what we could find.

It was an amazing drive up the mountain with plenty of incredible views.

We stopped many, many times checking out different trees and stumps and finally found the perfect one.

We loaded it into the jeep and headed back to town, just in time for Kat to go to work. I think the table is done, so I'll try to go over and get a picture of it and post it later. I bet it turned out really cool.

That night I went to Tommy's to hang out with Kat while she was working and managed to hustle a group of Texan tourists out of some money playing the ring game they have out back on the patio. It was a fun night and a great finish to one of the best days off I've had all summer.

I guess my next post will be about the Fourth of July, which actually was the best day off I've had all summer. I'm sure I'll get to it tomorrow so keep a look out, it was a good day!