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!