After a solid night's sleep, I think we all felt much better on Saturday. In to town we went to eat at Creekside Cafe. Holy cow. This place was beyond awesome. You know how sometimes, you walk into a restaurant and just smell something and think, "What's that? I'll have that?" This was that restaurant, except that smell was everything mixed together and positively mouthwatering! And, you could smell it a block away! We ate outside by the creek and had a very difficult time deciding on our meal. I went with the breakfast burrito. Yes. It was delish. Yes. It's a full pepper on top. Yes. I cut my own bangs before we left. Yes. I cut them too short. Yes. I had on two sweatshirts. I digress...
All of us decided we would be back the next day, post-race, to share the Nutella and whipped cream waffle. Next up was a drive up the mountain a bit to the Fish Creek Falls trailhead. We needed to burn off that breakfast!
First, we took the paved path to the viewing point of the falls - it was only about 1/4 mile. Nice photo op though! Soon, we would be at the top of those falls and then some.
Then, we journeyed down to the bottom of the falls for more photos and the start of the long trek uphill to the top. This is the bridge at the bottom of the falls.
We headed up and up and up. Turns out, we climbed about 1,200 feet (to 9,000) and went about 2.5 miles each way for a 5 mile round trip hike. We were careful to take it slow since we were running 13.1 the next day. I was surprised at how often I needed to catch my breath in the middle of talking. Maybe I was talking too much. :)
This was probably the most difficult hikes I've done. I'm not saying it was hard, but the most rocks and elevation I've done anyway. Don't laugh. I took a picture of these animal droppings to ask Tom about later because we kept seeing it. His analysis? Deer or elk. I guess elk because it looked too big for deer.
This grove of trees had us wondering - Aspen or Birch? I guessed Aspen and Katie guessed Birch. After further Googling, we've determined it's very hard to tell the difference. I'm open to expert interpretation. :) Either way...beautiful!
Snow!
The last little portion of the hike was a bit treacherous. We all agreed we would have been extremely nervous to have our kids with us on this one.
It did provide the most beautiful views of the hike though.
Finally, we reached the falls. Only took us about an hour and a half. :) Beautiful. Peaceful. Serene. I could have slept here for hours!
I took a few pics on the way back down. Round trip it was 5 miles and about 3 hours.
And, finally, a little Instagram collage of the hike.
Back to the condo and outside basking in the sun to get some reading in for the afternoon. Claudia and I have book club on Tuesday night, so we had some reading to do! We picked an Italian restaurant for dinner - Mazzola's - and headed out around 6 or so. We sat outside again and the food was SO good!!!! Redeemed ourselves from dinner the night before!
Caprese Salad - there are tomatoes and mozzarella buried under the arugula and basil!
They brought out flat bread and a hummus and olive oil dip too.
I ordered the spaghetti with a meatball. A huge meatball! It's hard to see in this pic, but it was ginormous. And delicious!
Post Carbs :)
The evening was rounded out with a trip to Safeway to pick up bagels and almond butter for the pre-race breakfast. I had Katie drive up close to this bird to get a good photo. We saw these things everywhere! Turns out it is a Black Billed Magpie. Pretty birds!
Sleep didn't come easy for me that night. But, the next day was race day so I tried to rest the best I could! To be continued...Click Here.
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