Vacation Day 3: Waterfall Edition

We were supposed to spend Saturday of our vacation with some friends of my husband's from Denver, but one of them was sick, so we went o the hike they suggested on our own.

I swear, the best thing you can do when you go on vacation is find someone who lives there (or near there) and ask them what you should do (and where to eat). This hike (actually two trails - Monarch Lake & Crater Lake) was fantastic. First, we walked along the edge of Monarch Lake, with beautiful mountains in the background, then up into the mountains. The Crater Lake trail has a series of three spectacular waterfalls on it. I'm not exactly sure what the protocol for counting waterfalls is, because I would have counted the second one as about 5 different waterfalls, all tiered one on top of the other. The trail went pretty near to the river/waterfalls, but you could hike right out to the edge - close enough to feel the spray and cold air coming off the water (that was very recently snow).

Like our hike the day before, we had to turn around before the end of the trail, because the dark clouds were rolling in and we didn't want to get caught in a storm up on the mountain. We high-tailed it out of there, but it was still about 7 miles back to the car. It rained on and off on us for about the last 3 miles of the trail, no big deal since we had our rain jackets.

We finished off our day by completely gorging ourselves at Hernando's Pizza. Our friends from Denver drove up to see us after all, and between the four of us we managed to nearly polish off two large pizzas... and after all that hiking, I didn't feel the least bit guilty about it.

Have I mentioned that I love vacation?