Lake Almanor Recap

Well, all good things must come to an end... today is my last day of vacation. I tell you, it was much needed. I feel very recharged and ready to face the rest of this wedding planning!

We spent a week up at one of my favorite spots, Lake Almanor. We could not have asked for better weather during this trip... it was mostly in the high 80's during the day and cooled off nicely at night. As always with vacation, I spent the first two days in a coma. I don't know why, but the minute I get away (especially to a mellow place like the lake), I can't peel myself out of bed! I spent some time reading, some time napping (ok, a lot of time napping) and some time catching up on "Ultimate Cake Off". Great show, by the way - I'd never seen it, but it was pretty cool to see some of the cakes they make!

Of course, we did some serious fishing. A lot of this week was spent doing still fishing with all sorts of different bait (live crickets, live meal worms and dead anchovy tails). We did catch some pretty nice fish:

Dad's 1lb 15oz Fish

Mom's 1lb 6oz Fish

Mike's Big Fish Coughed Up A Little Fish!

I'm not going to lie, I get a little bored with the still fishing business. I like the movement of trolling (and that we tend to catch way more fish), however, this was not a bad way to spend the evening:

Not A Bad Way To End The Day

I got in some very good water skiing at the beginning of the week. This is pretty much the only time during the year that I get to ski. I must say I'm not bad, considering that I only ski for one week a year. I didn't get very many pictures because I mostly skied when it was just Mom & Dad (Mike was busy doing a serious hike - more on that later), so one of them had to drive and the other had to watch me/man the flag. I did, however, have one of those great falls that I haven't had in a couple years. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but I think my ski caught the wake on the way back in. I did some sort of flip through the air and underwater. During this whole acrobatic stunt in addition to getting a lovely sinus wash, my back foot got stuck and then yanked out of the back binding. I ended up with a foot that looked like this for a day:

Hurt Foot

It may not look horribly bad, but it's still pretty bruised to the touch. I don't think anything is broken - I'm pretty sure I just got a nice bone bruise. Needless to say, I didn't ski after that - it hurt too much to stick my foot back in the binding (I did get back up after my fall... wanted to make sure I wasn't scared to get back in and out of the wake).

I mentioned Mike did some hiking. By some hiking, I mean he climbed Mount Shasta. I'm so freaking proud of him! He posted some great pictures on his Facebook page - if you have some time, take a look! We also did some cycling - including my first solo ride. The weather was beautiful and I managed to find some decent hills to climb!

We also did some kayaking while we were there. Both Mike and I had never done it before. It was definitely fun, but I think we would need to kayak somewhere like a river... we both got a little bored paddling around the lake.

Mike & I Kayaking

Now it's back to the grind. We picked Shadow up yesterday and am spending today doing laundry. We've got some cycling to catch up on (the USA Pro Cycling Challenge) and a movie to watch... it might not be a horrible Sunday!