PIcture Perfect Day at Lake Isabelle.

Apparently I suck at taper week.  Was supposed to have an easy 45 minute recovery run today with maybe a few strides (sprints) but the mountains were calling and instead I went for a 3 hour hike.  But can you blame me?

Hard to take a bad picture at Lake Isabelle.

The lake is scary low for the 3rd week in July.  All that rocky area should be lake this time of year.

Strummer sez hiking at 11,000' is hard work.

A rare moment of Strummer lying down and relaxing.

Even rarer than the albino grasshopper from yesterday.

I'm not sure if he's really an albino or what but he was here again today and he's still white so it's not that he was molting which is a more common reason for white grasshoppers.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, pretty mountains.

Still a bit of snow/glacier up high.

It's a bit early for the wildflowers but a few have started to bloom.  Paintbrush is probably my favorite.

This is one dogwalk he'd better not miss his contact on.

The hike was a bit naughty as far as training goes but I was itching to get up to the high country and Jonny was too and it was such a perfect day for it.  The elevation gain is small, it's mostly a very easy hike with not a lot of climbing but there are some steep bits and we went for about 1/2 an hour on the steeper trail above the lake.  And I probably went on a little too hard/long of a mountain bike ride yesterday.  Still I'm sure I'll be fine by next Saturday.  Will have to do some extra resting in the next few days to make up for it.