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Friday brought gorgeous sun and relatively mild temps to the Mad River Valley.  I chose to run after work and while the humidity was slightly higher than I would have liked, it was a night-and-day difference from my Amazon-esque experience on Monday.

My biggest roadblock in this run was shear exhaustion from working a double-shift the day/night before for a server upgrade.  I was running (literally) on about four hours of sleep and for a Friday it was a pretty darn busy workday.  Despite the grogginess, my run was pretty awesome.  The path was busier than usual but I was joined by a few other people running with their dogs and Toby made plenty of new buddies on our journey.

The river was almost back to normal and I took a better comparison shot (both with the iPhone).  Keep in mind that the river can get 2-4′ lower than where it is, but when you consider that the two pics were only taken four days apart it’s pretty amazing (click for bigger image).  I’d also like to give a quick shout-out to RunKeeper‘s Pro App, which has the ability to take pictures right from within the app, which are then automatically added to the activity map and transferred to the RunKeeper website.  I love this feature!

Aside from the run, I had two awesome experiences with my Vibram Fivefinger KSOs this weekend.  I headed to Jeffersonville both Saturday and Sunday to swim in one of the gorgeous swimming holes along the Lamoille River.  Saturday I decided to adventure through Cambridge after my acupuncture appointment; mostly to avoid going back through Stowe Village which was swamped with tourists for the holiday, but also so I could pick up some Brown and Jenkin’s coffee and Boyden Valley Rhubarb Wine.  I had two goals in mind: find a cute random place to eat and a nice place where Toby and I could swim.  I believe I found both:

Sunrise Cafe served me Vermont sausage/cheddar/apple crepes with latkes and fresh fruit as Toby and I sat outside gazing at the mountains.

Lamoille River Swimming Hole in Jeffersonville, VT

As you can see from the picture above, Toby and I chose an area of the swimming hole that was mostly all rock.  To the right of us was a more populated swimming hole/portage area with a real parking lot.  Given the heat and the holiday weekend it was full of a mix of tourists and locals dragging in their kayaks and canoes.  I felt pretty smart finding a pull-off just upstream of the main area; while I was still fairly close to the action, the portage was blocked from sight by a bend in the river and everyone was headed with the current in the opposite direction.  It left me feeling like I was on a private stretch of this gorgeous river.

The reason my little swimming area was practically abandoned is that to get to the river one has to maneuver some semi-steep and uneven rocks.  I wouldn’t call it challenging, but it was important to be sure-footed (as a friend of mine found out the next day when she totally bit it climbing down).  My Vibrams were perfect for the occasion.  I felt like I had a nice firm grip on the rocks and it made walking around the riverbed easy and smooth.

A quick note on the picture above: that rock that Toby is standing on is perfect for diving.  It jets at least 12′ into the water; as Toby discovered when he fell in the first time.  It also happened to be a great sitting rock as it’s recliner-shaped.  I hung out there for quite a while with my legs dangling into the water.  While it wasn’t quite as awesome as our Sunday excursion, lying in tubes on the river for two hours, it was still pretty darn awesome.

I hope you all had a good Independence Day or Canada Day (or just a good weekend for those not celebrating).  I’m enjoying one more holiday day off and then will be getting back on a trail either tomorrow or Wednesday.  We’re getting unseasonably warm temperatures in Vermont for the next few days (90-95ºF) so it’s really going to take some motivation to get out there but I can do it!  That means you can too. 😛