This weekend was very special to me. My friend Lynda (Lyndaloves2hike) came from California Friday to visit me and left early this morning to go back home. We had such a great time together. The marvel of SP to me is that I have met friends online that I later met face to face and we've become good friends. Chances are without this our paths never would have crossed. It's possible they might have some way some day but I don't know how. My friend Colleen (Stringi719) who lives an hour from me was the first one. We hit it off so well and have so much to talk about and share. Then through her I met Laura (Reddy2012) a few times. SHe lives 2 hours from me. A couple of years ago I met Striper23 in Albuquerque hope to meet up with her again sometimes. Lynda I first met online through our sharing of our hiking blogs and we became good friends online. When she came out here this last weekends we spent a lot of time hiking and driving around through the forest and sightseeing the kind of places we both love. From Friday night until last night when we said goodbye we never ran out of anything to talk about. We got exhausted and we wore her poor little dog Princess out (Princess is so adorable!) but we found our lives had so much in common, both past and present. There are so many more spark friends I would love to get to meet face to face and some of them I may get to someday. But the value of this site, the support here, and the friends we meet that become lifelong friends is just so awesome!

I have lots of pictures to post of our hikes and adventures together but today I'm still recovering and catching up since I didn't have a lot of time on SP the past few days so the pictures will have to wait a bit. On Saturday thought we did a local 5k race with STRINGI719, and her husband and I got a new picture on my sparkpage of Colleen, Lynda, Princess and myself. Colleen blasted the time she was aiming for and did great! Lynda and I opted to do the walk instead of the run because she was still tired from the drive and she lives at about 400 feet above sea level and we are at about 6,000 feet above sea level so the altitude was requiring some adjustment! We did the walk in 50 minutes and Princess was with us and kept us going very well!

I am off on vacation this week, which for me is a staycation, but I had almost as much fun as going away on a vacation. Of course I would love to go see someplace new but the fun I had here was such a welcome break from work and the day to day stuff.

Hope everyone is having a great day and I'l post pics soon!