The Hobie Fleet met at Storrie Lake outside Las Vegas, NM over the Labor Day weekend. Storrie Lake is a state park located just the east of the Sangre de Christos at the edge of the plains and usually has nice sailing wind. Saturday was nice, Sunday it poured monsoon rain most of the day and Monday was beautiful.
I usually stay at a nice little motel in town when I go to sail at Storrie mostly because it's nice to have a dry place to retreat to and it is only a few miles away from the lake.
Sunday morning, the clouds were almost down to the lake level and it looked like rain was imminent, so a few of us decided to drive 20 miles north to Salman Ranch where they have a large raspberry farm.
When we arrived, we were disappointed to learn that due to the late spring this year, the berries would not be pickable for another two weeks.
Salman Ranch is an old adobe ranch with an old mill, a small store and a cafe in addition to a 5-acre raspberry field. We had lunch, and took photos of their flower garden planted in the remains of three old crumbling adobes minus their roofs.
After a half hour at the flowers, the rain started and we drove back to Storrie Lake. When we got there, it was a deluge, so we went back into Las Vegas for dinner and watched tennis for the evening.
The rain didn't let up Sunday and drove most of the fleet members who had been camping at the lake home. Our good friend, Dave, stayed in his RV and kept an eye on the boats.
Monday morning we returned to the lake early, to find everyone gone except Dave and the weather beautiful. Dave raised his sails and we raised ours and sailed til noon in good steady wind and a bright sky and no one else on the lake---on Labor Day!!! We packed it up in the afternoon and left for home happy that we had stayed through the rain.
