2004
Public Radio does RSS
I stumbled across this on the Internet tonight. Guess I just never thought to check, but National Public Radio exposes a lot of content via RSS. Also, Minnesota Public Radio also has an RSS feed through them. Go get some good news feeds!
Labor Day!
Labor day is such a bittersweet holiday. It is always a fun time, but for those of us in the Northern climates it signals the end of the summer and the coming of fall. This year it comes with even more bitterness since we have had such a sad excuse for a summer this year. It feels like fall is in full swing. As we were traveling this weekend it was obvious that the leaves were about to change. I bet it will be full fall color season in a week or two.
Tammy and I went to Lanesboro for much of the holiday weekend. We went to explore the Root River & Harmony-Preston Valley Sate Trail. Lanesboro is the perfect place to explore this more than 50 miles of wonderfully paved bike trails. Out of here we had three days of great riding. We started Friday night with a short ride from Lanesboro to Fountain for 22.4 miles round trip. Then on Saturday we did a longer ride from Lanesboro to Houston which was 62.2 miles round trip and finished on Sunday with a ride to Harmony and back for 45 miles total. We got around 130 miles in for the three days and had some really great trails.
We stayed at the Habberstad House Bed & Breakfast. This is a great B&B! It was at the top of the list with our favorite B&Bs that we have ever stayed in. The owners, Nancy and Dave, are fabulous. The rooms are great, and breakfast was wonderful. We will definitely revisit upon a return to Lanesboro.
In addition to cycling in Lanesboro we also added a piece to our art collection. We stopped by the Cornucopia Art Center while we were there and saw some work by a Superior, WI artist named Erik Pearson that we really liked. We can’t wait for it to arrive. It’s unique and different than our other art and I think it’s going to be great fun.
We returned to the cities and a lot of rain. Due to the rain we ended up not going to the Jack Johnson concert we had tickets to and instead went to see Collateral. Good movie, lots of action. It was a bit predictable though.
On Labor Day Tammy ran the MDRA Victory 10k. I got up early and rode my bike up there to get some miles in and watch her do the run. I really don’t like getting up at 6:30 am on a holiday, but it also lets you get so much done in the day! I had a nice ride to the run and then cheered on runners as they went by. I saw a shirt for this movement called Run Against Bush. Pretty amazing how motivated our current president has made people, myself included.
All in all, a great, relaxing holiday! I put up some miscellaneous photos if you’re interested.
Site Tuning
I’ve been having a lot of fun lately tuning up our site. I’ve been able to “stand on the shoulders of giants” leveraging a lot of open source stuff and cut & paste hacking and slashing. Newest addition is linking to our photo albums with picture highlights. Huge thanks to Edo van Vliet for posting code to do this.
Satellite Radio
We’ve decided that before we go on our next big road trip we are going to take the jump to satellite radio. I’ve spent some time this evening doing searches on the two providers in this market – XM and Sirius. This is so similar to the Dish Network v. DirecTV. Aargh!
It seems like XM is better if you want premium content and more repeaters, but concerns about commercials and Clear Channel has an ownership interest. Sirius is supposed to have much better music quality (both in programming and quality of encoding), fewer commercials and importantly they have an exclusive with NPR.
Oh the horrors of making these consumer electronics decisions. Any suggestions?
Renaissance Festival
We made our 2nd trip of the year to the Renaissance Festival, this time with Tracy and Jeff. The RenFest is like a one day vacation. Great time to laze around in the afternoon, have some cheap wine and enjoy some relaxation.
Manchurian [Haliburton] Candidate
Tammy and I went to see the new version of the Manchurian Candidate last night. Much more suspenseful than the original, however lacking Frank Sinatra. Maybe it’s just my particular political views but the concept of the movie seemed a little closer to home than I would like.
Is fear of flying contagious?
I’ve flown many times. In fact, at one point I was flying about 50% of the time for work. Week in the office, week on the road. I’ve never thought that much about flying, it’s just something that you need to do. No big deal.
When Tammy told me that she didn’t like to fly I didn’t really think that much about it. That is, until we flew together the first time. As she stomped her feet and told me to stop the plane from shaking in the turbulence I realized that she wasn’t joking, she really is scared of flying. After hearing her go on about going down in burning flames and how nobody survives I find myself sitting on the plane watching the wing and wondering, is it really supposed to bend that much?
Flights I’ve been on since being exposed to her phobia have me on pins and needles. I watch the wing. I watch the cabin. Have you ever noticed how the cabin and fuselage of the plane move independently? On a recent international flight there was a good three inches of movement between the two structures. How much can it move? As I descended on a recent flight into Chicago through the clouds I couldn’t help but wonder if there were other planes out there. Is it really safe to be going 250 mph when you can’t see anything?
Cleary I need to regain my innocence and ignorance about flying and stop listening to her.
Garden State
Tonight Tammy and I took it easy and went to a movie. We decided to check out Garden State. I really liked the movie. If you enjoyed movies like Lost in Translation or Niagara, Niagara, I’m almost positive that you will like Garden State. I left the movie also thinking that it reminded me a lot of The Graduate, even though I couldn’t figure out why.
It took me a moment to get over Zach Braff. Braff wrote, directed and starred in this. I’m not that big of a fan of Scrubs, and while this movie has nothing to do with Scrubs I kept on thinking about it with him on the screen in front of me. However, given the quality of this movie and that it was his deal, I left with much more respect for him.
I’m tempted to get the soundtrack. The music in the film was perfect.
Vacation Recap
It’s a week later and we finally finished putting up everything from our trip. It takes a while to sort through over 2,200 pictures!
We were thinking of having some family over to go through some of our selected shots but decided against that in favor of putting up our photos with worthwhile captions of what you are looking at. You can make us feel good for spending the time to write all those captions by clicking through the pictures individually. They are divided into pictures from the Tour de France, shots in Paris and last from the hiking trip (Tammy wrote the captions for the hiking trip as her form of a ‘blog’ of that part of our trip).
I also got the data downloaded from my GPS and put up maps of each day of our hikes. I put them inline in the blog posts so you can see where we were hiking on the map.
The photo albums for our Europe 2004 trip referenced here are no longer online, and sadly the database that hosted them is lost so I cannot restore the curated captions that Tammy added to various photos. ☹️
Thunderbird
I’ve really not cared for Outlook Express for quite a while now so I’m giving Mozilla Thunderbird a shot. So far, it’s pretty good. Have to change some of my habits around keyboard shortcuts and the like. The news reader is much better than the Outlook one, but that isn’t saying much. We’ll see how this goes.
Heart Rate Data from the Peloton
Many of you know that I’m a gear junkie. I record my heart rate on all my rides and runs. Why? Because I can, not because I need to.
Polar just put up a webpage with heart rate data from a few riders in this years Tour de France. It’s really interesting. It’s also amazing to me how low their heart rates are even on the hard climbs!
Bourne Supremacy
Tammy and I went to The Bourne Supremacy last night. Fun movie with a lot of action and suspense. Lacked the excitement of The Bourne Identity in part because Identity was all new and we knew what to expect in Supremacy to an extent. Still very fun to watch. I did note that it seemed like most of the movie was filmed handheld or something. If you get motion sick easily (like me), watch out.
0600 Zurich - 1800 Uptown Art Fair
I just finished putting the journal entries that I kept while we were on the hiking portion of our trip up here in the blog. I linked in a number of photos from the trip as well. Took a little bit more work than I thought it would to get it all on there, but wanted to get it done soon. Tammy and I are still suffering from jet lag so making it past 9:00 pm is a little hard.
We spent most of Saturday on buses and trains working our way from Soglio to Zurich. We took a round-about way to make a trip back to Zuoz, one of the towns we had visited on our hike, to get this cool goat sculpture that Tammy had really liked. We made our way fairly easily.
When we arrived in Zurich we were greeted with absolute chaos. Unknown to us Saturday was Zurich’s Street Parade. This is from what I can see on the Internet the largest techno gathering in all of Europe. The train station had a stage setup with pounding techno. The streets were filled with people in various forms of crazy dress. Large man in fishnets and white leather shorts? Group of interesting folks? More fishnets? It was a little bit much coming from the trail to this. More pictures of Street Parade are on their site…
We wandered around after dinner a little to take some of the Street Parade in, but then retreated to our hotel to get some rest and relaxation.
We got up on Sunday and had “the longest day in the world”. We flew from Zurich to Amsterdam. Then from Amsterdam to Minneapolis. My mother came and picked us up at the airport and instead of going home we went straight to the Uptown Art Fair. We go every year, and didn’t want this year to be an exception. We finally got home and crashed very quickly.
This trip was simply awesome. The hiking section was particularly great. I’d love to go back to Switzerland soon.
I’ll probably take a little time off from the site here. I’ll be back in a bit though… see you soon!
Death by Meeting
While I was on vacation I wanted to read a light-hearted business book. I like to have something to spin around in my head during the downtime. Death by Meeting was recommended to me and it fit the bill just right.
First of all, this book is a business fable and some may find that really annoying. It’s a very fast read. Even though it weighs in at over 200 pages you flip through them very quickly.
The basic premise of this is that most meetings are not worthwhile and the author suggests how to make them more productive. To cut to the chase he suggests that meetings neet to have an intent that is more defined. Ultimately coming to four types of meetings that a company or division should have on different schedules. It’s interesting and I know I have personally seem many of the problems that the author points out about existing meetings.
I found it particularly interesting to read this after reading Agile Software Development with Scrum. I found a lot of what Scrum talks about to be more of a discussion of the dynamics of people in the workplace, and much of what Death by Meeting goes over is similar – both in problem and solution. For example, Death by Meeting suggests that teams meet every day for a 5 minute “check-in” meeting. This is identical in nature and intent to a daily Scrum meeting. Similar problems, similar solutions.
I won’t go into great detail on the book. Like I said, it’s a quick read and if you find the topic interesting I think it’s worth reading. I may try to take some of the concepts proposed and try to bring that into our environment at MarketWatch.
Casaccia to Soglio
Today’s Stats:
Moving Time 3h 54m
Distance: 9.2 miles
Ascent: 1,656’
Max Elevation: 4,822’
We had the dessert course of our hiking trip today. Today’s hike was an easier hike with some great views and a wonderful trek through history. We started our trip by grabbing a bus from Sils Maria to the small village of Casaccia. This bus descended down the Molaja Pass which is perhaps the most winding, twisty road I’ve ever seen. The bus has a special horn that it blows from time to time as it goes down to let traffic know it’s there, as the bus requires the entire road to make it around the hairpin switchbacks.
We got off in Casaccia and started our hike to Soglio. The hike was fairly easy. We slowly ascended a little then descended a bit too. All in all I think we descended more than we ascended today. Yesterday was a tiring day and Tammy and I were both feeling some tenderness in our knees so Tammy and I didn’t feel like burning up the trail. It was a nice final day of hiking.
Soglio is very close to the border of Italy and it seems Italian is as common here, if not more, than German. I noticed that the trail signs switched from German to Italian. Another difference that denoted the Italian influence was the near universal use of rock roofs on the houses.
As we were hiking along the trail and passed through a small village we saw this table on the side of the road with preserves for sale on it. We we’re confused at first. It looked like this stuff was for sale but there wasn’t anyone there and there were no prices on things. Annica translated the sign for us and it simply said the preserves were for sale and leave whatever you felt they were worth. How cool is that? We grabbed two jars and left some francs in the money jar. It’s nice to see such trust in your fellow people.
The trail was very nice and we passed several water flows. We even passed one relatively good sized waterfall that I took a moment to climb up a little bit on and get some better pictures.
Another really cool thing about today’s hike was a section of the trail that is an ancient Roman road. It was constructed forever ago by the Romans to help them get around their land. It was really amazing to walk on these stones that were laid literally thousands of years ago. How many people have tread on them.
We got our first glimpse of Soglio and it was so picturesque. Soglio isn’t in the valley and the first glimpse from the trail didn’t give the details of the ancient city inside. I’ve never seen a town with such narrow alleyways and corridors between buildings. It feels like you are walking in another century as you walk through the village.
Tomorrow we start our journey back home. We head to Zurich and then the following day fly back home to Minneapolis. It’s been a great time. Memorable in so many ways. The hiking trip was just great. Six days of hiking and 63 miles later I can’t believe that I wish it wasn’t ending.
This is a map that shows our six days of hiking all together. You can see the gaps in the first half of the trip that were taken by train. The last half of the trip is all on foot.
Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hike to Soglio from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.
Piz Lunghin Summit
Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 5h 4m
Distance: 9.5 miles
Ascent: 3,589’
Max Elevation: 9,124’
Shirley left us this morning. Shirley is one of the happy members of our hiking group and she’s a pretty incredible lady. She has no problem talking but luckily she’s got a wealth of stories that are interesting to back it up with. Shirley has done something like 20 Ryder Walker hiking trips and just keeps on coming back. She sets a pace on the trail that is hard to keep up with. I can only wish that I’m as healthy and fun when I’m retired and kicking back (if you can call what she does kicking back!)
Anyway, onto our hike. Today was awesome! Simply great. Best day of hiking I’ve ever had.
We started the day at 8:30am and stopped at a bakery in Sils Maria to get some lunch for the trail. No huts on todays hike. I didn’t even see any water springs now that I think of it. We hiked out of town and up into the trees. We took a route that was relatively gradual for a few kilometers to get some altitude. It was a very nice way to get up. Not too tiring and gave us time to get our legs warmed up for the day and let breakfast get down. We only had 7 people in our group (including Annica and Julie, our guides). There was another hike that wouldn’t go as high as we were that had a few people in it and several people decided to take today off and go to St. Moritz for the day. We are only a few minutes by bus from the famous resort town and people wanted to check it out. I think the note in the itinerary that today would be the hardest day of the trip also helped tip the scales for some.
We ascended fine out of the tree line running into a few groups of cows out eating grass. The cows in the Engadine region seem so happy. They just hang out on the mountain sides munching on grass in small groups. We hiked straight through several groups of them today.
The clouds were very low today and as soon as we got a couple thousand meters up we were looking down on them. They were also moving at a good clip. Looked like some bad weather was heading our way, but nothing too severe. There was no sign of thunder or lightning, just some precipitation. We stayed on the trail and got pretty darn cold. Everyone put on every layer they had, and even with that the wind was whipping us all into a pretty frigid state. Visibility was at times less than 50 feet. In my opinion, it was awesome! I know some may think that sounds awful, but I was loving it.
We headed along the trail to our destination which was a lake up the mountain. We spent about 30 minutes on some fairly exposed trail, but it wasn’t too bad since the visibility was so terrible we didn’t really see how big the drops were. That’s looking on the bright side eh?
We finally reached the lake and everyone was very cold. We found some windbreak and planned to have a very quick bite of food and head down. It seemed that the option of summiting the peak was out of the question. Then all of a sudden the sun peaked out just a little bit. We extended our lunch stay to warm up some, still thinking that the peak was out of the question. However, the weather just got better and better.
Annica decided that if we wanted to give the peak a try we could, but if the weather got bad we would have to turn back. Three of the others decided not to try it and just went down with Julie. Annica, Tammy and I headed up to the Piz.
It was a great ascent. We got to play in the snow as we went up to the Piz. I was a little concerned at times mostly as I considered how we would get down this route. The route that we took was a scramble on boulders with many big steps up. There were several times where I was grabbing anything that felt scure and pulling myself up the rise. Tammy on the other hand did simply amazing. She bounded up the side of the peak like a mountain goat! We made it to the top and there was a small gathering there with 3 Belgians that had just made it to the top as well from the other side.
It was just great to stand on the peak and look around at all the mountains. What a sense of accomplishment and a fun time. We took a different route down that turned out to be pretty great for the descent. Part of the descent was this really mushy gravel, dirt mixture that was sort of like bug muddy sand. It was great for the descent since we could just slide in a controlled way down. We also ran into good snow banks still on the mountain and we were able to “ski” down them on our hiking boots. The descent was a blast. Lots of laughs from all.
After completing the summit we did the long and steep descent down to Maloja where we caught a bus back to Sils Maria.
What a day! Such fun, such a great time.
We have a fancy dinner tonight. The Hotel Edelweiss is having a “konzert diner”. There will be a small orchestra playing music in between the courses. Pretty neat! Tomorrow looks like it is a pretty mild hike with some really great scenery and things to check out on our way to our final city of Soglio. Soglio is supposed to be great. Can’t wait.
Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Sils Maria - Maloja Loop from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.
Pontresina to Sils Maria
Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 4h 58m
Distance: 11.9 miles
Ascent: 2,506’
Max Elevation: 7,437’
There is something really fun about waking up in one village and walking out of your hotel with your pack on and walking right into your next hotel in another village having used nothing other than your own two feet to get there. The tiredness in your muscles, the dull ache in your feet and the layer of sweat mark a good days work.
The hike today was a very pleasant hike. I didn’t think it was as hard as some of our other hikes but our guides keep saying that we are just getting used to the effort and the body adapts quickly. I know the body adapts quickly, my legs feel strong and it just seems normal that one would wake up, have a big meal and then walk ten miles in the mountains.
We hiked up to the restaurant by Lake Hahnensee. We hiked up through the forest and above the tree line for the lunch stop. This wasn’t a trail hut, but instead a real honest-to-goodness restaurant. Again I was amazed by the number of locals that had hiked up for lunch. If you put a restaurant in the states on top of a 700 foot steep ascent do you think you would need a reservation for lunch? You do here!
It seemed like we ascended more than we descended but I think it was just that the descent was much more gradual than the ascent. I was grateful for that as my right knee has been feeling a bit sore and the decreased pounding on it from the gradual descent was appreciated. The hike was very different from the others since a lot of it was in the trees. We had great views however of St. Moritz as we hiked it’s perimeter at a couple thousand meters. The last 2 miles or so was a trail hike around the city lake to get to Sils Maria.
Tammy got a picture of an Edelweiss flower today. The edelweiss flower grows in the mountains and used to be the way that a man would prove his worthiness to his to-be wife by going up into the mountains and bringing an edelweiss flower back. Perhaps as a sign of the propensity to marry in Switzerland it is now illegal to pick an edelweiss flower and you can be fined if caught.
Tomorrow is the hardest day of hiking on the trip. I’ll let you know how that goes!
Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hike Pontresina to Sils Maria from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.
Zuoz to Pontresina
Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 4h 19m
Distance: 8.5 miles
Ascent: 2,526’
Max Elevation: 9,061’
Last night at dinner our guides presented two different hike options for today. One would be a relatively flat hike for those looking for any easier day. The other would be a day similar to the day we just had with good distance and good up and down. Tammy and I opted for the harder day, along with a guy named Matt who is the son of a family that is on the trip with us. The hike and day were great.
In cycling they often talk about riders who get stronger over multi-day events and those that are worn down. I feel like I am getting stronger on these hikes. My legs feel better today after the hike than they did yesterday. My knees are holding out strong as well. I am eagerly looking forward to my massage that I’ve scheduled for tonight though. A good rubdown on my calves and thighs will feel exceptionally good.
Our hike today started with a short train ride to a very small village that houses a funicular. Never heard of one of those? Me either. Essentially it is a rail system used to get up the side of a mountain. A couple of things are relatively unique about it. First, the rail car itself is built at about a 25% or more angle. Think of a rhombus. The other unique thing is that there are two cars that counterweight each other. There is only one rail however, and right in the middle of the track it splits in two and the rail cars quickly jump on different tracks to pass each other and then resume it’s way up the hill. I enjoyed the ride. Much better for me than any gondola ride.
After taking the fernicular up to the mountain we started our hike for the day. The day started right off ascending a descent grade that we didn’t punctuate in any way, we simply went over the top and then started descending down into the valley. Tammy had some blister problems on the way up that required some attention. Midway down the valley we took a moment to appreciate a small lake that is fed by the annual melt and then continued down our way into the bottom of the gorge.
Once we reached the bottom we started the big ascent of the day. We had the great luck of being able to stare at the real work of our hike the entire time we were hiking. The trail took a steep switchback laden path right up to the top of the rise where we had lunch at the hut there.
This hut was rockin! There were more people here than we’ve seen at any other hut, yet it was probably the most rustic hut that we have visited. In fact, we got to see the hut getting it’s supplies via helicopter as we were hiking along the ridge. Some huts are so inaccessible that they are only supplied by helicopter, and the helicopter will then fly out their garbage as well. Pretty neat. Anyway, there were a lot of people there including a huge crowd of what I believe were Italians hiking for the day. They were picnicking, drinking and singing songs on the side of the hut. It was so cool!
The other great thing at the hut was the special of the day, fruchtkugen! What’s that? Well, when I was a kid – I think in 3rd or 4th grade – we lived in a very small town in North Dakota called Napoleon. Napoleon was essentially 100% German. The local cafe served knefle soup every day. The school had sauerkraut every day. I’m talking German. One of the things I really liked was “kugen” and I’ve never had it since we lived there. Kugen is this baked custer desert with fruit in it. Not very sweet, but very good. And here it was in the hut on the top of this mountain. You bet I ordered a piece to go with my barley soup!
After our lunch we started a very long descent down to the village of Pontresina. It was a long decent, lasting about 2 hours. I got a bit exhausted on the decent after seemingly going down forever. See, going down is in many ways harder than going up. Your knees and legs absorb the shock of each step and it can really wear on you. Some parts of the descent were exposed meaning that there was nothing between you and a fair amount of a fall if you happened to slip and fall. It wasn’t as scary as it all sounded though.
Pontresina is a very nice town. I got myself a haircut which was a little interesting not knowing any German. Tammy got a huge “brezel” as well!
Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hike to Segantini Hütte and Pontresina from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.
Zuoz to Chamanna Des-Cha Hut and back
Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 4h 13m
Distance: 9.6 miles
Ascent: 2,956’
Max Elevation: 8,520’
When we were in France we spent at least €100 on water in one form or another. The water out of the tap tasted hideous and restaurants treated it like gold. Here in the Engadine region of Switzerland, Evian flows into your morning bath! All of these villages have these great public fountains flowing with cold, wonderful water that you can fill up your bottles to your hearts content with. These are all over the place and are a key enabler to the long distance hiking that is so common in this area.
We changed our hike from the schedule today and instead of hiking from Guarda to Zuoz, we took a train to Zuoz and then did a loop hike out of Zuoz. The hike was spectacular with the only complaint being a rather long “road hike” to get to where the real hiking starts. We left right from the front door of the Posthotel Engiadena and hiked out of town. The road pitched up immediately to at least a 20% grade as we were hiking out. We ascended around 300 meters and I was dripping wet with sweat before we even lost site of the village.
We spent the first 2 hours of the hike just going up, and up, and up. We ascended almost all of the 900 meters of elevation in the first half of the hike. It was hard, but very rewarding. Tammy and I accompanied by Daniel, one of the guides, were the first to make the hut. I pushed harder up the last steep ascent to get to the hut. The push was more of a “horse to water” thing than any kind of machismo.
Our destination was the Chamanna Des-Cha Hut where we had a great lunch. We brought some bread and cheese in our packs, along with a some Swiss chocolate. We also ordered Roschti Natural at the hut, a potato dish which is most similar to hash browns but different, and very good. We had a big lunch with the Grand Massif in the background and after an hour continued around the rim of the valley to the other side where we descended back down.
Descending those 900 meters was in some ways harder than the ascent. It really kills your legs, knees and feet in such a different way. My toes were aching on the descents and I was pleasantly surprised when I finally got my boots off and found that I did not have any blisters. Tammy chose to wear her Keen hiking sandals and it worked great for her, although her feet felt tired I think due to the lack of support.
My legs are feeling pretty tired today. Tomorrow we are going to be in a town that will have spa facilities and I think I’ll look for a massage to rub out some of the ache.
Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hiking Guarda Out-n-Back to Chamonna Tuoi from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.
Scuol to Guarda
First of all, let me wish my sister Alona a Happy Birthday! I was on the other side of the world and was unable to get in touch. Hope this is some small consolation for that. 🙂
Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 5h 25m
Distance: 12.99 miles
Ascent: 2,250’
Max Elevation: 7,365’
Today was the first day of our hiking trip! We just finished dinner with the group at the Hotel Meisser in Guarda. It was a buffet style dinner which suited me fine since I was starving after a long day on the trail. As I told Tammy, I was “deeply hungry”. The sensation is similar to when I finish a century ride. I’m not completely sure how to explain it.
The hiking today was sensational. We left from the front of the Hotel Guardaval and hiked to a gondola in Scuol. We took the gondola up 800 meters to start the hike. This hike is in the easiest category that Ryder Walker does, which doesn’t mean it’s a walk in the park.
The scenery was simply amazing. Every bend in the trail made me think “wow”. Tammy summed it up best, and as only she can with a simple “I love it!” repeated several times. Apparently it kept reminding her of the movie Heidi. I haven’t seen this masterpiece so I cannot comment. It was hard not to stop every few steps to take yet another picture.
We had a great picnic lunch mid-day and spent the entire day on the trail. We left at 8:50 am and arrived at 4:45 pm.
We have also been lucky to be in Switzerland on one of their big national holidays. Today is Dependence Day in Switzerland (also called National Day). Not independence, but dependence. It is the celebration of when the major kingdoms of Switzerland came together and recognized their “dependence” on each other. One of the strong traditions of this holiday however is an amazingly independent tradition where people climb up in the mountains all over and light huge bonfires. On our hike today we saw some of these ready for the evening. After dinner tonight we looked at the ridge line and there were over 10 huge fires visible. How very cool. All of the cities shoot of fireworks as well. It’s a big celebration.
I ate a ton at dinner, need to rest the feet to complete the readiness for tomorrow. I made it through today with no blisters or anything. Tammy wasn’t so lucky, she’s got a quarter sized blister on her heel, no good. She’s talking about hiking in her Keen hiking sandals tomorrow, and I’m sure she will. I’ll be in my boots thank you. We are going to be tackling a shorter route tomorrow, only 7 miles, however with more climbing involved.
Tammy is in the middle of repacking suitcases right now. Remember that I mentioned we have too much luggage? We are solving that problem and shipping two of our bags via train to the Zurich airport where we can pick them up before boarding our flight home. Yeah!
Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hiking Scuol to Guarda from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.