Question: what do you do the day after you have an EPIC hike through the Austrian Alps?
Answer: DO IT AGAIN.
Although to be fair, today's hike was almost baby stuff compared to yesterday. Seriously. Yesterday was HARD (and awesome).
We started out similarly, I believe by the river (although we took a local short-bus a ways up the road first). We had a bunch of fun by rivers/lakes (check out the green color below), and tried to dodge the pervasive electric fences that seem to be everywhere.
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| Check out the color of that lake! And Amy is perfect right next to it! So happy in nature. |
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| We love zip lines (that are only a couple feet off the ground). Most playgrounds have them, and they are irresistible to us. |
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| Especially to Maya. |
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| St. Anton is adorable. |
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| Kaesespaetzl kicks ass. So does everything else that we had at this restaurant (owned by the people that made this little park with a monster tree house, petting zoo, trolls, etc.) |
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| Here, this troll says "hey man, we spent a lot of money on this trail with the attractions and whatnot. Do me a solid and eat at our restaurant. Cool?" |
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| COOL? |
The place had a bunch of really interesting portions to it (the Wunder Wander Weg). But I think the favorite was a set of wading pools that were designed to walk through from beginning to end - the water was ICE COLD, which was nice for 10 seconds. Then it hurt a lot. Then it was just numb. Amy and the girls did the gauntlet several times.
After that, we went to the town museum - turns out the place looked really familiar to both Amy and me. I guess it was used in some famous movie, but I forget the details (doh!). But it's also supposedly cursed! Regardless, they had a mini-golf course next to it, so we braved the ghosts to try our hands with the putters. We thought about making the stakes "only the top 3 scores get ice-cream", but I caved and let everyone have a treat when we were done.
I don't remember who won, but we all emerged with shins intact and egos relatively unscathed.
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| Looking very Tirolean. |
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| That's one lucky gnome, bro. He high-fived me as I walked by. He hasn't seen action like this since he lived with those other 6 dwarves and that chick in the woods. |
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| The entrance to the spooky old museum (it wasn't spooky, nor did we see any ghosts). I swear, it's like sometimes I think they just make that stuff up! |
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| So, in the early 1900's, this was predominantly farming country (although I don't know what they would farm here, other than possibly GRAVITY. And maybe massive calf muscles.). But some dudes came and were like "man! you know what we should do? cruise down this mountain on skis!". The locals were like "nice knowing you" and went back to the fields. Turns out that the crazy people were right - they're GREAT downhills, if you have adequate combinations of great courage, great skillz, or little brains. This is their official seal of the downhill skiing association, formalized well before people thought it was a Good Idea. |
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| Amy in a fun-sized house. |
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| Swanky. To own this, you must have millions. |
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| Guess what's awesome? Sitting on a balcony, taking in an incredible Alps view with coffee in one hand, and Amy in the other! |
That evening, we ordered pizza (we all like the somewhat spicy one with anchovies the best). The delivery driver calls me Rico, and forever earns our business when we're in St. Anton.
Earlier today, one of the owners of our hotel (Christopher) rode the 140+ km road stage for the Austrian Giro. It has a couple of hard climbs, one Category 1, and a Category HC. The HC one is actually far more difficult than the climb up L'Alpe d'Huez (which Christopher has climbed about a dozen times). This one has about 40% more vertical climb than d'Huez, but is only 200m of linear distance longer (14.2 km vs. 14.0 km) I went to the desk and rapped with him about his race, the politics of the UCI (it sucks), doping, Lance, and of course everyone's favorite: Jens Voigt. Christopher was wearing a "SHUT UP LEGS" t-shirt and I just pointed, smiled, and said "I love Jens".
Will be sad to leave tomorrow.... But excited to see Basel Switzerland, if only for a day!
p.s.--> you'll note I didn't say that our journey was "ended". There were several places in the woods over the last couple of days where there were signs with pictures (some old, some recent) where it was so nicely put that "this is the spot where we remember Hans, when his mountain journey unfortunately came to an end" or the like. Of course, I was like "oh, that's too bad! maybe he had to go back to work or something", but in reality, I think that it might have been a more permanent end to their "journey", IYKWIM.
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