Six and a half miles...all up!

Well, our little Swiss waitress from Gimmelwald had it right. Today was an absolutely gorgeous day. The rain during the night last night caused fog to form on and around the mountains. When the clock went off at 7:00 this morning, we peeked out and saw a foggy wilderness where there should have been mountains, so we went back to bed for another hour.

We went down to breakfast about 8:30 and sat next to a couple from Texas who asked US (us?) to recommend some hikes in the area. US?? We told them the hikes we had taken and visited a few minutes before both of us went our way for the day.

We took a lift down to Gimmelwald and then hiked up (and I do mean up!) to Sprutz waterfall. Part of the hike took us straight up from Gimmelwald on a narrow path. Olen posed for a photo that makes him look like he is standing on the edge of the world, but the terrain is actually a gentle slope on the other side of him.

The biggest part of this hike was through forest land, similar to hiking in the Smokies, so as soon as we could switch from that trail to another portion of the North Face Trail, we did just that. We ate our lunch sitting on a bench near the waterfall and recouperated a bit from the hike up. The rest of the trail back to Murren was delightful. We walked through grassy meadows with the snow-capped mountains in the distance. At one point I had to recreate the scene from the "Sound of Music" where Julie Andrews sings, "The hills are alive...". Of course I didn't do the singing, just the spinning around dizzy from the beautiful view. What a cheap thrill.

We watched hang gliders take off by leaping off of thousand-foot cliffs into nothingness and then watched them float gracefully over the Lauterbrunnen Valley. It was a lovely day to do that...if we had the nerve...which we didn't.

Since we wanted to get as much value from our pre-paid train ticket as we could, we took the train from Murren, the lift to Lauterbrunnen, the train to Wengen and the lift to Mannlichen, an area on the east side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley. By the time we got to the top of Mannlichen it was 4:00 and the last lift down left at 5:30, which didn't give us much time to do anything on the mountain top. There was a great view of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau from there, and I sat for most of the time waiting for the cloud on the Jungfrau to clear so I could get my photo. I finally took a photo with the Jungfrau in cloudcover. We took the lift back down to Wengen, and by the time we got there I looked up and the Jungfrau was as clear as can be! Can mountains laugh? If so, I believe the Jungfrau was laughing at me.

I finally got my photo of the three mountains without cloudcover while on the train to Murren.

Even though it was only 5:30 or so, it was almost dark in Lauterbrunnen when we changed from train to lift there. Lauterbrunnen is in a deep (1,000-foot) valley with mountains on both sides. When the sun gets behind the mountains on the west (about 3:30) poor little Lauterbrunnen is finished with their share of sunlight for the day.

However, when we took the lift and second train up, it was still bright and sunny in Murren. Since Olen's pedometer registered about 6 1/2 miles today (all up!), we treated ourselves to a great dinner at a restaraunt in Murren. We sat at a table right beside a huge picture window and watched the late-afternoon sun on the mountains to the east as we ate our dinner. I had Alpina Rosti, which is basically hash brown potatoes and ham with cheese on top, and then baked in the oven. It was delicious. I like Swiss food much better than German!

We came back to our room for the evening. On the walk back we saw a herd of 12-15 deer on the hillside. They had unusual markings compared to our North Alabama deer. As the sun was setting, there was a lovely pink glow on the snow on the mountains we can see from our room. I'll leave you with this lovely sunset view from Switzerland. We hope each of you look at the lovely sunset God sends you today. He blesses all of us with beautiful things in this world to enjoy.

And...happy birthday to Olen's mother. We hope her day is very special.