Beautiful Day, finally!

It's Wednesdaz and the morning finally dawned a glorious beautiful completely clear day.  I'm ready to boogie!

Saturday was a twice annual event in Tschagguns - the movement of cattle from summer to winter range (or vice versa) with the animals being driven through the streets of town.  Unlike other events of this nature in the USSA, the jersey cattle were decked out with colorful headdresses.  Quite nice.

Sunday was wet all day, a time for reading, puzzle working and being generally lazy - not much else to do.

On Monday the weather improved enough to just set one up.  I walked to Schruns, the village across the river, then rode the gondola to it's terminus for a walk down the mountain.  Sure enough, equidistant between the top of the mountain and town the heavens opened up once again.  Oh well, that's why savvy travelers have rain gear!  But the downer was that I'd planned to have lunch at the facility at the top of the Gondola only to find it closed that day.  That's fine, I probably didn't need the calories anyway.  But on the brighter side, upon my return to Schruns, I found a wonderful little meat shop that served sandwiches.  The smoked bacon offering was simply superb!  Not our usual kind of bacon, but the Canadian bacon type - just all meat no fat.  And the smoke flavor was wonderful.  It was so good I bought 2/3 lb. for the upcoming trek.

The old body is still having trouble adjusting to the time change.  Following a short nap at 8 PM, the clock rolled around to 4 AM before slumber returned.  Jet lag is a real pain in the ...

The locals tell me the region is experiencing colder than normal temperatures with the snow level lowering over night to 1500 meters.  Can we stand much more of this global warming?  I don't think so!

The local tourist office is a godsend.  The Internet service is free.  They don't seem to mind if users stay on for an hour.  They are also extremely helpful (in English, too) with bunches of area information, and loads of printed material, hiking trail maps, and such.

Yesterday was the best day so far, weather wise.  I took one of the local buses to the gondola behind Tschagguns for the ride to the top.  Under mostly cloudy and foggy conditions, I embarked on a 1.5 hour walk to Lindauer Hütte (hut) where a nice lunch would be served.  During the walk, the warming sun finally came out a few times - very cheery, and necessary to dispel the 30F degree temperature at the top of the lift.

As usual while walking down the hill, I didn't pay much attention to the few people I passed on the trail.  I was hailed by a hiking threesome (Roger, Helmut & Elle) sitting on a bench to find that they were also lodgers at Drei Türme.  In somewhat broken English we walked together to the bottom of the hill.  Helmut at 69 years of age told stories of associating with troops occupying Germany following the end of WWII.  His English was rather good with very good grammar and vocabulary.  His wife Elle was returning to school to improve her English.  So consequently we spent lots of time talking.  They gave me ride back to Drei Türme, but I accepted only on condition that I order a round of brewski's.  And you know how that goes.  Several drinks and dinner lead to party time well into the evening.  Wow, those Deutschlanders certainly know how to put away the beer.  Bad news though.  You see, I now have a new set of German friends that want me to return next year for more Alps hiking.  And since these folks are also retired we can walk for days and days.  Such wonderful people here, and such good times!

Okay, I gotta split!  It would be a pity to waste any more of this fantastic day shuttered inside a building,

By for now.