Last Hike in the Alps.

On our last full day in Austria we went on a hike in the alps in Slovakia. The hike was longer than our first hike but only went slightly higher in elevation. The views were amazing.
This is the view from the parking lot where we started. We did not make it to the tops of any of these mountains but they were an amazing sight. Yes the blur in the top corner of the picture is my finger I don't know how that happened?

We started out and had to cross over a stream that was flowing from the waterfall we would eventually climb to. The water in the stream was very cold and had an impressive frosty blue appearance. The water was also so clean that you could simply scoop it up and drink it. This pictures shows Thomas the guide and Em crossing the stream. This was only ten minutes into the hike.

M was just crossing the bridge on the right. We were hiking with a group from the hotel where Thomas worked. We were most definitely the only Americans. The sun was very bright reflecting off the rocks in the stream bed. The rocks were very bright white probably because they had minerals deposited on them from flooding.

I told you the water was a cool blue color.

There were really cool water falls all along the hike. It was nice to be in the valley because the sun was incredibly bright outside of the valley. This made it hard to get great pictures. There was just too much light contrast.










While I have no pictures of wildlife there was a really cool spider web that was very big and about 15 feet off the ground. I was a little worried about how big the spider was that made that web.










This just shows the grade of the hiking we were doing most of the time on this hike. The forest was very nice. I was interested to see that most of the plant life was very similar if not identical to CT.







We had one final crossing to do before we made it to the end of our hike. Marika is being helped by Thomas and the other guide from the Hotel. There was over a hundred foot drop where the water was flowing to the left in this picture. This is the water fall that we were greeted by at the end top of the hike. We had to climb up a crack that can kind of be seen in the left bottom corner of the picture to get up to the waterfall.
The water fall was far more impressive than Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite. At least here there was water flowing.



Thomas had amazing timing to catch this picture. But afterward he missed me dunking my head in the water.

I love to take pictures of the flowers I find on our travels. There are more of these shots with different focuses on my shared pictures account with shutterfly.Finally the sun was in my favor for these pictures. On the way back down from the waterfall which by the way is written Slop in Slovenian. we stopped at a hut where the people live all year round with no modern utilities. But they had running water provided by a hydrological pump. We filled out water bottles with fresh mountain water and enjoyed some soup made fresh in their outdoor kitchen. The people live here in the moutains and sell food and beverages to the people out hiking. The mushroom soup was made from wild picked mushrooms in the area. It was very good and really neat to see people surviving very well in the mountains with such limited modern equipment. The cows are wearing bells too!
Marika really wanted to do her Julie Andrews "The Hills are Alive" scene from the Sound of Music in this field.

At this point I have said all I really can about this hike. Afterward we went for a swim in Faaker See in Villach where Thomas who still was not tired at all wanted to make the half mile swim across the lake to the Island. I made it Marika and my sister did not and decided to turn back before they reached halfway there. It was a great day and really made me wish I could spend more time hiking in the moutains and taking in nature!