Diessenhofen
This is one of the few river crossings in the area – a single lane covered bridge! I ate dinner one evening at a restaurant on the water’s edge. There are walking paths close to the water on both sides and along the bluffs on the north side. The steep banks in this area make for miles of picturesque views. After taking this photo, I walked by a field of barley I thought looked pretty shabby. The next day I walked that way again and it had been harvested.
Stein-am-Rhein
A woman I met at the John of God event showed me photos she took of this town a few days before. I paid a visit the next day. It was fairly crowded with tourists. It is known for the frescos that cover the walls of the buildings surrounding the main square. There are a handful of narrow streets to wander through. There were a half dozen local teens jumping off the bridge and swimming in the swift water in the middle of town.
I rode the ferry back to Diessenhofen. I thought it would be a lazy downstream drift, but no! The captain had to power zigzag a demanding route between shoals the whole way.
Red Geraniums
A typical feature of many older homes in this area.
Wetterhorn
Since the weather was improving all afternoon, I quickly dropped my bags at my hotel and got out on the trail by late afternoon. The wind pattern that day happened to keep this one peak open to view.
Finsteraarhorn
My hotel was straight downhill from here and afforded a commanding view of the glacier mid-slope in this photo. The glacier calved a couple times while I was outside. I thought it was thunder.
Schreckhorn
The weather pattern kept sweeping snow off the back of this peak all day. I hiked half way up the slope of First (which is something of a plateau stretching out from the base of the peaks), then caught a gondola to the top. Then I walked Schwarzhorn cross slope almost to Gross Scheidegg before heading back down to Grindelwald. That was a long day.
Schreckhorn & Eiger
I watched clouds appear and disappear from the top of Eiger all afternoon. I walked past this little group of houses just as the peak cleared about the best I had seen, not long before evening shadows engulfed most of the valley.
Zurich & Jungfrau, Switzerland, 7/15-22/ 2012
I made reservations to see John of God in Winterthur, Switzerland, July 16-18. By the time I looked into hotels, they were all sold out in the Winterthur area, so I expanded my search until I found a good deal at a gastof on the German side of the Rhine, 45 minutes commute by train. I was unprepared for the beauty this little stretch of the river offered, from Stein-am-Rhein, where it spills out of LakeConstance, to Schaffhausen, where it forms the largest waterfall in Europe. I was so happy I had reason to travel this stretch by rail multiple times, lost in the landscape till they called my stop.
I followed up with several days in an area of the Alps that had been highly recommended to me – Jungfrau. I was lucky to have two beautiful days out of four. I stayed in Grindelwald and explored as large an area as I could reach on foot.
