We just had a great
day of hiking the alps and then driving through them. Last night we
sought out a little hotel that we saw in our guide book. When we asked
the help of a local we found out the hotel had burned to the ground.
So much for that. We wound up at a nice little ski hotel and had a
good nights sleep. In the morning we got into the car to head
over to Kitzbühel, a world famous ski area. When we got there
an hour later we had gone through some really splendid scenery. At
Kitzbühel we found where we wanted to hike to and then took a
gondola up to one peak. We then hiked for an hour and a half to a
peak which seamed very far away when we started out. Along the way
we saw the snow cat garage. It was really cool; they had every different
type of Pistenbully around, from an original 200dw to a 300 winch-cat.
We walked through amazing scenery, right out of a storybook. Our destination
was a ski lodge situated high on top of another peak. After walking
through herds of the most happy cows Ive ever seen we came to
our destination. We got there to find a crowd of Austrians chowing
down on some food that would have made me fall down dead from a heart
attack (not to mention the gallons of beer they were chugging). We
got our little tomato & mozzarella saladswith olive oil. It was
exactly what I (and all of us) needed. We got up refreshed and ready
to make the run back down to the gondola. We got to the gondola, about
an hour and a half later, quite tired and thirsty, but not tired enough
to miss looking at the start of the World Cup downhill. This is (by
all amounts) the most testing of all downhills. Looking down the start
slope, I agreed. We got our picture taken and took off down the gondola.
At the bottom our car looked very nice, and we collapsed into the
seats. We drove through some really nifty switch-backs, but our (dads)
speed was slowed by quite a few huge trucks that seemed intent on
limiting our speed (and fun factor) to 40mph. We eventually arrived
at Mad Ludwigs castle at about 7:00. I need to get to bed!