To Schauinsland!

Yesterday, we took a most spontaneous trip to Schauinsland. In the morning John asked "Do you want to take a walk?" The answer was yes, and as usual we packed some water, mixed nuts and dried fruit, and diapers.

Now, a little aside. I've been thinking lately that I'm in really good shape, but then realized that I haven't done anything for the heart and lungs in a long time. I don't do much that gets my heart pumping. So, since I wasn't carrying Edwin, I decided to run up the stairs, stopping at every street and waiting for John. This amounted to about three sprints.

We headed into the woods and decided to just walk straight on the woods road. We came out at the next village to the south of us, Gunterstal. That's when we made the decision to walk to Schauinsland, stopping for lunch on our way there and taking the bus back. A great plan and what a treat to eat at a restaurant in the woods!

As we walked, we were climbing in elevation and we came across some great frost!

What am I going to do with all these frost pictures...?

Well, we go to the restaurant we were aiming for, saw lots of cars in the parking lot, but it was closed. Bummer! Big bummer. At this elevation there was lots of snow and all those cars belonged to people who had come to sled with their kids.

I had been carrying Edwin for a little while and was pretty tired, but willing to keep walking toward food, so we switched off again and we picked up the pace to the top of Schauinsland about 2 km away. By now, there was lots of snow underfoot and it was nice to get some more winter experiences. We got to the top and what should our wondering eyes should appear, but tons of cars and sledders!

They had a really cool sled lift. Look closely at the following series and see if you can tell how it works.

It looked like a lot of fun. And if we had some free time I would love to go and sled. We have no idea if it's free, what days it's running, if you can rent sleds, etc, but it looked like a great system.

And it was so pretty! There was also a ski lift going that you can kind of see on the right in the middle.

The sad ending is that all the restaurants were closed. But oh well. We ate the last of our nuts and caught the next bus down the mountain to Gunterstal, where we jumped on the tram. We had about 7 minutes to wait for the tram to our neighborhood, so we walked to the bakery and got chocolate croissants. The tram stopped right in front of the bakery and we rode home.