So, after a nice relaxing day at the animal park, we felt we were ready to take on a bit bigger hike. We reviewed many pamphlets and decided on visiting a nice gorge that was nearby. Given the hot weather, it is my experience that gorges are usually both nice to look at and a little cooler when you are down in the bottom near the river. So we packed up and drove about 20 min to the starting point for the hike.
Of course when you begin any hike, you are full of enthusiasm since your feet and your back have no idea what is in store for them…
Mike liked this warning sign since it contained the word “Achtung!” one of the few German words he had encountered prior to this visit.
The hike started off pretty easy with a nice gentle slope down into the gorge. We could hear some rushing water up ahead.
We came to this rather nice waterfall. There was also some pretty impressive lens flare going on here.
I stitched together this panorama shot of the falls to show it from top to bottom. One of the ongoing problems with a gorge hike is that I don’t have a wide enough lens to capture the whole scene. There is not always the chance to stand far enough back from the subject in the limited space. So I just took a bunch of photos and stitch them them together later with the magic of computers.
I really enjoy hikes like this. There was a lot of interesting scenery and the difficulty was not too bad. Going in and out of the gorge was a bit strenuous with all these steps, but it was easier than a mountain trail of similar steepness. Oh, keep in mind I was doing this with 12kg of baby in a backpack, adding to the fitness for me.
No matter how much the boys complained about being too tired for a hike in the morning, as soon as we were out on a trail, they ran off like little rocket-men. Here is a rare moment when I managed to get ahead of them on the stair climb and have a nice reverse angle of them clowning their way up.
That is it for the first stretch of the hike. more to follow….
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