The Big Hike – Part 1

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….

 

Some more of Ferleiten

Other than the animals, the attraction of the park were a bunch of kiddie rides.  The ticket was not an all inclusive one, and every ride had to be paid for individually, but the prices were actually pretty reasonable.  Fairly much everything was 1 Euro for a ride, with some of the things actually being free.  The general rule was if electricity was involved, it cost a Euro.

 

I think one of the biggest hits with the kids though were these pedal go-karts.  Free, and there were three carts and three kids so the math worked out perfectly.  They raced around the little track for many many laps.  Despite his scrawny looking little chicken legs, Liam had no trouble rocketing around in that thing and I am surprised he has not been after me to get him one for home.

 

Right next to the free carts was a pretty fun merry go round.  There were actually quite a lot of playground type activities for the kids that did not cost anything, sort of unusual for a tourist destination in my experience.  I just expect to have everything cost an outrageous amount of cash.  Cherie got into the act and rode with the kids while Mike put his back and enormous belly behind spinning the ride.

 

 

Although most of the rides were there to be enjoyed by bigger kids, Henrik was not left out altogether.   He got to have a go on this sweet helicopter.

 

 

There were some electric motorcycles that of course the boys had to try out. 

 

 

I think this was the coolest ride they had.  You sat in a little boat that was pulled up a slope, then released to fly off a jump into the water.  Mike really wanted to do this, but he was nervous that he was a bit too big for it since it was essentially designed for children.  This was also the only ride I saw with a queue while we were there.  Here is some random kid flying through the air.

 

 

That wraps up Ferleiten… but don’t worry, I still have plenty more vacation fun to deliver.

 

Ferleiten Animal park

After our nice day of hiking and swimming, we thought we would do something more child focused.  We had many many brochures and internet pages to go through outlining the various activities in the area.  After some deliberation, we decided on the “Wildpark Ferleiten.”   This was described as an attraction combining a small animal park with examples of local wildlife, along with a sort of kiddie amusement park/playground.  It was also only about a 20 min drive from the house, so it seemed like a pretty good choice.

The entrance had a nice looking bear statue that the kids of course had to climb all over.  Notice that Liam is fully decked out in his German Fußball fan uniform for this trip.

The animal area was nice with very large enclosures on the mountainside for them to walk about.  The actual selection of animals was not particularly exotic, deer, mountain sheep, some wolves.  Mostly things typical to the region which to be fair is not super different to what can be found in Canada.  So I don’t think anyone was super impressed with the “exoticness” of them, but it is always nice to look at animals.  The kids got to feed quite a few of them as well, which is always a popular choice.

There was one super-exotic animal that was heavily promoted all over the region.  Seriously this was one of the main attraction getting top billing over wolves and bears… here is the very special and hard to encounter…. groundhog.  Cherie even managed to get a photo of this rare beauty.

The location of the park itself was also one of the main features.  It is on the side of a mountain, next to the entrance to a national park, with an enormous waterfall across the street.  There was all kinds of natural majesty shoved in our faces and we did enjoy it a lot.  Here is the lovely Claudia standing in front of some mountains that still manage to have snow on them this late in the year.

A nice photo of Cherie with the huge waterfall in the background.

Here is the behind the scenes photo of how Mike took that picture… I just thought it was funny to show the “behind the curtains” view.

Here are the happy Starrs.  Look how nice they can smile when the children are off amusing themselves and not needing any entertaining/supervision. 

And I thought it was funny that in between taking the first and second photos (just in case)  Liam managed to run in and insert himself in the portrait.  He also managed to smile nicer than he ever does when I want him to pose for a family photo as will become evident in future posts.

So that covers the first bit of the Wildpark.  Stay tuned for the rides….

First Hike

Our first activity in Austria was to go on a little hike up the mountain behind the house.  The neighbour had advised us that it would be around 2 hours and there was a nice hut to have lunch up there, so it sounded like a nice thing to do before lunch. 

 

Jacody and Liam both found some walking sticks and were ready to spring into action.  Here you can see he is still smiling since he does not really understand how much walking we are planning to do or just how steep it is to walk up a mountain…

 

 

This was also the first hike I would have carrying Henrik the fun-bundle on my back.  The pack and Henrik together weighed around 12kg, which I fairly quickly learned can feel like about 500kg when you are half way up trail.  I was going to become considerably more fit on this vacation based purely on my increased Henrik-carrying.  I also had a nice walking stick that I had acquired on an earlier vacation in Switzerland.  Cherie was the designated drink and snack carrier for most of the treks.  This photo was also taken pretty early in the outing before we were too pooped.

 

 

It was a pretty nice walk, about 2.5km with 400m vertical.  Quite a few nice views and nice things to see as we went along such as this little waterfall.  Of course as soon as the kids saw any water they were right in there goofing around.  I think this picture was taken about 2 seconds before at least one kid stepped right in there and soaked their shoes.

 

 

As promised, the top of the trail had a nice Alm where we wanted to stop for lunch.  We were pretty tired since it was the first hike and none of us are in terrific condition.  I think all of our minds and wills were far better prepared than our bodies.  There was little question that we all wanted to do some nice big hikes, but the reality was that we were pooped and sweaty by the time we reached this hut.  Definitely all of us were very ready for a nice lunch and cold refreshments.

 

 

The kids all got Apfelschorle (sparkling apple juice) and the adults all enjoyed a nice refreshing Radler.  This particular one was pretty heavy on the lemonade portion of the drink and was almost pop-sticky.  It was very tasty, but I think I have had more refreshing ones.  I almost needed a water afterwards to wash the sugary stickyness out of my mouth. 

 

We also had typical hut lunches, lots of sausages, cheese and bread.  I think I had Weissewurst, but it was Jacody who ordered the best dish.  He had a big board with basically one of everything on it, bread, sausage, leberkaese, cheese… He could not manage more than about half of it, but lucky for him Mike was there to pick up the slack.

 

 

We rested and ate for about an hour up there since is was so nice.  The weather was hot and sunny and there was a brief discussion if we should keep hiking up the mountain to the top (+1 hour more) or head back down and go to the lake for a swim.  Sore legs and sweaty hikers determined the lake would be a nicer way to spend the afternoon.

 

The kids of course had a good time and I think they also enjoyed having lunch high up with a nice overview of the valley. 

 

 

Henrik was the best passenger possible.  The wee man did not complain at all about being cooped up in the backpack for hours at a time and amused himself with special Henrik-singing, Henrik-pointing, and of course Henrik-poking-papa-in-his-head.  Here he is enjoying some non-pack time with mama after he had his lunch treats.

 

 

Finishing off with a couple more of the view up and down the valley.  You can see the lake in the second photo, which is where we headed to swim and relax in the afternoon.  A very nice first day warm up hike.

 

Vacation time in Austria

Well, the vacation is sadly over now.  It was very fun to see the Starrs and meet their delightful children, we were particularly happy that the kids all got along together so well.  It would have been a difficult couple of weeks if the kids were sullen and fighting the entire time.  Instead, the time was spent asking Mike and I inane questions.

The biggest chunk of the vacation was spent in Austria.  We rented a nice house near Zell Am See, an area which we had heard pretty good things about.  The drive from our place to the house was supposed to take 4.5 hours according to Google maps and my navigation system.  I figured it would be 5.5 hours, but neither my own estimates, nor the electronic devices figured on

• German Traffic
• German car accidents
• German construction

So, our 4.5 hour drive took a little over 8.5 hours and we were all very tired of sitting in the car.  The kids actually held up better than the adults in my opinion.

 

By the time we arrived, I think it could have been a run down shack and we would have been thrilled as long as it had a place to get out of the car.  Instead, we were treated to a house that lived up to the expectations pretty well.  Here is our first view of the place, just outside of Maishofen with mountain and hiking trails beginning right out the back door.

 

 

Here is the other side of the place with the sun room and garden.

 

 

One more look from just up the hill, so you can see that we were a little bit out of town, with a nice view along the valley.  This is just what I like in a place, close to civilization but far enough away that you can ignore the rest of humanity if you want.

 

 

Foolishly, I did not take too many photos of the interior, but here is one of the living room.  The whole place had the “mountain hut – Ski lodge” feel to it and was very comfortable.  There could have maybe been one more couch in the living room for the number of bottoms we had to sit, but the kids were not really staying still long enough to worry about sitting down anyway.

 

 

Here is the view from the porch.  This range of mountains is known as the “stone sea” and we were treated to a very nice view of it.  In the evening as the sun goes down, they look very red and ominous, but in a good way.  So the first impression of our holiday place was totally positive and everyone was pretty excited about spending a week in this spot.  There was very clearly more activities available than we had time to do them, so we would be spending every evening choosing the most promising way to spend the next day.

 

The Fat Project–Grand Finale….

Well this is it… the big final weigh in of the fat project.  After our week in Austria filled with plenty of exercise and plenty of beer and snacking we have returned to the scales in the lovely home base at Entringen.

After a brief discussion, today seemed to be the best day to weigh in and then relax and enjoy whatever food we want for the rest of the holiday.  Mike and I donned the official weigh in uniform of lederhosen swim suits and a T-shirt.  Since Mike and I both were doing the ongoing weigh-ins post shower and “au naturelle” I weighed the clothes first so we could subtract them from our final score. 

They come in at a scale busting 400 grams. This will be deducted from each fatties score to stay consistent with the weights we have been reporting throughout this endeavour.

First up, Mike waddled up to the scales and sucked in everything possible to try and look good for the camera.

The week of beer and sausage did not do too much damage…. Mike came in at 89.5 kg (it was wiggling between 89.5-6 and he gets the benefit of the doubt.)  That brings his total weight loss to 8.6 pounds since the start.

Next up was this handsome piece of man…

n

I weighed in at a very blurry 83.5kg, less the weight of the clothes 83.1kg.   My total weight loss for the project then is 9.9 pounds.

Here is the full break down of the project.  Since we had no scale in Austria with us last week, I just took the start and end weights and then calculated it purely linear between the two points.  Not perfect, but I was not about to pack a scale on vacation.  The final total weight loss is measured in Black Forest Cake.

All in all pretty great results with both of us losing close to 10 pounds and not sacrificing too much in the way of foodish enjoyment.  I for one plan to continue with the fat project round two once the vacation period I over and I am back on a regular routine.  I think next round will be with less frequent weigh ins and perhaps only weekly updates.  I f there have been any fans of this who want to jump on board with my quest for fitness, feel free to participate.  Start will be first week of September.

 

Dance School in Hulb…

As I work on my overall fitness level, I am frequently taking some nice walks on my lunch hour these days.  This takes me through the wonderfully picturesque parts of Hulb, Böblingen, a town known for its dedication to both industry and car dealerships.  Seriously though, Hulb is basically an industrial park with a few office blocks, some factories, mega groceries and a furniture store or two. 

As I was strolling along though, I noticed this place tucked into the corner of a building next to a window-builder (Fensterbau)

The Elaine Walker Acadamy of Irish Dance, complete with a  catchy looking stylish line art dancer logo.  I am not sure why I found this so amusing, but I just laughed when I saw it.  It seems very out of place to have a “dance acadamy” in the middle of Hulb between a glass shop some factory or other.  It is almost as strange as the scuba shop in the middle of Böblingen (we are at least 5-6 hours drive from the sea in any direction.)

Anyway, it is good to know that my Irish dancing needs will be taken care of along with any double glazing.