The Great German Road Trip, Day 5: Sylvensteinsee and Roßkopf, August 7, 2020

Sadly, this day was already our last day of hiking. It was also the hottest day. Fortunately, we picked an intermediate tour on a wide, well-maintained path with excellent views and lots of shade. This tour was only about a ten-minute drive from our accommodation, just like the previous days' tours, but brought us to a very different landscape yet again. We started at Sylvensteinsee, a reservoir created by a dam on the Isar, circled around Roßkopf mountain and ended up back at the lake. Even though it was hot, the water was not very inviting because it was all cloudy following the large amounts of rain the previous weekend and at the beginning of the week, so we didn't go in, but we did find a nice mountain stream along the way again to dip our feet into during the tour!

Here's the map of our last tour. I started tracking a bit late, that's why the loop isn't closed.

As you can see, the water looked kind of green and uninviting, but it was still a beautiful day.

Walking all the way around the mountain, we got to see a lot of little streams and waterfalls going down the mountain.

There were a lot of butterflies on this walk. There were also a lot of horseflies, which we didn't like as much as the butterflies!

Once we circled around we had an impressive view down into a canyon, and even spotted a waterfall below!

Here's a better look at the waterfall. Glad I had my camera with a bit of zoom: it was inaccessible!

That tour ended our trip. I sat on the balcony at our accommodation in the evening to read, then hit the highway for the drive home after breakfast the next day.

One last look out to the mountains from the balcony on the farm before heading home.

The Great German Road Trip, Day 4: Schwarzenbach Valley, August 6, 2020

I had some pretty sore muscles after all that up and down the day before, and it got pretty hot, so we chose an easy tour for this day. My friends call this walk through the Schwarzenbach Valley the frog tour, since frogs breed and lay their eggs in the puddles along the path. Even in August, we saw some tadpoles!

At the beginning of our walk, I didn't take any pictures, even though we had a lovely jaunt through the woods along a river. We even had the chance to take a break and sit on rocks in the river with our feet in the cold Alpine water! After a while, we looped around and got to see the promised frogs.

During most of the walk we had a great view of the mountains we were on top of the previous day. This was near the end of our walk when we headed back toward the Isar River, which was still rushing fast and loud from the rain days before. 

The Great German Road Trip, Day 3: August 5, 2020

The weather cleared up and the forecast called for light cloud cover and a bit of cooler weather before the heat wave, so it was the perfect day to head up the mountain to the peaks of Brauneck (1,555 meters) and Latschenkopf (1,488 meters). To get there and conserve some energy, we skipped the first 1,000 meters of ascent and took the lift. It was steep and we had a breathtaking view on the trips up and down the mountain!

The ride made me nervous, but the view!

Once at the top, we started our tour. 

Here's the map of our tour after disembarking from the lift. We were definitely walking for well over one hour and forty minutes. It was slow going due to the ascent and descent on the rocky terrain, but well worth it for the views in between.

It was breathtaking up there!

There were lots of people on the trail after several days of rain and much hotter weather in the forecast for the next days. 

I could even smile on the way down, even though it still made me nervous hanging in that little cabin!

The Great German Road Trip, Days 1 and 2: August 3 & 4, 2020

This year is full of strangeness, one of those strange things being a lack of a vacation in the United States. I have gone back to my lovely home state of Michigan every year for most of the 17 years I've lived in Germany, but this year I decided not to because the situation was just too unsure considering the Corona pandemic: things seem to be changing every day and I was concerned about getting stranded, quarantined, infected, or spreading infection. So this summer I am not crossing any international borders, but rather travelling the lovely country of Germany. One could even say I'm travelling from sea to shining sea: I am travelling from Senftenberg Lake only about an hour away from home to Sylvensteinsee in Bavaria, then on to the North Sea in East Frisia and later on to the Baltic Sea in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. So, after four years of no posts, I'm back!

After a busy few months of staying home, homeschooling the boys, and working online, I was thrilled to venture off on my second big trip of the year (back in February, not aware that it would be my last international trip for a while, I splurged on a trip to Spain--more on that later!). This trip was to take me to see dear friends in Bavaria, about an hour south of Munich. The drive from Mittweida to Lenggries took me 5 hours and the last hour or so was in the rain. Monday and Tuesday were rainy, which left us with verdant landscapes and clean, crisp mountain air the rest of the week. It was perfect!

I arrived at our accommodation, Haus Marter in Winkl, just in time for a delicious dinner prepared by my friends. Then we started planning for the next days. Our tours would take us through the foothills of Lenggries, around the peaks of Brauneck and Latschenkopf, through the Schwarzenbach valley, and from the Isar around Roßkopf Mountain and back past Sylvensteinsee. It was a perfect week! 

Around 2 or 3 pm the rain let up enough that we could go out for a rainy walk. We ended up walking through the farmland behind our accommodation for about three hours and uphill just a bit through the forest, picking our way past puddles and rushing streams. 

This is normally a quiet stream, but after several days of rain was quite full of water.

A view over the rolling hills, across the valley and to the mountains on the other side.

Here's the Klaffenbach, which turned into a rushing waterfall after the rain.

This is downstream on the Klaffenbach, normally some lovely rock formations are exposed, but there was so much water that just the biggest round rock was peeking out!

It was so refreshing to see something different. We didn't mind the rain! My toes got a bit wet in the puddles on the first alpine tour with my new shoes. They are good for short walks, but I decided to go with my boots for the next day's trip up Brauneck.