Travels with Carly

It's generally the case that the one who is most often behind the camera rarely appears in the photos. That holds true for Carly, who was with me almost every step of the 1,115 miles I walked this spring/summer in Bayern & Baden Württemberg. Despite her protests, I did manage to take a few photos that prove she was here. 

Despite being camera shy, Carly is an extrovert who readily engages with other chickens. Here, in the woods near St. Ottilien on the first day of our Querweg hike from Freiburg to Ueberlingen. 

 

Alpine wildflower garden near King Ludwig II's mountain hunting lodge, Schachenhaus. 

On the window sill of Schachenhaus. 

More views near Schachenhaus:

View over the Reintal:

Enjoying a much needed feather fluffing from friend Leslie during a break on the Maximiliansweg: 

Comparing sore muscles and blisters at the Sonnenalm hut on the Maximiliansweg. This bird had never heard of the Maximiliansweg. 

Conversing with other hotel guests at breakfast in Bad Reichenhall. They had never heard of the Maximiliansweg either. In fact, we didn't meet any other hikers who had.

 Carly's favorite door in Bad Reichenhall:

Bayern hike photo dump #9: Scheidegg to Lindau

This seems like a good time to mention how great the shower was in the hotel in Scheidegg where we spent the night. Stefan had suggested we stay in an impressively inexpensive AirBnb RV, with shower access inside the house it was parked next to, but I insisted that having a private shower would be worth the extra expense, and it was.

The last day of our Bayern hike was a 16-mile descent into Lindau. That's right: Mr. Broken Femur was now able to hike 16 miles in a single day.

We were warned of cats as we entered Ostkinberg:

Hi, Jakobsweg:

At one point, Austria was an easy one kilometer down the road--a ten-minute walk!--but we honored the terms of my Fiktionsbescheinigung...

...and admired Austria from the German side of the border. 

Across the road from Austria was a German church with cows:

We started seeing signs for Lindau ~9.2km from our destination:

Keeping Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Boeserscheidegg company was its sister city, Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Boesenreutin.

We've driven to Lindau multiple times on this freeway. This time, we walked.

Look--storks in the field below Oberhofer Halde, the ridge where we were about to see...

...unexpectedly expansive views of the Bodensee.

The view included a guide to the peaks in front of us...

...as well as a renovated chapel, originally built in 1870 by Prince Luitpold of Bavaria in memory of his wife, Augusta of Tuscany. Leave it to me to take a photo of the sign but not the chapel... 

We then began our descent from Weissenberg into Lindau...

Lindau's Altstadt is on a small island. We declared our destination reached when we walked across crossed the bridge to the Altstadt.

Proof of concept: It's possible to take a ferry from Lindau all the way to Ueberlingen. Doing so would connect my Steinebach-Lindau trek with my Freiburg-Ueberlingen trek, if I ever wanted to spend the time connecting them. 

We enjoyed Lindau's Altstadt in the company of a few thousand other tourists. 

This brewer's star frames either a stein or a pot of coffee for the morning after:

Kinetic art near the harbor:

The regional train back to Munich was standing-room only. We were lucky to have gotten seats.

Ta da! A 16-mile day.

Bayern hike photo dump #8: Oberstaufen to Scheidegg

After returning from Oberstaufen, we enjoyed two weeks with friends visiting from the U.S. Then we headed back to Obserstaufen to finally make our way, over two days, to Lindau.

Our hike began at the Oberstaufen train depot. For those who, like me, wonder about such things, Oberstaufen is ~25km from Niederstaufen, and both towns are east of the Bodensee; but they of course had me thinking of that prefix-less Staufen 200km to the west in Baden Wuerttemberg, where Faust blew himself up in his hotel room. Today I learned there's another Staufen in Bayern 110km east of Stuttgart, and Hohenstaufen castle ruins between Staufen and Stuttgart, and a Hochstaufen in the Chiemgau Alps. Wikipedia explains the connections: "The Hohenstaufen dynasty, also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254." Unclear origin is something the Staufer and I have in common.

The 10th meridian east runs straight through this barn: 

The hills were alive with the sound of moosic:

We could tell we were heading out of Germany's bread basket and into its fruit basket...

...where the hills were alive with the sound of music.

We had hoped to stop for tea at Artemisia, an herb garden and tea house about a third of the way along our route, but we arrived too early and had to satisfy ourselves enjoying just the garden. 

A path through the woods...

...and past cows...

...landed us in Oberreute right around lunch time...

...but alas, the village store was closed for lunch, so we ate apples and Nimm Zwei candies on a bench in the shade next to the church. 

Our route then took us through the generously well-maintained trails of the Hausbachklamm, a pretty but diminutive gorge by any gorge standards.  

We emerged hot and hungry in Weiler-Simmerberg...

...where we bought some Band-Aids and hoped to find lunch.

We found a little outdoor cafe that looked charming, but had such a carnivore-focused menu and puzzlingly slow-motion service that we were happy to learn they only took cash, and with the excuse of having to find an ATM before we could order, we made our way to an Edeka and had Brezen and buttermilk on the grungy steps near the parking lot.

Our destination for the day was Scheidegg. Here's a sign for both Scheidegg and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Scheidegg. We could understand how, with a 12% grade, bicyclists might be upset with Boeserscheidegg. Perhaps folks of unclear origin with similarly befuddling experiences in Weiler-Simmerberg founded it.

We were not expecting castle ruins on our hike, so when this sign beckoned, we took a detour.

Some ruins, of course, are more ruined than others. There is not much left of Altenburg.

Our path reunited us with our old friend, the Jakobsweg:

Scheidegg was another mile past this lovingly, thoroughly painted farmhouse:

We arrived late afternoon in Scheidegg. Somehow I forgot to take any photos of anyplace outside in town, but I did take some photos inside the church near our hotel:

Obligatory organ photo

I was going to write that I cannot explain this pulpit, but if you Google "boar eagle lion church," the interwebs explain that this thing is called a Tetramorph. Oh my.

After dinner, we walked up to the fields above town and caught our first no-doubt-about-it clear glimpse of the Bodensee, our destination for the next day.

Ta da! A 15-mile day...