Well, you read that right, laundry day… After a week away we were running out of clean socks and shirts. So, we loaded our dirties into two small bags and headed down the hill to the laundry mat. While the laundry was running, we (I really mean Carson) worked through a few caches until our timer went off. At this point I said “See ya!” and went to finish the laundry while Carson finished a cache. Unfortunately, the clothes were not completely dry when the cycle was finished, so I hefted them back to the room, spread them out all over, and put the do not disturb sign on the door. (I could only fathom what the cleaning lady would have thought if she could have seen it!) Then we left to pursue the rest of our day.

We spent the second half of our day on the far side past Interlaken exploring the St. Beatus Caves (pronounced be-at-us). We started with lunch at the restaurant there (slow and not worth writing home about), then proceeded into the caves. You have the option to go with a guide or complete the tour on your own; we opted for the self guided tour which turned out to be pretty nice. At the first stop on our tour, there was a sign that directed us to the caves’ app. This app provided detailed information on the formations inside the caves as well as the systems known history. The cave was well lit (for a cave) and the paths and stairs were well-maintained, despite being paid for only by donations and entrance fees. It took us about an hour and a half to get through it all. Once outside again, we grabbed an ice cream bar and sat in the shade until our bus arrived.

Once back on the bus, we headed into Interlaken to grab one more Grand Tour cache and dinner. This too was pretty good, but nothing special to write home about.

Most of our trip is through regions of Switzerland that speak German as their primary language. But one of our options from Lauterbrunnen was a day trip into the French-speaking region for cheese, a castle, and chocolate. After the hiking yesterday, we wanted something a little less intense, and this day trip seemed to fit the bill. We planned out the timing for the trains we’d need take the night before, and decided to take advantage of our hotel’s picnic lunch service so we didn’t have to specifically schedule a stop and could just eat whenever we got hungry. We grabbed a quick breakfast in the morning, picked up our lunches from the front desk, and then hit the road. Er…train.

A few hours later, we arrived at La Maison du Gruyère to learn about (and taste!) their cheese. Our travel passes got us in free. The visit started with an audio guide (a cow named Cherry) who told us all about how humans ensure she produces quality milk so they can turn it into quality cheese. There were smelling samples of many of the things cows eat that ultimately affect the way the cheese tastes. Some of them were quite pleasant (mostly flower varieties) and others were kind of gross on their own. We got to see the machines and highlights of the process to make the cheese, then things wrapped up with a view into the aging cellars where they can store up to 7000 wheels of Gruyère AOP. We each got three pieces of different ages to sample. I liked the oldest best (it was the saltiest), while Amber liked the middle option.

With the cheese portion of our day complete, next we climbed up the hill to Gruyères village. Our destination was the Château de Gruyères. On the way up, we worked out the details for a letterbox cache that’s part of the Grand Tour series of caches at popular destinations across Switzerland. (The one in Appenzell that gave us so much trouble was also part of this series.) We got stuck at one point looking for a date required to open the cache box. Amber finally decided that some squiggles must be it, and it turned out she was right.

With the cache found, we continued to the castle. It was cool to see the inside and learn a little bit of its history. The castle was home to many different artists over its last couple hundred years, so most of what was on display inside was artwork. That might be ok to a point, but it was mostly from the last few decades, and some of it was really weird (think flowers-with-hands-for-stems-that-are holding-a-baby-faced-sun sort of weird). Not exactly our cup of tea. (And we liked it so much we forgot to take a picture.)

By this point we were hungry, so we settled down in a small park and broke out our lunches. Ham and cheese sandwiches, apples, candy bars, and water. Butter probably wouldn’t have been our first condiment choice for the sandwiches, but it was better than expected. We discovered that the water was “with gas” which is kind of gross, but we were pretty pleased overall considering how easy this was for us.

Then the chocolate! A quick two trains after lunch took us to Broc to visit Maison Callier. The tour started with a humorous elevator ride that took us down approximately 18 inches. Yes, really. It continued through a series of eight rooms, each with a portion on our audio guides supplemented by interactive displays, and the door to each subsequent room opened automatically when it was time to move on. Every person on the tour had their own audio unit in their own language. This initial part on the history of chocolate was a bit cheesy (wait, wasn’t that earlier?) but it was also really well done. The audio units were pretty cool because once this guided part was over, we were able to go to our choice of individual stations and hold the unit near a scan point (probably NFC) to hear the relevant content.

We listened to most of the optional audio stops and tasted a few ingredients like almonds and hazelnuts, before we broke down and skipped to the reason we were there: the chocolate tasting! Seven or eight flavors later, there was only one we didn’t like very much (marzipan and orange). The rest were delicious! Finally we had to decide what to buy to take home (or at least out of the store). We managed to limit ourselves to just six chocolate bars and two boxed assortments.

The last few trains of the day where uneventful, but gave us time to pick a spot for dinner in Interlaken. Amber chose a place called Hüsi Bierhaus. We tried a couple of local beers on tap, and the food was pretty good, too. Amber had mac and cheese with bacon, and I had the “mega bratwürst” which was extremely tasty. After dinner, we caught the last train of the day back to Lauterbrunnen.

The forecast for today indicated rain, so we were pleasantly surprised when we woke up to sunshine! This also gave us a sense that our plans for a hike today may not be a wash after all.

So, after breakfast, with our hiking gear and rain jackets on our backs, we headed out to catch the cable car to take us up to Grütschalp. This cable car was pretty interesting in that it had a cargo hold that hung underneath to easily move construction materials up and down the side of the mountain. This time it was hauling lumber.

Once at the top, we checked our map and started the 2.6 mile track to Mürren. This hike was considerably easier than our hike a couple days ago as it was fairly flat and well maintained. Along the way, we were treated to a walk through cattle, (I really wanted to pet one, but didn’t…), slugs as fat as your thumb, and waterfalls.

Shortly before arriving, with distant rumbles of thunder in the air, Carson took a moment to pause and reflect on his actions… What action is he reflecting on, you might ask? Well, the action that he made that caused him to delete all the pictures from the good Camera… it was a pretty grumpy walk into town…

After accepting that the pics were gone, we ventured into town and started to get sprinkled on. So we paused to gear up for rain; rain jackets, pack covers, and prayers. Not two minutes later, the sky opened up into a pretty good shower. Unfortunately we were on the far side of town from our next stop the cable car to Gimmelwald, so we cranked our feet into a higher gear and hassled through! On a positive note, we have decent gear and stayed dry underneath it all 🙂

Due to the rain, we tweaked our plans a bit from Mürren and instead of hiking we took the cable car down to Gimmelwald, then another down to Stechelberg, and finally a bus to Trümmelbachfälle for lunch. As we sat down to have sandwiches, the rain let up and the sun started to peak out again. We then headed over to explore Trümmelbachfälle. This is a massive waterfall that traverses mainly along the interior of the mountain with several viewing platforms along the walk up. There is an option to take an elevator from the bottom to half way up. We opted to walk all the way up but took the elevator back down.

With the sun peaking out, we spent the last part of our afternoon hiking through the Lautrebrunnen Valley, taking pictures and finding geocaches along the way. Hey!!! He found them! While taking a picture of a snail, Carson found the pictures that he thought had been deleted.

We topped off the day with dinner at Hotel Oberland with a couple of tall local brews, schnitzel for me, rösti for Carson, and chocolate fondue for dessert.

Goodbye, Appenzell! There’s a very slim chance we’ll ever see you again, but we took lots of photos to remember you, so don’t feel bad, OK?

The agenda for today was all about Liechtenstein, but it was a travel day which required strategic planning to make sure we did not have to haul our suitcase and the two hiking packs around while exploring the city of Vaduz on foot. So we took a series of trains, one of which included a crazy guy ranting at everyone in German. We really had no idea what he was saying, but I think we looked at each other like, “Is this guy off his rocker?” And honestly, the answer seemed to be yes based on the reactions of other people around us. Amber: “Now our experience is complete.”

Once we split from crazy guy, we stopped at Sargans train station. Why stop in Switzerland when our destination was in Liechtenstein? Because that station has luggage lockers where we could stash all the big stuff and transfer a few key items to a more typical backpack for the day. From there we took a bus from Sargans into Vaduz to go exploring.

One of the first things you notice in Vaduz is the castle part way up the mountainside to the east. I had forgotten that it’s not open to the public because it is the actual home of the current prince, but we decided to climb up anyway. Some of these slopes rivaled our hike from yesterday, but this climb was over much quicker. We were able to get close enough for a good look at the castle as well as some great views out over the top of Vaduz and the valley on either side.

We spent more time walking around the city finding some caches. Nothing too complicated today, but the most interesting took us to a covered pedestrian/cyclist bridge over the Rhine River between Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Imagine that…a bridge between two countries where you can freely walk back and forth with no fence to pass through and one to approve your presence!

Next it was time for lunch. We picked a place called Made in Italy, partly just to see if it measured up to what we remembered from 2010. The owner was clearly Italian, so of course it was great!

By then it was just about time to leave Liechtenstein and head for our next hotel. But before we left, I wanted to get a pressed penny. Well, of course it wasn’t a US penny, it was a €0.05 coin. And rather than costing $0.51, it set us back €4.05 (about $4.50)! With that taken care of, we caught the bus back to Sargans, grabbed the rest of our bags, and boarded a series of hot and crowded trains that weren’t much fun. By the last train of the day, we were finally starting to cool down again when we met another couple from the US on their 18 day honeymoon. And I thought 12 days was going to be expensive…

We wrapped up the day with dinner at our hotel in Lauterbrunnen. Pizza for me and Rösti for Amber. Very tasty! We also realized the weather outlook for the next few days doesn’t look great for visiting mountain tops, but that’s why we came prepared to be flexible. It looks like the agenda for tomorrow will be more hiking, this time around Lauterbrunnen Valley.

Amber said she wanted to do several hikes during this trip, so I made sure to come prepared with multiple options. My choice for this morning was of moderate difficulty and was supposed to take around two and a half hours. We’d hike up to a summit, then catch a cable car back down. Doesn’t sound too bad, right?

What if I told you the route from Schwende Station to Ebenalp included a climb of 2,500 feet? That sounds a little scary, and it probably was a bit more than either of us were originally expecting. But the trail was well-maintained and we made good time despite some sections that had us huffing and puffing. We were on our own for about the first half, then we caught up with some other groups and played leapfrog the rest of the way up. We had some great views over the valley, and passed through a cave near the end. We were pretty well spent by the time we got to the top, but we can look back now and say it was a pretty reasonable hike for us.

The climb ended at the Berggastgaus Guesthouse where we had an interesting lunch to help us refuel. I played it safe and got a breaded pork cutlet with french fries, while Amber took a risk and got something I can’t remember how to spell. It was a pasta dish with sausage, but the pasta was a little too onion-flavored for her liking.

With lunch taken care of, we had one last objective before catching the cable car back down. We worked on a multicache that required gathering numbers from nearby hiking trail signs. This was a little tricky with the translation from German, but we were able to get there and make the find without too much trouble. We watched a few paragliders take off as we came back toward the cable car station, then bought our tickets down so we could catch a train back to Appenzell.

The rest of the afternoon was spent finding all those caches at which we’d failed so miserably the day before (and dodging raindrops). It’s amazing what a full nights sleep will do for your geosenses! We even managed to work our way through that field puzzle, though I’m not sure we actually took the intended route to get there. We also visited the Appenzeller Bier brewery, and while we weren’t able to do a tasting as we’d hoped, we did get to buy beers and drink them while we listened to their audio tour.

We rounded out the evening with dinner at our hotel since it was supposed to have one of the better restaurants in town. We opted to sit outside despite the rain which was mostly pleasant until it picked up just before dessert and started coming in around the edges. This was probably our best meal yet with both of us really enjoying our selections.

One last thing…

We made it! We left home at 8:15am on Sunday and arrived in Zurich at 8:30am on Monday, for a total of 17 hours… Oy! But now the fun can begin!

We spent our first day trying to kill time until we could collapse at a reasonable hour. So, we put our luggage in a locker at the train station and hit the streets of Zurich. In true Caron Monroe fashion we spent the better part of the day hunting geocaches and not finding any of them! However, on a positive note, we did get to walk all over the city and had really good burgers and shakes at The Butcher (a restaurant that we may not have known was there if we hadn’t passed it half a dozen times.)

After lunch we attempted to find one more cache but again no luck. So, we gathered our luggage and boarded the train to Appenzell. By mid-afternoon we were checked in to our hotel and out about the town exploring and attempting a few more caches. We started with a field puzzle cache that required exploring the main street. Part way through our exploration we sidetracked to get a webcam cache for our 1200th find! Then back to work on the field puzzle. Unfortunately, we spent a quit a while trying to get our numbers to work, but again came up empty. So, hey, why not try for yet another cache, maybe we can break this negative cycle!? Nope, not tonight! This was just one more objective leading to yet another DNF… I suppose major exhaustion and sleep deprivation do not mix well for successful caching.

We give up! Time for supper! This, my readers, was a success. We ate at Gass 17 where we both enjoyed our first Swiss bier! Mine was alongside a wood fired pizza and a banana split and Carson’s was umm… (He will have to fill this in when he can think of it…)

And the finale for the day… wait for it… wait for it… SLEEP!!!!! Well, showers first, then BED!

PS, sorry we don’t have any photos from this day, we were too exhausted and preoccupied with not finding caches to remember…

Edit: here are a few photos of the main street in Appenzell from the next day.

We’re sitting in the slowest TGI Friday’s ever in the Atlanta airport, but all is going well so far (other than the glacial pace of this place). The wait gives me a moment to post our departure pic from earlier, and lay out the general plan for the trip.

Unlike the Iceland trip that was often planned down to the minute, our time in Switzerland will be a lot less structured. (The waitress just came by to let me know they are out of what I ordered.) We know where we are staying and when, but each area has a list of possibilities that we’ll pick from based on how we feel. (Turns out they found an extra sandwich in a back corner or something, so I got my original order after all.) Hopefully I’ve put together enough notes for this approach to work out. We’ll find out soon enough! We have another hour before boarding our flight to Zurich, but Delta tells me our checked bag is already on board. (The sandwich was kind of meh; I’m sure our trip will be better.) Amber is getting anxious, so it’s time to get out of here. Our next post will likely come from Appenzell tomorrow night. Until then.

We’re about to embark on our latest adventure!

Just a quick note from the plane as we finish typing our last few posts. We got up this morning at 5:00 AM and finished packing up to hit the road. We were slowed by a few things including an empty gas card and a large group in front of us at Procar who had damaged their vehicle and were working on paperwork or something. We were getting worried we wouldn’t have enough time to get our VAT refund submitted and through security in time to make our flight.

It was about that time that I noticed our flight had actually been delayed by almost two hours. This turned out to be a good thing for us as it gave us plenty of time for everything we still had to do. It also shouldn’t affect our connecting flight to Madison as we had a long layover to begin with. The rental return went smoothly (no damage despite a few rough gravel roads), and we were soon at the airport. We were expecting a long line for the VAT refund, but we basically walked right up and were on our way a minute later. We cleared security without issues, and had time for breakfast before the waiting began. Amber even discovered a donut with caramel glaze and caramel filling which was delicious.

For our last full day in Iceland, we really had just one item on the itinerary. Glymur is one of the tallest waterfalls in the country, but it requires a significant hike to reach it because there are no nearby roads. We grabbed breakfast at our hotel, loaded our packs, then started the hour drive to the parking area at the end of a long fjord. The skies were overcast, but the weather was otherwise pretty good without much wind (yet).

The hiking trail was roughly marked with yellow paint on rocks along the way, and it brought a wide range of terrain. Things started out over relatively flat terrain with a mix of dirt and gravel and one or two easy stream crossings. A while later, you descend through a cave and take some rough stairs down to the bottom of the canyon next to the river.

 

Here’s where the fun really began. We had to cross the river without a typical bridge. Instead, there is a log over the second half of the span and some mostly exposed rocks to scramble over for the first half. There was also a tension cable stretched across to hold for balance. There were several groups of people all headed in the same direction, so we got to watch about ten people go across before it was our turn. The technique that seemed to work best was to carefully find rocks with the least water rushing over them to get you to a large rock in the middle of the river where one end of the log was bolted down. Several people could stand on this rock at a time to help steady the cable for the people coming behind them. Perhaps the trickiest part was ducking under the cable to be in position to get onto the log while wearing a large backpack. After that portion, crossing the log was a piece of cake. I went first and was pretty methodical over the rocks. Then it was Amber’s turn, and she opted for the “faster is better” method. Both seemed to work well as we came out the other side with dry feet. Hurray for good boots!

 

After the excitement of the river crossing, things didn’t really slow down. We had a series of steep climbs where rebar poles had been hammered into the ground to provide ropes to hold. After those, there was a similar section going down, only it was across rock and it was partially wet. Our trekking poles where great for all of this as having an extra support really helped us feel stable even on tricky slopes. From this point, there was nothing quite so complicated.

Once we passed through the first climb after crossing the river, we could catch glimpses of the waterfall at the end of the canyon. Each viewpoint got progressively better until we reached a designated stop with a nice rock wall and paving stones. There was a cache hidden in the rock wall that Amber spotted in short order. The marked trail seemed to end there, but we decided to keep climbing.

 

Eventually we reached another large flat space with a cliff edge directly across from the falls. Here is where I finally busted out the good camera and the tripod. By this point I realized I had forgotten my jacket in the car which also meant I did not have my hat or gloves either. This was unfortunate because it was extremely windy and cold now that we were nearer to the top of the canyon. Amber was nice enough to lend me one of her two jackets. I was happy to have it even if I did look pretty silly in a jacket a few sizes too small.

 

Soon it was time to head back down and do everything in reverse. This was mostly uneventful as the trekking poles made the harder parts easier. The main difference was that the mayflies where out in force and would not leave us alone. Luckily we were prepared for just such a situation, so we busted out our head nets and became the envy of every other hiker on the trail. One guy even offered Amber $12 to buy hers, and I’m not sure he was joking. She countered at $15 and that seemed to kill any further discussion.

 

Back to the river crossing. Amber went first and got across with no issues. I made it to the middle rock, then went to duck under the cable to be on the same side as the rock crossing. Only I did it a little too early and didn’t really have enough room to stand on the other side of the cable. I did a nice limbo move, but I had both hands on the cable and managed to keep everything dry including my pack. Amber got some pics of me crossing, but missed that moment, probably because she was too busy thinking, “Oh, $h!t.”

 

When we got back to the point of the cave, I remembered that there was another cache nearby. I originally thought it was down next to the river, so I headed back that directoin while Amber waited at the cave. Turns out I had misjudged the GPS map and the cache was actually on top of a ridge the same height as the top of the area above the cave Amber was sitting in. I had a really steep climb made possible by my poles, but found the cache shortly after. I had no desire to go back down the way I’d come up, so I opted to follow the ridge around and realized it was headed to the back side of the cave where I could meet up with Amber again.

The remainder of the walk back to the parking area was uneventful. We spent a total of about five hours. Towards the end, we could feel just about every rock under our tired feet despite our boots. Still a great adventure to cap our trip.The afternoon was much more low key. After getting cleaned up back at our hotel, we spent some time shopping for souvenirs, then had once last expensive Iceland dinner where we both got lamb. Finally, we finished the day with some lounging in a local pool.