Weekend update May 22

Greeting faithful followers,

It was an on again off again rainy weekend.  We managed to get some inside housework done, mainly still putting the house back in order after the kitchen remodeling.

We have been enjoying nature this weekend despite the rain.

 Early this afternoon we had deer grazing in our yard.

 There are two deer in this picture.  This picture was taken out our living room window.

Later in the afternoon we had another deer or the one of the deer may have come back.  This time in our back yard.  This picture was taken looking out the window in the kitchen by our table.  This deer was eating dandelions.

 Here is the deer again with two birds at the bird feeder.

Here are a pair of American Goldfinches at our bird feeder.  The male is the bright yellow.  The female is the yellowish-brown color.

I'm so pleased to report our lilacs are blooming at the edge of our yard.  Not a lot of blooms but two bushes have flowers.  This is the first year these lilacs have bloomed.  Also, note the bluebird house in the photo.  We have a family of bluebirds living in this house.  Mary spied on the family and knows for sure there are two eggs in the nest and possibly three eggs.  We have seen the parents in our yard.

We bought a watermelon this evening at Mega Foods.  I was checking to make sure it wasn't one of the steriod pumped up watermelons from China and discovered it was grown in Weslaco, Texas.  Edwin lives in Weslaco.  This watermelon could have come from the fruit growing ranch Edwin lives on, although we didn 't see any watermelons growing when we were there last year.  Needless to say, we are happy to report this watermelon was grown right here in the good old U S of A.  Have a good week.

Home Accents

Greetings,
I more or less had the day off today so decided to shop for some "home accents". Our new couch needed some pillows so I found these at Pier One.

This is a close-up of one of the pillows. Snazzy huh? 

 I needed something too hang my apron collection on so this was my choice, again from Pier One.

 A close-up view.

 Our flowering crab is in full bloom.

Here's a close-up of the flowering crab blossoms. A special thank you to my photographer, Greg Barnes. We had kabobs on the grill for supper. We used the Weber because our gas grill is terminally ill and headed for the landfill. Maybe we will find a new one later this weekend! That's all for now folks.

Weekend Update

We are feeling the pressure of having to produce a blog.  We wonder if there is a blog support group?

Loyal followers, we don't want to discourage you from checking our blog but we will not be able to provide daily blogs as we did on our trip.  However, we hope to supply something of interest to you now and then.

Sunday was the better of the two days this past weekend.  We took advantage of the nice weather and went to Chippewa Valley Growers to pick up some hanging baskets.  Then last night we had to bring them inside due to a frost warning!  Same holds true for tonight.

We hope you are having a good week.  Greg & Mary

Tuesday, May 10 Lucerne, Switzerland

Hello Faithful Followers,

Yes, it is true, we are home. We thought we would finish out our blog with our day getting to Lucerne and what we did while we were in Lucerne.  We appreciate your patience waiting for our next blog.

You may recall how your intrepid travelers got to Murren.  Murren, Switzerland is where we were when we started our day on Tuesday.  Basically, we had to do in reverse what we did to get to Murren.

We left Murren at 9:36 AM on this train car.

 We traveled to Grutschalp where we boarded this cable car.

 You can see from this picture we had descended to 4,875 feet.  The train station in Murren is at 5,361 feet.

 Looking up at the Grutschalp station as we were descending on the cable car.

Inside the cable car.  There were only 4 passengers including us.  The guy in the blue shirt looking down the mountain was the operator of the cable car.  We think he was more interested in the young woman seated in the corner.

Approaching the cable car station and the train station in Lautenbrunnen.  If you enlarge the picture you can see the train waiting to take us back to Interlaken.

Our luggage on the train from Lautenbrunnen to Interlaken.  When we left Lautenbrunnen we had the train car to ourselves.  By the time we got to Interlaken, the train was full.

We had about 30 minutes between trains in Interlaken.  This was nice as it gave us a chance to have morning refreshments in a local cafe.  This shows the train we took to Lucerne was scheduled to leave Interlaken at 11:04 AM and the intermediate stops.  At the bottom of the sign you can see the numbers 2,2,2,2, 1, 1/2.  That indicates where the train cars will be situated on the train for 2nd class and 1st class ticket holders.  The 1/2 means part of the car is sectioned off for 1st class and the rest of the car is 2nd class.  We bought all of our tickets for 2nd class.  There isn't a whole lot of difference between the two classes.

We went along the northern shores of Lake Brienz for the first part of our trip from Interlaken to Lucerne.  This is a glacially fed lake.  That is the reason for the color of the water.

 After Lake Brienz we went along other picturesque scenery and more lakes.

This is the Hotel Movenpick Monopol that we stayed at in Lucerne.  We arrived in Lucerne at 1:00 PM.  Our room is in the picture on the 5th floor to the far right at the corner.  There was a Starbucks, a McDonalds and a small food court on the ground floor facing the street.  The hotel faces a major intersection in Lucerne.

 We were happy that our room was ready 15 minutes after we arrived at the hotel.

This is the chapel bridge.  This is Lucerne's iconic tourist attraction.  It is a foot bridge that crosses Lake Lucerne.  It was about a two block walk from our hotel.

Looking across Lake Lucerne at our hotel.  Our hotel is in the center of the picture behind the boat.  The hotel is about one block from the lake.  We took the picture while seated on a park bench along a promenade along the side of the lake where Old Town Lucerne is located.

 We walked around Lucerne in the afternoon.  We found Andrea moonlights selling shoes in Lucerne.

We met this lovely family on our walk through Old Town Lucerne and decided we were blending in well with the locals.  We left Lucerne in the morning for Zurich knowing we had made meaningful relationships along the way.

May 9 Murren

We woke to an absoulutely gorgeous day and it stayed that way all day. We are in the mountains and we saw them at their best.  This was the view from our window when we staarted our day.

This is the view from our balcony looking up the street into town.  This was taken about 7:30 AM.  The train station is on the left.

 After breakfast at the hotel, we walked through town to start our hike on the mountain behind the town.

 There were lots of wildflowers on our walk.

There are several trails behind Murren that connect to other trails.  There is an extensive trail system for hiking in the Alps.  Greg is pointing the way we were headed.  Notice we are going up!

We hiked through the woods and through pastures and along the ski slopes.  This is Mary on one section of the trail.

 This is one of the pastures we hiked through.

Looking up to the top of this mountain.  It really isn't the top but it is all you can see from this vantage point.  If you look closely on the top left of the mountain, you can see a little building.  The building is called Birg.  The elevation of Birg is 8783 feet.  That is where the cable car will transfer you to another cable car to get to the top of Schilthorn Mountain.

We walked through this little group of buildings.  Most of them are stables for cattle in the summer.  The ones with chimneys are either lived in or are rented out to skiers in the winter.

These are three of the mountains across the valley from Murren.  The mountain peak on the left is Eiger at 13,026 feet elevation, the middle peak is Monch at 13,449 feet, and the peak on the right is Jungfrau at 13,642 feet.

 This is a waterfall in one of the valleys we went through.

 Mary on the trail on the way down. Mts Eiger and Monch are in the background.

Mary on the trail.  We encountered patches of snow in the higher elevations and the north facing slopes of our walk.  Sometimes the trail would be completely covered in snow.

 We came back to the Eiger Guesthouse where we are staying for lunch.

 The view of Mount Eiger while we were eating lunch.

They have window boxes almost everywhere.  This window box is in one of the windows of the Eiger Guesthouse.  Pansies are one of their favorite flowers for window boxes in Murren.

After lunch we took a cable car up to the top of Mount Schilthorn. The top of Mount Schilthorn is 9,748 feet.

 Looking down on Murren from the cable car.

We transferred cable cars at Birg.  This is the building I pointed out in an earlier picture looking up while we were hiking..

This is the top of Mount Schilthorn, 9,748 feet.  They filmed part of the James Bond movie, "On Her Majesty's Secrect Service" at this location.  George Lazenby was James Bond in this movie.  I think it was filmed here in the late 1960s but they still play it up as a 007 film location.

 The view from the top.  This is looking at Mounts Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau.

 Another view in a different direction.

Mary at the top.  It was almost 40 degrees colder at the top of Mount Schilthorn compared to the temperature in Murren.  Lucky for us it was almost 80 degrees in Murren.

 Greg at the top of Mount Schilthorn.

While we were inside the building at the top, a hang gliderer went by. This picture was taken through a tinted window.

After dinner at our hotel we took another walk.  We came across this animal.  It is called a shamway.  I'm just guessing at the spelling.  We showed the hotel clerk our picture and he told us what it was.  Apparently is a sort of a cross between a goat and a deer.  It looks more like a goat to me.  They are a wild animal.

 I don't know if you can see them but he has two curved horns.

This was our last full day in Murren.  Tomorrow we head down the mountain and take a train to Lucerne.  We are staying at a Movenpick Hotel near the central train station in Lucerne.  Then on Wednesday we fly home.  On Wednesday, we take a 6:00 AM train from Lucerne to the airport in Zurich.  We are flying on Delta Airlines.  We are scheduled to depart Zurich at 9:50 AM on Delta flight 67.  We are scheduled to arrive in Atlanta at 2:20 PM Atlanta time.

We will go through United States Customs in Atlanta.  We are scheduled to depart Atlanta at 5:15 PM Atlanta time on Delta flight 1257.  We are scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis at 7:03 PM on Wednesday, May 11.  Our car is parked at the E-Z Park lot.  Then we drive home!