July jaunts

 Once you graduate from high school and leave the family home, it’s not very often that you find yourself with a full month of unoccupied time.  No work.  No searching for work.  No stressing about work. No obligations at all.   Back in June, when I was looking at the calendar of empty days that made up July 2011, it seemed like a really, really long month and that it would last forever.  Sitting on the couch.  Watching Oprah.  Eating potato chips.  I thought that I’d be bored out of my mind.  So, I did what comes naturally to me when faced with so many free days in a row…I started cramming them full of stuff.  Here is what I came up with. 

It started out with a short trip up to Norway to catch up with Joe and Sharon.  They're staying in a small little village just outside of Oslo for the summer.  Something tells me that Levi will never be satisfied with just a can of "Bud" when he gets older.  He's going to go for the imports.

Biking out to a favorite swimming hole...













...on a beautiful lake in the hillsides east of Aas.  The water actually wasn't too cold...maybe because we were swimming so fast to get away from the monster leeches!

We also did a few day trips up to Oslo.  (such a shame what just happened up there)   This time was for an Expat 4th of July picnic in Vigelandsparken.

The real attraction of this park is the more than 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland depicting humanity in all it's forms.  Here, "Throwing Babys".

And the famous "Angry Boy" who's bronze hand is rubbed bare by the tourists.  Levi didn't seem all that interested.

It was great catching up with Joe and Sharon - it's been a lot of years since we've seen each other.  And Beth has made a new friend with Lydie.

It seems like I only had enough time after getting off the plane from Norway to drop Beth off at the house and re-pack my bags to get back onto another jet bound for America for a solo visit to my folks.   It’s always good to get back to Ligonier for a visit, swim in the pool, play golf with my dad, and get my mom onto the exercise bike – no small feat!  The return flight between Johnstown and Dulles was a nightmare, skipping through the heavy wind and clouds.  I made the mistake of trying to read and got a serious case of motion sickness, almost losing my breakfast into one of those little bags in the seat pocket.  It took me two beers and a plate of nacho’s in Dulles to quiet my stomach down…go figure.

Then, after a few days of running errands around Haarlem and playing "boy toy" to Beth, we both headed to Italy for some hiking in the mountains.  With an extensive network of well-maintained trails, rustic mountain huts (rifugio's), food and wine that is NEVER bad, and some of the most dramatic mountain scenery that I've ever seen, the Dolomites are fantastic!

 Did I say rustic?  Some of the rifugio's bordered a bit on the "posh" side.   But, how posh can it really be if you can only reach it with a steep, sweaty trek of a few hours?

 

The approach to a more "typical" rifugio.   These places are usually located at junction points of trails.

This particular one had it's own green house for fresh herbs for the kitchen.
  

 And guess what's on the menu at this rifugio?  Fresh trout!  With pasta of course...

 High mountain pass.

 Building a bridge out in the middle of freaking nowhere. They must have packed in the materials with mules.

 Surrounded.

 All of the trails are rated for different levels of difficulty.  They have set cables on some of the more challenging ones where you have to rope in to ascend/descend.  A lot of these trails are left over from World War I army maneuvers.  This particular trail was rated "moderate" and didn't require ropes, but I still couldn't get Beth to do it.  In her defense, the photo is a bit out of context.  This is a sheer cliff face with a 600-700 ft drop off to the right and no visible plateau above.   But, there IS a rifugio up there less than 2 kilometers away!

We had lunch on the mountain side as often as in the rifugio's.  It doesn't get much better than this.

 We based ourselves in Cortina d'Ampezzo, host city of the 1956 Olympics.

The flower decked terrace of our hotel in Cortina was a great place to wind down with a bottle of wine after a day on the trail.

Playing with the new hotel mascot - Harley, a 4-month old British bull dog.

We rented as cheap of a car as we could find because we wanted this to be a hiking vacation, not a driving one.  We only needed to get from Venice airport to Cortina and then out to a trail-head or two.  Big mistake!  Our little piece-o-crap Lancia promptly broke down.  It was tough enough trying to find a mechanic who at least understood hand-gestures (let alone English), but now it's proving even more difficult to get the rental company to reimburse our expenses.  Live and learn.

I can't end this entry about hiking in the Dolomite's without mentioning the trail that beat us both.  The hike to Croda Da Lago was brutal!  Our mistake was that we started at the wrong trail-head and after 2 1/2 hours and nearly 3000 vertical feet, we didn't have time (or energy) to make the last assent up to the lake and rifugio.  Even the French family who had started at a higher elevation were struggling to climb the last pass.  It was a frustrating decision, but we had to turn around and never got to see the lake...a good excuse for a return trip!

Now I've got 4 days left of holiday...where's that damned couch?!?!?