After a good night's rest and a typically good German breakfast, we were ready to find a laundry in town and wash our clothes before we left Berchtesgaden for Austria and our drive to the Edelweiss Hutte for the next night. Our hosts at the Hotel Bavaria insisted on doing our laundry for us using their big machines. They did charge us but it was easily 1/3 of what we would have to pay at a public facility and we got to sit in the dining room and read, snack and look at the mountains while things washed and dried.
We got all packed up and headed out. The "normal" route to go to the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse is to go on the autobahn in Austria. We chose to take a back road. In either case, we had to get a special Austria driving sticker for the car or risk being tagged by cameras and paying a big fine. We were able to fill up our gas tank and get the sticker in Berchtesgaden before we left.
The road we took was still a major one, even though it wasn't the autobahn. I was looking forward to the scenery along a major lake that was on the way, but it turned out that we actually went through a tunnel all along that lake. It was then that I realized that if a major road is shown like a dotted line, it means a tunnel in most of the places we drove.
For half of this trip, we planned to drive through the Alps and go over some high passes. The first was the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse. If you go to the link, you can see more about this twisty, touristy road, including its history.
I grabbed this illustration off the website. Remember, these numbers are meters, not feet.
When we paid our toll at the bottom of the mountains, we asked about the weather. We were told that it was just a little rainy. This was the way the cobblestone road up to our hotel, the Edelweiss Hutte, is supposed to look.
We got to the top, struggled in the wind and rain to get our stuff out of the car and checked into the hotel. It is a tiny place. We had a light lunch and went back to the room to rest before going down to dinner around 7:00.
When we arrived we couldn't see much because we were in the clouds, but we did see a marmot on the rocks outside our windows. Marmots are a big thing there and the hotel had many products make with marmot fat.
While we were having dinner, it started to snow. Everyone there started getting a little anxious -- but especially the folks who had come on motorcycles.
It was very cold in our room, but we had down comforters so that helped when the hotel did their heat control thing. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of the marmot, but I did get some good pictures of what it looked like outside our window the next morning.
Yeah, we were snowed in. Big time.
We were still in the clouds. The little parking area for the hotel was down a steep incline. A couple of cars and an older Toyota 4-wheel drive were parked there. The motocycles were stored in some garages the hotel had for that purpose.
The staff spent a couple of hours clearing the snow there and on the incline down to there. Fortunately, we had parked up on the major parking lot where the gift shop is. At one point the Toyota folks took off and we thought they had left. When we went up exploring, we discovered that they were in the upper parking lot. They had tried to leave, but the road hadn't been plowed yet and they only got to the edge of the road when they realized that it was too slippery even for them.
So we all waited...and waited...and waited. We went up to the car again and discovered that the parking lot had been plowed. Our car was somewhat surrounded by snow and the Toyota folks were still there. Finally, while we were chatting with them with my poor German and their better English, the woman who ran the gift shop arrived in her old Toyota front wheel drive station wagon.
She said that the road was okay, just a little snow close to the edges, and that we should be able to make it down fine. So we followed the Toyota folks down. I was most concerned about getting onto the asphalt and off the cobblestones after what we learned about the road up to the Eagle's Nest. I was also intent upon getting out of the clouds and down to a level where we could actually see the edge of the road.
It didn't take too long for us to see that even if we hadn't been at the highest point on the road, we still would have been snowed in. Trout did a great job of driving on the wet and still slippery road. We loved these "barriers". They were just wide enough apart that most of today's cars would sail right through them.
The farther down we got the better the weather conditions were and the more we could see. So much for us seeing the mountains from our hotel.
And is that some blue sky?
Now we're talking. No snow. No rain. This is the way it's supposed to be the 3rd week of June.
A twisty road for Trout to drive and scenery for both of us.
And we caught up with the Toyota folks. They were heading over to the glacier for their next night.
This looks like some kind of postcard, but I did take this picture.
There were waterfalls along the ground.
We did get below the timberline.
And down into the valley with some charming villages.
Where we could see waterfalls higher up.
This day we were heading into Italy to drive another high pass in the Dolomites. We passed on that pass. The weather continued to be iffy at the tops of the mountains. Trout said he really didn't need to drive the high passes. My knuckles were still white, so we varied our route to Merano a little bit.
Before we left Austria, we stopped in the little town of Lienz for lunch. We drove through town looking for a likely place and decided upon the Dolomiten Hotel. They had a conservatory on the side and that's where we ate. If you click on the link and then on the 1st picture, you'll see that it's very 70s. They were featuring fresh "spargel". That's asparagus and it is white, so both of us got pasta dishes with it in them. We were almost to Italy.
