June 26: Mayrhofen to Pfunds (with train transfer from Jenbach to Landeck)

 

We got up, ate our Weisswurst, and got the bikes packed and ready to roll at 8:00am. The sun was shining and the bike path was easy rolling but Bowen was lagging. It took nearly two and a half hours to ride to Jenbach even though it was downhill though with a light headwind. By the time we got to the Jenbach train station, Stephan and Otto had already been cooling their heels for an hour while we bought train tickets and organized ourselves for when the train came. Otto rode along with us on the train so he wouldn't miss the experience of riding the Austrian trains.

The train to Landeck goes through Innsbruck, where we had to do a train transfer. Fortunately, that train transfer was relatively easy, and there were no other cyclists competing with us for bike parking space. On the way to Landeck, however, we could see the weather steadily getting worse and worse, with clouds first appearing and then becoming gradually darker as we approached Landeck. Stephan and Otto Sr, driving the RV on the freeway, got held up behind traffic, but that didn't matter as when the train arrived at Landeck the skies opened up and a thunderstorm blew through, necessitating that we stay at the train station for lunch to wait it out.

Arturo had a weather radar app on his phone, so he pulled it out while we had lunch. "It looks like there's a clear window of a few hours." Sure enough, by the time we finished lunch the rain had stopped, and Stephan and Otto Sr arrived. We mounted our bikes and loaded up our luggage so that we wouldn't have to depend on rendezvousing with the RV if it started raining. That way, we could just find lodging and figure it out.

The tandem led the way, with Xiaoqin and Bowen following behind but the others mysteriously fell back. I was determined to make as much headway as possible before the inevitable thunderstorm came back. Following the signs along the road I found the bike path leading out of town towards Pfunds, and it turned out to be quite pleasant and uncontested by cars. I would later discover that the others ended up on the car road and had to ride through the tunnel.

The bike path follows the Inn river, crossing it and following alongside it on the opposite side of the river from the main road. It grants you views of the power dams before dumping you out onto Prutz. Boen and Bowen had both played at the zipline playground behind Prutz but this time when we arrived it started raining. We hid under some shelters (one kindly resident even opened up his garage for Mark Brody), and soon when the rain stopped we kept going again.

I had my eyes on the Vaya hotel in Pfunds, which looked really good. It being a Thursday I didn't bother making a reservation. Past Prutz, the bike path follows a pattern where it would hit a climb, then descend into the next town before rolling on flat terrain for a bit before repeating all the way up the river to Pfunds. We made it to St Christina before it started raining again, but coincidentally we found a tunnel on the bike path just as the rain started so we had shelter right there!

Once again, the rain stopped but we could feel our luck running out. By the time we hit Mariastein it had started raining again in earnest, but we were already committed --- it was Pfunds or bust! We kept riding even though the sky was really opening up at this point and our socks were wet. But the scenery was still gorgeous. Arturo posted on Strava later that he thoroughly enjoyed it.

Arriving in Pfunds we discovered that the Vaya was full in between when I saw it had availability and our arrival someone else must have booked up the remaining rooms! Looking on booking.com we found Pension Grein, but when we got there there was no staff there. Fortunately, we had our phones and Arturo called the owner and settled us in for the evening. We parked our bikes in the garage, waxed all our chains, and then took showers. After that, the sky cleared a bit and we could walk to dinner in a light drizzle. It was an adventure and our clothing likely wouldn't dry, but that's why you always bring a set of spare cycling clothes.

At dinner, I looked for lodging for Friday. My favorite hotel, the hotel Frenzenshohe was full, but I noticed that Trafoi had an opening at the hotel Madatsch, a great location with a half pension. Arturo checked and the place was cheaper on the website directly for a half pension, so we booked it! That would place us at 1400m high, granting us a 1500m climb on Saturday, which was reasonable.

Review: Norwegian Wood

 I will confess to having bounced off prior attempts to read Haruki Murakami books, but hope springs eternal, so somehow Norwegian Wood found its way into my library queue and this time I actually read it.

Of all the Japanese novels I've read, this one feels the least Japanese. Other novels, I've read, for instance, would make references to Japanese books not available in English translation, but darn near every music/pop culture reference to this book refers to English music or American music, and nearly every book reference is steeped in English or American literature.

The book revolves around a young man who starts college a couple of years after one of his best friends commits suicide. The book has a lot of people committing suicide, making me wonder how come Japan's subways were so packed in the 1970s. Besides the aboved mentioned best friend, the best friend's girlfriend, the protagnist's new best friend's girlfriend and quite possibly another person I'd forgotten about also commit suicide.

The book's theme isn't suicide, however. It's about relationships. Again, the point of view character lives a pretty unbelievable life, but maybe college was cheap in the 1960s. Apparently despite being from a family that's not rich, he pays for his expenses solely with a part time job at a record store, and never has to be accountable to his parents, so he would skip out on classes and go on trips, etc., and still has plenty of money to go on dates, buy drinks and bullet train tickets, etc. I guess when you write fiction you don't have to be realistic.

In any case, the point of view character makes all the dumb mistakes a young adult male can make. I won't fault the author for those --- as a former young adult male I made many of the same mistakes, though not with the same wild profligarate spending (not being rich) and not having the kind of major that would have no consequences if I skipped out on them for weeks at a time.

In the end, the author makes the correct decision, but not before making a lot of questionable ones. I'm not sure I learned a lot about Japanese culture from this novel, but the novel must have rung a lot of resonances because it was apparently very popular both in Japan and elsewhere.

June 25: Mayrhofen Panoramaweg

Arturo, Mark and I got out of the apartment at 6:50am, walking to the nearest supermarket. When you visit Europe, you're used to very indifferent customer service. Some service workers even seem to think that customers are a nuisance. This store, despite being part of a chain, was tiny and had the most enthusiastic customer service agent in Europe I'd ever met. We started by buying bread and eggs, and then I spotted Weiss wurst. We bought two packets of 6, reasoning that would be two each. The customer service agent immediately reached back behind her and grabbed the special mustard that goes with Weisswurst proactively!

We then visited the other grocery store for more pedestrian needs. We also bought more sunscreen, having ran out. The kids would forever complain about the icky sunscreen, since they were much more used than our brush on sunblock which we'd successfully used for years.

The kids hadn't had Weisswurst at all on this trip before, and so they chowed down like crazy. Boen ate 3, as did Bowen. "Boen has got to be half weisswurst by now!" remarked Mark. We then got water bottles filled and got ready to visit the cable car for the Mayrhofen Panaromic walk, which Arturo had identified and confirmed with Stephan was a good one. Stephan had spent time in Mayrhofen before, so he decided to take the day off and work remotely instead. I asked him to ponder on whether he wanted to do the Stelvio or Silvretta instead. Boen got Otto to start pushing for Silvretta, since he thought that Silvretta + Klausen was much prettier than the Stelvio. Xiaoqin speculated that Stelvio would end up being their preference because it was just much more famous than Silvretta.

We walked over to the Penkenbahn cable car station and bought tickets (I bought the wrong ticket which cost a bit more) and then took the cable car up. It is a measure of the spectacular nature of the places we were going that our initial impressions were of being underwhelmed. The place was pretty, no doubt about it. It just didn't stand up to Secada or Tre Cime. I was glad we chose to stay for only 2 nights instead of doing more hiking in the area --- the location wasn't high enough anyway to stay cool, though the apartment we stayed at was cool enough even without AC.

The hike did grant us views all the way into the Italian Border, on the other side of the St Jakob/San Giacomo pass laid Sterzing, the town where we had started so many days ago. We walked past several artificial lakes and visited a mountain top church before doubling back and hiking down to the lower cable car station and riding it back to town, where we bought quick snack lunches at the supermarket before going back to the apartment to relax, get hydrated, do laundry, change into swimming trunks and then walk to the swimming pool.

The Mayrhofen swimming pool offered special rates after 3:30pm, so we bought passes and then proceeded to talk our way into the indoor area where the water slides were. There were two water slides which were on a timed schedule. One would open, then there'd be a 10 minute pause, then there would be another that would open. It was because there was insufficient staff to keep both slides open at the same time.

One of them, dubbed crazy river was the oddest water slide I'd ever seen. It had a couple of intermediate stops almost designed to stop you so you have to stand up and get onto the next stage of the slide. This looked like it was guaranteed to cause one slide user to crash into another if the previous one was slow. This was probably of no consequence if you were a kid and light, but I didn't want to be the adult responsible for slamming into a kid at high speed in a water slide like this one so after trying it once I stopped using it.

The other slide was much better designed, a fully enclosed tube that sloshed you around from side to side at high speed. If you weren't careful water would get up your nose. We all enjoyed that one thoroughly and couldn't get enough.

Arturo noticed that the supermarket closed at 6:00pm, so we had to leave earlier than expected to buy dinner and breakfast. We bought Weisswurst, for breakfast, and prepared to make Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner. We also got word that Otto Senior was excited about driving the Stelvio on the RV, so we started looking at train schedules and forecasts.

The forecast for the next day was for pleasant morning and a thunderstorm in the afternoon. We could take the train to Jenbach and then to Landeck where the climb to Reschen pass started, but that would forfeit riding in good weather. I decided to split the difference and proposed riding to Jenbach first thing in the morning, and then taking the train to Landeck and then riding up towards Reschenpass as high as possible. My preferred goal was to make Nauders, but Pfunds was also plausible. Nobody disagreed, but Stephan had a complication which was that Otto Jr really wanted to ride the train while he and his dad would do the drive to Landeck. He would have to meet us at the train station on our unpredictable schedule and then entrust his 7-year-old to the bad influence of our 13 and 10 year olds.

While dinner was being made, I checked the flat tire on the front. 

Review: Kaisnvxs SIM card for Europe

 I've always found the e-sim providers to be disappointing, with low speeds similar to T-mobile's European performance. This year, :Bowen was going to be riding his own single, which made having a phone with a data plan and voice call capability non-optional., making most data-only e-sim services not worth considering Of course, once I gave him a SIM card, Boen would be mad if I didn't give him one two, so I bought both of them the Kaisnvxs SIM card from Amazon.

12GB for $23 grants you less data than buying a SIM card locally in Italy, but on the other hand, I didn't expect to be able to buy SIM cards in Misurina, and didn't want to waste time in Bruneck or Sterzing looking for one. So this was a reasonable compromise. Having unlimited calls or SMS was also a big plus.

The SIM card activates on first use after you install it into your unlocked smartphone. That piece worked perfectly. So did the data plan --- though the kids weren't very careful with the data plans and the plans started throttling 20 days into the trip. The voice calls worked fine in Italy and Austria, but by the time we got into Switzerland it stopped working and I switched to using my T-mobile SIM card instead.

The SIM card was good value, but obviously I wasn't happy with it not lasting the 30 days as promised, and I would try a different card next year.

June 24: Krimml to Mayrhofen

The hotel didn't come with breakfast, but was fortunately right across the street from a Spar that opened early, so Arturo and I went to the Spar and bought breakfast, and we all gathered in Arturo and Mark's room to eat. Having a kitchen meant we could fry eggs, make coffee, and have a filling breakfast after yesterday's efforts.

In the past, I'd always ridden from Wald im Pinzgau up Old Gerlos road rather than visit the Krimml waterfall. But given that the Krimml waterfall was a centerpiece of the Tauern National Park, I decided that we should place it on the visit list, and Arturo agreed. The "new" Gerlos pass road was also a toll road, and my experience with toll roads is that meant that traffic would be manageable even if it wasn't light. Our target for the day was set for Mayrhofen, where we wanted to do more hiking. Stephan said he was feeling the strain of so many riding days in a row, and we clearly needed a rest day to dry out our clothing as well, as nothing had dried fully overnight.

We rode down to the campground to dropped our bags at the RV. Then we rode down to the Krimml waterfall. Crossing a bridge, I found what looked like a gorgeous place, but it turned out to be the waterfall therapy location, and closed to visitors from 10:00am onwards. A placard at the location told us that the therapy sessions would go on for weeks.

Turning back, we found the actual location, where we bought tickets and did the hike up to various viewpoints along the waterfall as well as down below where we could enjoy our shower. The waterfalls themselves weren't very impressive, but it was definitely worth a visit. I can see why Jobst wouldn't bother with the waterfalls on subsequent visits though!

By the time we were done with the hiking it was lunch time, so we ate lunch at the waterfall cafe. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't outrageous either. After that, it was time to bike!  We rode back out to the main road and started climbing the Gerlos road. The road is a far cry from the Old Gerlos road with its 14-18% grades, but instead granted a steady 6-8% grade, working its way around the hill, granting us better and better views of the waterfalls as we rode. My front tire felt soft, so I had to stop to put air in the tires.

It being the afternoon, once we got out of the tree cover it got warm rapidly and Boen and I just poured power into the pedals and just got the climb over with. At the summit, there was a huge toll terminal, but bikes were free and so were the bathrooms! So we made use of the bathrooms, filled up our water bottles, and then walked over to the viewing platform to wait for the others to show up. Apparently we were not the only ones to have felt the impact of the afternoon heat, as the others slowly made their way to where we were, with Bowen bringing up the rear.

When we had all eaten our snacks, we started riding down. Not having ridden this road before, I had no intel to provide the others. The road quickly intersected with the old Gerlos road intersection with a descent, and then we were at the familiar Gerlos Stauseewhere we stopped for an ice cream. There were views of the reservoir (Speicher Durlassboden) as well as goats for the kids to feed and play with. We probably spent too much time there, but it was a short day. And then there was a short climb followed by a descent to the town of Gerlos itself.  We saw cable cars and what looked like a very wealthy town, and in the future it might be a better place to stop than Mayrhofen..There was a strong headwind through town, so we had to pedal.

Past Gerlos the road once again took a big dive and the headwind was no longer an issue. The descent finally terminated in a series of hairpin turns which dropped us into Zell am Ziller. Stephan was particularly impressed. "I'd driven this in the past, but had no idea that the road felt this good on the bike! And it's not even 3 hours from Munich!" He was moving to Munich in August and this trip had affirmed that the decision was going to be a good one for cycling.  In times past, we'd just ridden down towards Jenbach from there, but this time we went up the river towards Mayrhofen. Stephan's dad had found a campground in Laubichi, and I'd identified the Black Eagle Luxury Apartments as being reasonably priced and reasonably close to town.

The river bike path wasn't hard to find, and once we got on it, it switched between gravel and pavement. Since it was just a 6km ride we didn't bother looking for alternatives and just rode along until we found the campground. The campground entrance was surprisingly hard to find, and eventually we just got bags handed over to us over the fence while I struggled to do electronic registration for the apartments on a tiny smartphone screen. The apartments turned out to be one of those zero-contact places, and we would only get entry codes after registering all the guests AND paying the guest tax.

Arriving in Mayrhofen, we found to our dismay that the apartments were right next to the main road. Fortunately, there was a well rated Smashburger place next door, so after parking our bikes and moving into the entirely adequate hotel (no AC though!) we could just walk next door and have dinner. Over dinner, I looked at our schedule and realized that we were ahead of schedule. I had originally intended to arrive in Mayrhofen on June 26th, but we'd somehow made it here on June 24th. That gave us another 6 days!

Arturo had found a panoramic hike using the cable car for the next day, and we were exhausted so after dinner we did laundry, hung up all the clothing, and went to bed, leaving tomorrow's choices till tomorrow.

June 23 2025: Heiligenblut to Krimml (with a train transfer from Zell am See to Mittersil)

The forecast for the day called for thunderstorms in the afternoon. While I was usually sanguine about rain and thunderstorms, Grossglockner is famous for bad weather. In 2008, I spent an entire Spring watching the forecast for Grossglockner every weekend to see if I could make an attempt to ride it, and the weather was so awful every weekend that I never actually made it!

Emphasizing to Bowen that he need to make every effort to reach the summit before noon, I made him drink a cup of cappuccino in the morning. Boen demurred, confident in his ability to catch his brother before the summit, despite giving him a head start, since we were stuck with delivering the luggage to Otto Senior's RV before starting the climb proper, giving us an extra 60 meters of climbing. Ben would decline the luggage service, as he had a scheduled to make today --- he needed to get to the train station at Zell Am See by 3:00pm in order to catch the train to Munich!)

We were all out of electrolytes so before starting the climb we stopped at the supermarket at the corner of the main highway (it was a Monday, so supermarkets were open again), and bought 3 tubes of electrolyte drinks. These would be sufficient to last us until the end of the trip. Two of these tubes were blackcurrant flavor, a flavor you'd never find in the USA. The other one was a green apple flavor, also another flavor never found in the USA.

Grossglockner consists of two passes, Hochtor (2504m) and Fuscher Torl (2428m), with a dip in between. The climb from Heglienblut to Hochtor is a fairly consistent 12% grade at altiitude, testing the lungs and legs of any cyclist. The good news, of course, was that the RV was carrying our luggage for us. After about 20 minutes Boen and I arrived at the toll gate, where instead of forking over cash, bicyclists get to pus a button and ride through the gate guarded by a swing arm.

From there, the scenery gets rapidly better and better, giving you grand views of the valley behind and ahead of you. At Baumstamm, we caught up with Xiaoqin, who had asked on the group chat if anyone else had seen Bowen. Fortunately, Ben had caught up to him and would ride with him to the summit. We stopped for some pictures, and then rode on, ignoring the turnoff to the Stausee. Arturo and Mark would do part of it before running out of time.

As the climb got higher the wind picked up and it stopped being hot. We came across some sheep grazing at the side of the road at a fortuitous rest stop, and Boen got off to pet the goats. At hairpin #19, there was a water fountain that let us refill our water bottles before the final push to the top of Hochtor. There, we stopped for the obligatory photos before riding through the summit tunnel, descending down to the Fuscher Lake, and then hammering up the last 200m climb to Fuscher Torl. Two corners before the Fuscher Torl, we saw Bowen, and that automatically made the engine in the back of the tandem turn up the power. We caught Bowen just before the final turn and rolled across the Fuscher Torl signpost. There, we stopped for photos, then ice cream, and then stood at the watch tower waiting for the Xiaoqin to arrive.

We had our fill of pictures, bathroom stops, and seeing the weather start to turn, decided not to wait for others, putting on our jackets.

I've always descended Grossglockner under time pressure, but this time I didn't feel very much pressure despite the rain drops. The clouds just didn't look very threatening, and I knew we could descend the road well before the thunderstorm. This time, I enjoyed looking around as we descended at speed --- great walls of mountains around us as the wind whipped past us at better than 40mph. We could have gone faster if I wasn't so impressed by the scenery that I kept stopping to take pictures! This was by far the most satisfying descent of the Grossglockner highway I'd done.

At the bottom, we rode the busy highway (which wasn't unpleasant to ride because we were just as fast as the cars!) down to Bruck, where we found a restaurant with a perfect rating on Google that served burgers. The burgers were great, but not really deserving of a 5 star rating. The others by this time had ridden down to Zell Am See, not having seen any of my signal messages to meet at the restaurant. No matter, as we made plans to rejoin them after lunch.

Riding to meet them, Boen realized he forgot his gloves and we doubled back to pick them up. By the time we'd met up with everyone else, the thunderstorm was starting to blow. That decided things for me: if we're going to wait out a thunderstorm we should do it by train, not inside a hotel. I quickly made the decision that we should ride the train to Krimml, and spend the night there. We took our luggage from Otto Senior's RV, and rode to the train station with raindrops coming down sporadically.

At the train station, we bought tickets via the app to Krimml, then booked a hotel there. Rain came down in sheets, and we saw lightning. When the rain cleared for a minute we walked over to the train platform, and there we were told that the train now only went to Mittersil, despite us having been sold bike tickets all the way to Krimml. The non-cyclists could take the bus from Mittersil to Krimml, but the bus wouldn't take bikes! This was a big change from the last time Arturo and I were here, as back then the train took us all the way to Wald im Pinzgau, just one town away from Krimml. "I can't believe the app sold us bike tickets for Krimml when the train wouldn't go there!" declared Mark. The train had a dedicated bike car, and the tandem even got its own spot, lying down on its side in the bike car!

On the train, we coordinated with Stephan, since we were quite tired and the extra 20 miles of riding wasn't going to be good with luggage. They were going to be slower than the train, so we told them not to try to meet us at the train station. Since everyone had live tracking on their phones and GPS units, we figured meeting up on the fly was feasible.

Getting off the train station in Mittersil, we picked up the Tauern Radweg, the famous bike path from the Krimml waterfall to Salzburg.  The bike path was most frequently ridden in the other direction, from Krimml downriver all the way to Salzburg, but with the broken trainline and the rain we didn't see very many cyclists at all. It was overcast and gloomy, maybe even threatening, but the rain only sprinkled on us here and there, and after half an hour, it stopped and the sun even came out, enabling us to doff our raingear.

In Neukirchen, Stephan stopped and we coordinated the luggage handoff and with our reduced load and the better weather we started making good time. The bike path detoured to and fro compared with the main road, but our stint in Neukirchen told us that the main road had so much traffic it was best avoided.

Arriving in Krimml during the golden hour, we were so late that we decided to eat dinner at the restaurant before it closed. "That last 2km felt harder than Grossglockner," said Arturo, reflecting the weariness we all had at this unexpected ride. Ordering my meals and eating quickly, I let the others get their desert while I rode to the campground to pick up our luggage and bring it to the hotel. Once the hotel had checked me in and opened up the garage, I waxed all the chains on all the bikes before we settled in for the night. Nothing we washed was going to dry (despite the hotel having the best sink to date for handwashing our laundry), but we had salvaged a day and was ahead of schedule!

Review: Camelbak Steel Podium Bottle

 Pierre Moreels told me that the best insulated water bottles are the stainless steel podiums. During this year's hot summer tour (people actually died in places like Italy and France, where AC is not commonly available), I discovered that our regular insulated podium bottles didn't keep water cool for more than a couple of hours. When I found these bottles for about $30 each, I decided to buy 2 to give them a try.

These look just like the regular insulated ones, except that they're made from stainless steel. They're much heavier than regular bottles, at 354g each. The flow rate on these bottles are great, due to a straw in the middle of the cap which allows air to enter the bottle. You can't squeeze these bottles to get more water, but I have no issues with them.

Here's how incredibly well they work: I filled them one quarter with ice, and then the rest with cold powerade. 24 hours later, they still had some ice left! In fact, your biggest danger with this bottle is that if you treat it like a regular water bottle and fill it with ice and water, after 3 hours you'll run out of water because you still have too much ice left in the bottle!

The biggest con with this bottle is that being made out of steel, unless it's a perfect fit, any metal bottle cages are going to give some rattling with this. Actually, even without a metal cage, if you have ice in the bottle you'll hear some rattling sound from the ice in the bottle! Having a plastic/carbon cage does alleviate the problem.

On cool days, I will take the trouble to switch out to regular insulated bottles or even uninsulated bottles. But on a hot summer day, these bottles are the bee's knees. Highly recommended.

June 22: Nikolsdorf to Heilgenblut

Breakfast at the hotel was great, with the owner personalizing the softboiled eggs with smiley faces for Boen. Otto Senior showed up early at our hotel so we could do a baggage drop., Stephan and Otto rode by and then we retraced our walk from the train station back to the Drautal bike path, heading towards Lienz. At the intersection leading to Dolsach we stopped to make sure that nobody missed the turnoff, and followed my laid long ago GPS track up to the Iselsberg highway.

It was cool to start but because the road was exposed we warmed up really quickly, and pretty soon we were sweating our way up the 10% grade towards Iselbergpass. I had ridden the road before, but was always coming from Lienz in the past, so this approach was new to me until I saw the city limit sign for Iselsberg. Boen and I were well ahead of everyone except Mark, and we arrived at the Iselsberg pass in time to take a photo.

There's nothing at the pass proper of note, and the next ice cream shop I knew was at Winklern, a town I'd stayed at in the past but had nothing to recommend it. Past Winklern I remembered the ride being relatively hot and unshaded, so an ice cream stop at Winklern was a necessity. There was a SPAR supermarket but it would be closed since it was a Sunday.

The descent from Iselsbergpass was fast, and we hit it at full speed without needing brakes, reaching 46mph. At the ice cream shop, we bought ice cream. By the time we finished, Stephan, Arturo and Ben had reached us. "Our first 70kph descent!" declared Stephan. Bowen was having a slow day, and Xiaoqin opted to stay back with him. Unfortunately, I'd not given her any cash and she would discover that the shops were only taking cash that day, so she'd eventually have to eat at a restaurant that accepted a credit card.

There's an official bike path along the Unter Stanach valley, but I'd always taken the road, since the bike path looked like it did gratuitous climbing. Ben and Mark would take the bike path and reported that it was wonderful. Bowen and Xiaoqin would benefit from their advice. It turned out that early on Sunday you'd get a lot of traffic on the main road. Arturo, with his 25mm tire also preferred the main road.

It being a Sunday there was plenty of lodging, so we'd shown up without reservations. Arturo and I debated various hotels for a while but the Pension Bergkristall had good reviews and was off the main road and close to town center. We rode up to it and negotiated with the owner, showing him the deal that booking.com was offering us. He first prevaricated saying that he couldn't beat the booking.com offer, but when we pointed out to him that we were taking up all the rooms had had left he eventually caved and gave us a discount. On a Sunday with clear weather the tourist has a lot of pricing power.

We left our bags and bikes at the Pension and went downstairs to Cafe-Bar Laterndl to have a pizza lunch. Stephan and Otto showed up and told us that the campground where Otto Sr was parked was at the bottom of the town, but Otto Sr was still out riding. When Otto Sr showed up, we took the bikes out and rode down to the campground to pick up luggage and ride back up and unpacked. Mark reported that the cable car was going to close within the hour, making the cable car visit not worth the money. Boen and I then went over to the National Park Information center for ice cream and to visit the free exhibits. We were just about done when I checked the maps and noticed that Bowen and Xiaoqin were just about to arrive.

We met them outside, took photos, and went back to the hotel to shower, do laundry and change. Dinner was at Casa Antica, a restaurant with the gorgeous views of the area. The crepuscular beams coming down from the sky kept interrupting our dinners as the photo opportunities kept presenting themselves.

After dinner we walked around town. If I'd read the booklets I'd gotten from the National Park Information center more carefully I would have noticed the hikes that were available from town. Nevertheless it was gorgeous and I know what to do the next time I'm in town.

Review: 4monster Day Hiking stowable backpack

 I've had good luck with the Sea-to-Summit waterproof backpack in the past, but this year, we were planning to have several big hiking days, so I wanted backpacks with waterbottle pockets for 4 people. We ended up with a pair of 4monster Day Hiking backpacks.

These are backpacks with no structure whatosever so they can stow into a thethered stuff sack that you can't lose. Because they have no structure, if they're empty they will flop and your water bottles will fall out. Fortunately, when hiking in the alps or dolomites you're almost always stuffing the backpacks with raingear, snacks, and other items.

These packs also served as auxiliary stuff sacks for clothing when transfering equipment to and from the RV. I also used them several times when shopping for breakfast at 7 in the morning. To my surprise, these packs held up. They're not waterproof, but I used them in sprinkles a few times and they worked fine.

The packability is great, and I never had trouble stuffing these back into their stuff sacks at the end of the day (or start of the morning when packing). The price is right also. Recommended.

June 21: Untervellach to Nikolsdorf

In the morning, we discovered that some of our clothing wasn't dry. Fortunately, with a short day expected today, we expected to have time for everything to dry. Otto Senior drove the RV to Marienhof, and we proceeded to load it up with luggage and ride off along the Gail bike path. Following the bike path signs, the partly cloudy skies gave the backdrop a mythic look.

Despite the lack of direct sunlight the humdity was high and we found ourselves in need of a refill at a fountain in Wulfeniadorf, after which the bike path took us past a couple of impressive looking treehouses. By the time we got back to the Gail river, the sun had burnt off all the morning clouds and it was now quite warm in earnest. Looking for fortification before attempting the Plockenpass, we stopped at Zur Sage in Kotschach just because it had great reviews.

The place turned out to be a buffet place --- you didn't get a menu, you paid for your feed and then took as much salad, main dishes, and dessert as you like, but there was no choice. Arturo took one look at the menu and decided to visit a supermarket for lunch. The rest of us decided it was a good deal and ate up.

While the climb up Plockenpass was warm, we were climbing it from the gentler side, which topped out at 10% grade. We were pretty warm at the top and glad that we were done for the day. Descending into Oberdrauberg, we picked up our luggage at the campground and then rode over to town for ice cream. We then rolled the 6km to Nikolsdorf where more climbing awaited us before we found the Spiele-und-Buchhotel.

To our delight the hotel lived up to its name, and the tour the owner gave us was wonderful, showing us all the books and board games the hotel was filled with. "If you have any board games in mind that you can't find let me know and I'll put it from the basement!" They even had English books. Ben asked and we were also allowed use of the washing machine! We took showers, played a few games of Jenga, and then started the laundry.

There was a complication for dinner, however. It turned out that the only restaurant in town was fully booked! After having already showered and in the hot afternoon, I didn't feel like riding. However, it turned out that there was a train and with a single stop we could visit Oberdrauberg for dinner. It was a fairly long walk to the train station, and we discovered that the restuarant in town was right where we had ice cream earlier. Ben volunteered to ride because someone had to pull the laundry out of the washing machine and hang it up, and riding was the way he could make it to the train station on time.

While we were waiting for the train, I asked if I could test ride Ben's bike with a front load. He agreed and I rode it around and realized that Ben just liked the front loaded handling better than I did. I've tried front loads in the past and never liked how slow the steering of a bike felt.

The dinner took a while, as is usual for European restaurant, and by the time we finished it was nearly 8:00pm and we had to take the next train. Fortunately, the weather held and it was a cool walk back to the hotel. The next day would be the first half of the Grossglockner, and I knew I wanted to avoid staying in Winklern, but wanted to stay in Heglienblut, which I had seen from pass tours and thought would be a nice place to sleep, being relatively high and therefore much cooler than the valleys we had visited in the last two days.