A day hike in Zion National Park - Thanksgiving, November 25, 2015

With Paul's sister have a wedding ceremony in Las Vegas the day before Thanksgiving, we took advantage of being in the vicinity of Zion National Park to spend some time there. The temperatures dropped a good 20 degrees the day before, so we only spent a long day there and did not camp. But were we blessed with a gorgeous, brisk day and blue skies.

The Virgin River in autumn.

A shot actually from the shuttle -- we had little time to stop at the many trailheads, with our hope to get in the 10+ mile hike to the West Rim.

It soon got warm on the ascent and in the sunshine.

Once we went beyond Scouts Lookout where the true climb of Angel's Landing begins, we got to more snow.

At the West Rim, looking across at... Bryce maybe?

The long path down (or up)

Home -29 May

We have a few more posts to go--visiting with family in Aidenbach (posted now!) and Münich, our travels to Prague and Poland, Venice still--but, yes, we did indeed make it home safe on Friday. And, yes, this time the bicycles did indeed arrive on the same flight as we did.

Once we put them back together we took public transportation from the airport to within a few kilometers of the border crossing and rode the rest of the way home. 55 kilometers in total, the last 40 of which seemed like the longest due to a headwind. Oh well. Some 26 hours after waking up at Bea and Alex's outsude Münich and right as the sun was setting, we met up with Finnian at Boundary Bay for dinner and a pint.

Lots of good memories going through our heads, lots of good thoughts, too, about being home. Life is good.

Gear bomb.

Ready to roll.

Our home mountain, Mt. Baker.

München and surrounding, ~22-28 May, 2015

Once we'd returned from our Czech Republic/Poland leg we were able to spend some time visiting with Bea and Alex in their home in Neufahren, north east of München.

Nearby, we toured Alex's shop a couple villages over from where they live. Alex takes American hogs and makes them better. Customers come from as far as 500km away to have him work his magic.

Later, Bea took us to another neighboring village, Freising where we walked around and took in the view from the schloss atop the hill.

We also went sailing with Bea's and Alex's friends on Starnbergersee. The boat, a Dragon, was used in the Olympics (we think in the 60s?) where it managed to podium. Not a lot of amenities other than a blue bucket, but ample space for us all. We felt so welcomed by Bea & Alex's good friends.

Boats racing on Starnberger.

We also went to Deutsches Museum, the world's largest museum of science and technology with a lot hands-on exhibits. Pretty amazing and a little overwhelming. We spent much of the day but really only made to boats, planes, motors, electricity and musical instruments. As with everywhere, there was so (too) much to see. Of course, we'll have to return someday.

Before we were going to have to sit in airports and on an airplane for hours and hours, we decided to take one last jaunt on our bikes. We followed the Isar River on bike paths and trail from just up the road from Bea and Alex's into Munchen, then south of the city. And we looped back by way of the river again, as well as lush farmland.

Surfing the Isar in downtown Munchen.

On our day riding back, we went through a ... park... of some sort. With beasts and curious structures.

This guys scratched and scratched.