What Did You Do Today? We Climbed A Mountain!.. In The Swiss ALPS!

How did I wake up this morning?? Well! Let me tell you! :) As you know, we have a little snail friend in our tent. I love snail. (even though he did get dangerously close to my bag last night and I may have given him a little flick or two.) Knowing of his secret plan to try and sneak home with me, when I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was sit up and try to locate snail. I smiled when I looked to my right and saw him sitting on the wall next to me..... annnnnd then I looked a little higher, and stopped smiling... 

 "ehhhhhhhhhh! (flail-y hands) what is that?!! WHAT is that?!"

"a really big snail."

"NO! too big! That is NOT a cute little snail! TOO BIG!"

Yea. I got laughed at for that one... but GROSS!

My snail catcher! :)

(I know the picture is blurry, but do you see how big that is?! Snails are not supposed to be that big!)

So after that eventful 6am wakeup, we decided to get up and get ready for the day and sit and watch the sunrise with a cup of tea (I'm secretly converting Nick into a tea drinker :)... it's workingggg ;)

We made our first on-the-road friend this morning! We made the point of starting a conversation with a kid that was reading and having coffee alone. Thus, we met Kyle from Scotland. He was really cool! We meant to head out early to go hike, but we got to talking with Kyle and he came with us to the grocery store and we came back and ate breakfast together. We wanted to invite him to come hiking with us, but he was leaving that day to head to Italy.

Nick and I headed to Lauterbrunnen.

This waterfall. This was the goal for the entire day. To see this. Up close. (this was taken from where we parked. Mind that I zoomed in, so this is actually a lot higher than it looks ;)

A local (very confidently) told us what hike to take.

A hike up to the waterfall and back. 2 hours and 30 minutes.

This is what our 6 hour hike looked like.

(we are the purple line :)

This map is VERY deceiving. This hike was EXTREMELY steep. We went up RIDICULOUSLY high. Walked wayyyy farther and deeper than we needed to go. and took quite a few detours. Needless to say, it was a really good workout :) and a really good thing that the parking meter was broken and everyone was just writing notes on their cars, because we would have paid for 4 hours and probably would have had a ticket by the time we got back.

 The view from the end of the neighborhood and beginning of the trail... (see how close the waterfall looks? and see those snowy mountains in the background? yea. remember those ;)

 Going UP!

 Trying to show how steep it was, but none of the pictures were doing it justice...

 and getting even higher! (pretty sure we were already higher than the waterfall at this point)

I was trying to point out the squishiness of the giant mushroom... and it broke. I got called a mushroom killer.

 Another attempt at showing how steep it was. I was holding the camera straight from eye level, and that's how high Nick was in comparison to me... (he was only 8 steps ahead of me... 8 short-legged Jennifer steps ;)

We had to stop a lot to take pictures...

Wild flowers :).... and still going UP!

 Up so high, we are practically in the clouds!

 Remember those mountains??... you couldn't even see one full peak from where we started...

However long later, we finally made it to Winteregg!! (you know how normal people get there? They take the train. Go figure.) Time for lunch!!

 Remember the $4 coke we bought? Yea. This takes the cake. One bottle of water.... $5.45 francs (aka I don't want to know if that breaks $6 USD). I was NOT ok with that. It didn't even taste good... or look like fancy water... 

We found the cows with bells!!! :)

We liked this one and he liked us too. (I didn't even notice until now that his face was all burned... but we don't discriminate ;)

After lunch we still kept walking even deeper, so far above and past the waterfall, but we were determined to connect with the right trail on the way down and find that waterfall!!

So pretty! 

 My beautiful wild-flower bouquet!

Another picture-taking pitstop! :)

So...

Want to hear a funny story?... After all of that, there never was a spot to see the waterfall. This was as dramatic as it got, the stream leading into the waterfall :)

But certainly no complaints! :)

After spending a beautiful day up in the mountains, we came back to a ticketless car, drove back to the campsite and relaxed in the sun, and finished off the night with a cheap, microwaveable dinner and some soccer in the dark. :)