Hiking in Bavaria

I take the kids on a hike every morning here. The trails start about 50m from our front door. We have a few favorite routes, though there are enough criss-crossing trails that we can mix and match the path we choose to get anywhere.

There's Ice Cream Mountain (we hiked that one when we were here before).

Johannes Kappelle, where you can go inside and ring the bells (!!!!).

and Amy Kappelle, which is actually called Romanische Kappelle.

We call it Amy Kappelle because a dog named Amy lives in a house near the trail, and she often joins us for some play time near the chapel. That's her on the stairs, in fact.

Sometimes we get lost in the network of trails. Sometimes we have to blaze our way through a stinky cow manure field and up a steep, forested hill to get back on track. Sometimes Sterling starts to fall asleep in the backpack and we have to laugh and goof with him like fools so he will wake up again and take a proper nap once we're home.

We run into a lot of spiderwebs. We pretend we're Hobbits or some of Robin Hood's merry/henchmen. We get caught in the rain. We do Choose Your Own Adventure hiking where each kid takes a turn deciding whether to go left or right at each fork in the road. We come across signs that say "Botanische Lehrpfad" and do not understand what that means.

That happened last week. I kept the phrase in my head all the way home and looked it up first chance I got. Except I typed it in wrong and Google Translate told me it meant "Botanical Instructive Mortgage" and I was so confused.

It actually means "Botanical Learning Trail," and we went that way this morning. I think all the lehr (learning) has been taken out of the Pfad (trail), though. It was just a regular trail. But still a nice hike. We came across this old wall.

Who knows how long that's been here?

I'm soaking in this summer of hiking. Trails and forests and spiderwebs in the face, even, are good for the soul.