Triftbrücke—a bit of Nepal in Switzerland.

This, my friends, is called hiking in the Swiss Alps. It is what we did yesterday. Here we are at the beginning, fresh as daisies. It was the perfect day for hiking. It was soooo clear and beautiful. We ate a few raspberries and what I think are gooseberries along the way.

The wildlife was VERY friendly! We got a little muddy at times (especially Hazel). Amazing. You can hardly tell what this picture is, but I tried to get above Jethro and Hazel as they were crossing one of the ‘streams’ we went through. And here we are at our destination—it’s called the Trift Bridge and “is one of the most spectacular pedestrian suspension bridges of the Alps. It is 100 meters high and 170 meters long, and is poised above the region of the Trift Glacier.” Here is a shot from on the bridge looking down on one side. The other side is the lake. Which I failed to take a picture of. You can see a bit of the glacial lake from this picture. Talmage was tired out. We stopped and had lunch and rested for a long while, and he slept the entire time. (We had him all shaded up, but I snapped this picture right before we got going again.)

Since I don’t think my own pictures capture the bridge just as well as they could, here are some pictures from my friend the internet: Pretty SAH-WEET eh? I thought so. When I saw the second picture in a magazine, I knew we had to go here. I like heights. And I like suspension bridges. It was awesome. It didn’t really swing, but it definitely bobbed. A lot. Kind of like being on a boat. And it was looooooong.

So, back to my own pictures. Which still don’t do the views justice. It was gorgeous. Don’t mind Jethro. He’s an 8-year-old boy. Plus he’s related to my husband.

Another fun little stream crossing. Okay, it looks nice and all, but I have to admit that by the last bit I thought I was going to die. The first couple hours of the hike were beautiful and easy. Then we got to the part where the cable car gets to (but we walked from the bottom), and from there to the bridge it said it was another hour’s hike. But what they didn’t point out, was that that part of the hike was KILLER. Rocks and steep and HARD. Not treacherous rocks and steep—just your legs feel like jelly and the spot where your legs connect to your pelvis starts to feel very very abused (at least mine do). If I hadn’t had the bridge to get to, I honestly would have stopped and gone back. As it was, I just tried not to whimper too much. Then on the way back we were all hot and sore and the kids were tired (actually I shouldn’t say kids—Jethro and Hazel were serious troopers, but Ethne was tired (not that I was the one that carried her, Brett is the buff man and carried Talmage pretty much the entire way, and Ethne a significant portion of the way too (yeah, at the same time))). Anyhow, we got to the cable car place and happily waited for our turn to ride it down to the bottom.

See—therein was my salvation: Brett thinks we probably hiked about 7 miles. It was gorgeous. It was fun. It was amazing. I may never hike again.