After a night at 4 degrees (C)

A beautiful cloudless day, 4 degrees in the morning, and back the 7 kilometers to the tram and down to Innsbruck.  (My legs were a little more tired today)!  What a great night.  (No showers, but there is running water and flushing toilets)!  Breakfast served in the morning.  Then back on the trail.

Sunrise on the mountain outside my window.

The best view out a bathroom window I have ever seen!

The breakfast room.

My little room on the right.  I took the bottom bunk. No one had the top.

Looking down into the Inn Valley to Innsbruck.

Can you see the wild mountain goats?  There was a herd of about thirty.

Looking at the mountains across the Inn Valley.

The bottom part of the trip was actaully on a cable car that adjusted each car according to the steepness of the slope.

Above timberline for the night in the Alps

This is the "high" point of my trip--staying overnight at 2,000 meters above sea level--at timberline, among the peaks of the Alps.

I took a tram up to the top of the peaks that are just north of Innsbruck and then hiked in 7 kilometers to a hiking hut that was built in 1926 and still run as a guest house high up in the mountains.

The mountains were beautiful and the day was mostly sunny.  The food served was about as good as any I've had in Germany and they seemed to enjoy all of the guests for the night.

There were sheep up at that elevation grazing with their bells around their necks and still snow on some of the trail.

It made me feel so at home!  Here there is no language barrier.  I felt like being in the high mountains of Utah and Colorado.

Innsbruck from above.

There are two trams.  The second takes you to the very top.

Crosses atop every peak.

Places where they had installed cable alongside the trail for a little help.  Austrian flags painted on the rocks made sure you didn't lose your way.

Still snow on the trail in places.

You know you are not in the US when you see these alongside the trail.

The "hut."

A few more of Innsbruck

The rain is gone--a beautiful day out my window.

Old Town Innsbruck.

The beautiful cathedral.

The Inn River.

See the tops of those mountains?  That is my next posting.

Innsbruck, Austria

It is so beautiful to go into the Alps mountains in southern Germany and Austria.  There is still a quite a bit of snow on the tops.  It has been spoiled a little by all the rain that lasted most of the day, though.  It enabled me to stay inside and get my laundry done, though.  This trip has been mostly rain-free, so I have nothing to comlain about.

Detail from the stained glass windows at the Frauenkirche in Munich.

Kufstein, Austria

Actually, it just means "bright!"

Innsbruck - the Olympics were held here in 1964 abd 1976.

By a fountain.

"Bacon Room."  My kind of place!