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| Katie was the very first person we met when we arrived at the Vienna airport last August. She was holding the ELCA sign up after the driver had gone off looking for us! So we made our own ELCA sign to welcome Katie here to Liptovsky Mikuláš!! |
But backing up to Friday, we were pleased to finally complete a full week of classes at school for the first time!! Woo-hoo!! My busiest teaching days are on Fridays, and then afterwards, I help with the Drama Club at school. While I was in classes, Tim had some good news - a colleague offered him a men's bike that has been sitting in her garage unused for a few years. So after school, I found a note on my desk from Tim saying he had gotten a ride to her house to pick up the bike, had walked it back because of low air in the tires, and he was taking it to a bike shop to get air. So now we'll be able to expand our explorations a little farther by bike, at least until the snow flies! We're really excited, and very grateful to our generous colleague! Tim also spent a lot of time cleaning up the women's bike left here by a previous lector - it must have had its last ride in the mud. :-(
Katie's train got in around 8:00 Friday night, so we took her out for pizza, then we went to bed fairly early to prepare for our big day of hiking on Saturday. The guidebook said the climb to the top of Poludnica Peak was a "moderate half-day tour with significant steep ascent and descent, and easy orientation - total 4 1/2 hours", and the colleagues we asked about it said we could manage the hike. Of course we were also told that just last weekend, one women from a nearby town had fallen to her death on that mountain. Hmmm..... well, now we know the meaning of the guidebook description. An American midwesterner's definition might state that there were "a LOT of SIGNIFICANTLY steep ascents and descents on trails that may be muddy, narrow, steep, blocked by many large fallen trees, steep, not always well-marked, steep, and providing many absolutely gorgeous views - total 7 1/2 hours!!" Yes, that was our day!! The pictures tell the story best..........
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| Our 9:00 a.m. start was from the bus stop near this hotel in Závažná Poruba. A nice lady approached us at the L.M. bus stop and helped us find out our destination bus stop, where to find the trail, etc. The first of many fun people we met on the hike day. |
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| The start of our hike was on a nice road, with leaves changing colors on the hillsides. |
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| We saw several hot air balloons during the day! It was a beautiful sunny day, in the low 70's by midday, with blue skies and fresh mountain air! |
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| The next part of the trail was a gravel road that started sloping upwards more. It was a forested area at the base of the mountain, with several cabins along the way, which we're guessing could be rented during the summer. |
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| It was starting to get warmer by the time we reached a meadow with openings in the trees to see the valley below for the first time. The trail was getting steeper, but still what we would call "moderate" at this point. |
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| These trail signs were posted in about 3 places. Helpful!! |
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| We saw several unusual kinds of mushrooms - these were even bigger than they look here - about the size of salad plates. So here's my "fun guy" pointing out the fungi!! :-) |
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| The trail started to get a lot steeper, but in some places at least there were tree roots to help as steps. Our walking sticks found in the forest were really needed from here on out!! |
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| We were really excited to start seeing the yellow trail markers when we were unsure if we really were on the right path. |
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| This big cave in the rocks looked intriguing! |
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| There were campfire remains in the cave, and I went back as far as I could see, but we didn't have a flashlight, so it got too dark after a while. |
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| Trails went both ways from the cave, but we found a yellow trail marker! :-) |
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| Getting higher - beautiful views through the treetops!! |
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| Another hot air balloon - way down below! |
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| One of MANY places the trail was blocked by fallen trees - most were bigger than this one. |
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| The view from Predná Poludnica - the town is Liptovsky Mikuláš, and we even spotted our flat, thanks to the bright green color! |
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| We made it!! |
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| Another view from Predná Poludnica |
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| This is where we stopped to eat the lunches I had packed - we were famished after 3 1/2 hours of hiking! |
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| A Carpenters tune kept rolling through my head..... "I'm on the top of the world looking down on creation..." |
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| We kept wondering where the poor woman last week "fell to her death", and a few steps beyond me could have been one - YIKES!! |
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| The views were absolutely beautiful - 360 degrees from the top of Poludnica!! |
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| The three hikers at the top of Poludnica Peak! |
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| God's creation --- we were in awe!! |
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| On the way back down the mountain, we needed to find the blue trail, and some other hikers helped us locate it! |
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| O.K., so the blue trail was a little narrower, and MUCH closer to incredibly steep drop-offs --- and provided many more candidates for the "fell to her death" likely sites!! |
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| Still on the blue trail - with many breath-taking views all the way! |
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| We LOVE the mountains!! :-) |
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| This is the 10-foot metal ladder the trail led to at one point, so we could climb down a rock cliff! |
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| We could hardly believe we were actually doing this! |
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| O.K. - we're all down the ladder now.... |
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| The sun shining on a mountain meadow, far below |
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| A close-up of the meadow reveals a small house? hut? church? It was far below us, but still quite high in the mountain, and it looked almost inaccessible except by a small trail. |
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| More examples of fallen trees across the trail! |
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| Still descending - using new muscles - HA!! We met a couple on the descent, and the man was quite a character. It was amazing - he knew very little English, but somehow managed to get across that bears had recently been sighted here, so we should make noise in the woods - he had bells and one of those "a-ooga" sounding horns!! Also, that he had found bear scat on the mountain with corn from the farmers' fields below! |
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| We thought we had come a long way DOWN, but we were still far above our destination! |
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| The last part of the trail was through thick forest, and we FINALLY made it to the bottom to level ground!! |
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| The view from the bottom of Poludnica, across the Vah River to the High Tatras |
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| The last leg of our journey was the road into the village of Ilanovo |
When we got into Ilanovo after the hike, we had about a half hour before the bus back to Liptovsky Mikuláš, so we stopped at the closest pub for 3 glasses of mineral water, the restrooms, and another round of water!! Our legs were really feeling muscles that don't normally get that much use, and we were tired and muddy, but we were incredibly delighted at accomplishing the hike and awed by the beauty we beheld on the trails. We came back for showers before heading to a restaurant for supper, (too exhausted to cook!), and we dropped into bed for a long night's sleep!
This morning we went to church, and it was a big celebration, which we didn't find out until afterwards was for the church's anniversary. Five pastors were there, two of whom gave sermons, there were 2 choir anthems - both a cappella - one was a spiritual, and one gal sang a solo, so the service was almost an hour and a half long. After church we stopped for a few lunch items and showed Katie around town a little, then came home just before it started raining for the rest of the day. So we decided to stay inside, warm and cozy until her train left around 4:00. Then Tim and I listened to our weekly sermon online, had supper, and will study some Slovak after I load pictures here. And that wraps up our weekend!
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