Day 12 - Althütte, Germany and Surrounding Areas - Europe 2022

 Day 12 - Althütte, Germany and Surrounding Areas

My friends had left the house by the time I woke up.

I ate breakfast and showered. Then, I checked the weather. Rain was predicted at 17:00. There was a lake, Ebnisee, about an hour’s walk away that I wanted to walk to, so I packed my backpack with peanut butter, cookies, fruit, water, and a raincoat. Then, I said bye to Edon, who needed to stay at the house and work.

Within a few minutes of leaving I realized I was entirely dependent on my phone for getting to the lake, but more importantly back to Vanessa’s. I didn’t have a portable charger with me. It was already after 13:00 and I didn’t want to turn back, so I just hoped my phone battery would last. 

It was much warmer out than I was expecting. I was definitely hot in my jeans and hiking socks.

I followed Google Maps to the lake. Like In England, the paths seemed to cross through a mixture of public and private lands. Along the way I was messaging Vanessa and she let me know there was a small waterfall, Gallengrotte, that wasn’t much further than the lake. I put the location in Google Maps and as it slowly loaded, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to get offline maps of the area. I hoped my phone was able to keep getting service!

The waterfall location finally loaded and it was only 20 minutes away. Since I planned to be back to the house by 17:00, going to the waterfall fit nicely into my time schedule.

I sat down next to the lake for lunch and noticed that the sky seemed quite dark for storms being more than 2 hours away. I pulled up Weather Underground and discovered that rain could start at 15:00, which was very soon. I was going to get wet. Since I had a raincoat and a walk in the rain seemed inevitable at this point, I walked to the waterfall.

There were one or two occasional drops of water at the waterfall, so it wasn’t very waterfall-y today. The rain started to fall, but not too heavily. There was also occasional thunder. The large rocks in this area were really neat. They also looked like good homes for bears or some other potentially dangerous animal.

I now realized that in addition to all the other things I had overlooked, finding out about dangers in this area - animal, plant, insect, human - had also been overlooked.

I took comfort in the fact that I thought my friend had said her kids visited these areas…

I walked back in a mostly steady but light rain. Edon asked me to get wine for a sauce we wanted to make for dinner, so once I got back to town I made a detour to the tiny grocery store. Since I was already quite wet with sore feet and knees, I figured the extra walking wouldn’t matter. I purchased an incredibly cheap bottle of Merlot and headed back to the house.

In the future, I want to hike long distance trails. The thought of hiking during thunderstorms was a concern I had. Walking in the rain today alleviated some of my fears. I will admit, though, it was really nice to be able to get to a nice dry house and change out of my wet pants, socks, and boots. This is a luxury that won’t be available if I am backpacking.

Edon and I made an awesome dinner. He continued working while I did dishes and worked on the blog. It was really wonderful to spend a warm and dry evening hanging out together while the rain continued to fall outside.