Matt and Heather: Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland

Another incredible trip! The weekend after the Black Forest (previous post) we went with a group of friends down to Switzerland for some camping. This camping trip was just my style! We set up a bunch of tents and of course did not forget our air mattresses (I am very particular when it comes to sleeping in comfort!), we ate as a group for breakfast and dinner, and we definitely ate well. Jim and Diane set up our menu and we had things like Flank Steak and Mashed Potato's, Fajitas, Pancakes, French Toast. All that to say...we weren't quite roughing it!

BUT what we were doing was having an incredible time sharing life and adventures with friends. We were rather active this trip and that was right up my alley. On the first day, I decided to wake up early and go for a long run, I went through the mountain valley passing about 10 truly spectacular waterfalls, again, a run where the view was just amazing. Another top ten (yep, that makes two top ten runs in the span of a week). When I got back to the camp some of the group was going to hike for the day. We were hoping to get a good hike in on this trip so Matt and I jumped at the chance.

We left the campsite and started on what we thought would be a decent but not incredibly intense hike. 7 3/4 hours and 1925 calories later we returned to camp absolutely wiped out, I felt particularly wiped with that run in the morning as well as the hike!

We ended up on quite the adventure on the mountain, we ascended pretty high on some fairly steep trails. We found a gorgeous glacier lake that the guys thought would be awesome to try and get in to (I didn't witness anyone getting in much over there knees). We had to cross some pretty terrifying areas of snow on steep inclines. We were met with thunderstorms, and on the decent were also met with steep/tiny trails which required some real thought and careful steps to get down them.

It was an adventure and absolutely a huge highlight of the weekend for everyone that experienced it.

The following day we were definitely up for more physical punishment and went on a bike ride down the valley. It only took us a little under an hour to get to the town we were aiming for, but that was because we pretty much glided downhill for a large part of it. We had lunch in town and made our way back to the campsite, the way back took more like 2 hours since we had to go up hill pretty much the whole way. Matt and I hadn't been on bikes in a while, so boy were our bottoms tired! Though that didn't stop us from riding further up the valley to check out some amazing waterfalls that we had heard about.

An exhausting, yet wonderful trip, I love the memories we made with friends, it will never be forgotten!

Some pics from the hike (unfortunately we forgot the camera during the second days' bike trips)...

Taking a break on the way up...