Climbing down the trail on Mont Ste-Odile

Two chains: one river

The Rhine separates two mountain chains: The Vosges on the French side and the Black Forest on the German side. We visited them on successive days.

Mont Ste-Odile

Mont Ste-Odile is a pilgrimage site (sight?) in Alsace named after the patron saint of eye problems who was herself born blind and was said to have created a spring near where the picture at the top of the page was taken. (We found several folks filling up large bottles of water there; they will undoubtedly use these to cure all kinds of eye diseases if they are sufficiently blinded by faith).

At the top of the mountain is a restored convent where our active mountain hikers stopped to rest and model the latest in men's fashions, even on women:

The Black Forest

On Monday we crossed the Rhine into Germany to spend our first seriously rainy morning in the Black Forest. The Wasserfall (Waterfall) was our favorite stop just before a great German lunch with (what else) a high slice of Black Forest Chocolate cake for dessert.

We had to leave the area when the mountain trolls starting coming out:

After lunch we headed down to Switzerland to drop John and Francimar off in Basel where they soon found their way to two days in Lucerne on the lake while Pietrina and Dick retraced their tire treads to Paris.

We'll post the other pictures soon but they don't have many people in them.

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