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Kilometers - 242
Passes - Klaussenpass
The Trefethen's (John and Loren) left us this morning in a pre-arranged shortening of their tour. Transporting their motorcycle back to Munich gave Donna and Graham opportunities to stay out of the van and ride these wonderful roads for a few days! We had decided to start out the day riding with Richard and Leslie, since we seemed to be ending the day riding with them anyway (I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with the fact that they were quite convivial riding companions and we liked their riding pace :-), and Donna joined us for the day.
Heading out of Beatenberg (Interlaken) we rode back along the lakes and back through Brienz, then headed up for some smaller, fun roads. We didn't have time to stop when we rode by the Ballenberg Museum, but we worried about meeting the tour buses we saw in the parking lot along those small twisty roads!
When we were getting back onto a major road Brian managed to get off balance on his bike and leaned it over onto his bum ankle. Several of us watched in horror as the bike slowly leaned over, and I could see that he was slowly deciding that his ankle was going to be OK and that he could support the bike's weight and push it back upright... and we gave a sigh of relief as he got his balance back.
We skirted south of Luzern on small roads paralleling the Autobahn, our goal was to ride the ferry across the "Vierwaldstätter See" (See == Lake) starting from near Beckenried. We arrived shortly after a ferry had departed, so we had almost an hour to wait for the next ferry. In this picture we've just parked the bikes and we're preparing to walk up to the nearby restaurant to enjoy a meal overlooking the lake (LtoR in picture: Paige, Richard, Leslie, Brian, Donna.)
Here the ferry has just arrived and Richard, Leslie and Donna are getting their stuff ready to push the bikes onto the ferry.
And now we're on the boat and enjoying the breeze created by the boat... it was a fairly warm day, and the airflow felt great!
When we got to Altdorf we were baking, and the city was incredibly busy, but Paige (we was leading) pulled into the square with this statue of William Tell, who came from this area. After we stopped and looked at the statue we decided we were hot and wanted to keep moving as much as possible so we got going again. We had a little confusion with all the traffic getting back together as a group again, but eventually we regrouped and headed for the next pass.
I radioed up to Paige that I wanted to stop for a picture, so we stopped for a quick picture about half way up to the Klausenpass. You can barely see Paige in the lead, then Brian, Leslie, my empty bike, Donna, and Richard.
Then, just before the top we stopped for espresso and apple strudel, you can see the group sitting at the corner table.
It was still a hot day, so when we stopped for gasoline less than an hour away from Unterwasser Donna decided that she didn't need gasoline, and was way too warm to stand in the heat waiting for us to fill up, and she BAILED on us! :-) Actually, I think she wanted to get there as early as possible to help Graham with the van unloading, how nice of her! At least she told us how to find the hotel (this one was *easy* to find) and we showed up shortly after she had arrived. This was the view from the balcony of our room. You can see all the flowers in the planters hung from the balcony railings above our room.
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