See comments on heavy keychains for our hotel rooms on June 24th.  One thing we noticed about Swiss keys are the little holes rather than teeth.  By the way, we decided that the ability to lock your roommate into the hotel room was a bit of a fire Marshall issue!

What the heck is Rob doing?!? Is there a dead body in that bag?  Hmmm...what did happen to Pat, his passenger for the tour?

It just turns out that Rob is into adrenaline sports and he loves to paraglide in the Interlaken area which is our destination today.  That meant he had to find a ride for Pat.  She rode with Richard and Leslie on the back of Richard's bike. 

Here is one of the cobblestone switchbacks on the old St. Gotthard pass. Note the white stripes in the middle of the road: those aren't painted on, they're actually white stones set into the pattern of the cobbles to form the stripes!  You can see the gallery tunnel across the valley that the new road runs through.

At the top of Nufenenpass Brian bought a candle that exactly resembled a cobblestone.  He took it to dinner that night and showed it to Paul and Linda Schock.  He covered up the wick and excitedly told them that he had pried it up from the St. Gotthard pass in the middle of one of the switchbacks to take it home as a souvenir.  Paul's eyes got wide as saucers and then narrowed in disbelief.  He couldn't believe Brian had done such a thing!  He was still in shock even as Brian set the candle on the table, pulled out a lighter and lit the thing ablaze.  Linda started to smile and Paul finally got the joke.  Brian burned the candle every night of the tour after that. 

There was just a little snow up at the Nufenenpass.  Here is Paige and then David riding through the "snow tunnel."

Paige is being pursued by some mystic fog that decreases our visibility at the top.  We did see John Trefethen and his son Loren and their riding buddy, Stan Rosow, up there.

Some of the switchbacks on Grimselpass.  We went over Grimselpass, stopped at the top for lunch, continued a ways down the other side before turning around to ride back over to be able to head east over the Furkapass.  Hence twice over Grimsel.

Close to the top of Furkapass some enterprising Swiss had carved a tunnel into the glacier that Paige and Brian are standing in front of.  It's hard to see but there is more blue under the brown of the glacier.

  At the end of the tunnel are two guys (gals?) in polar bear costumes and a photographer ready to take $10-14.00 off your hands for a picture inside the glacier.  None of us could imagine the sales pitch the polar bears were suckered by..."No really, it's a great job.  Pays $5.85 an hour!"  After using the unisex bathrooms we headed over the top.

Just after passing by the summit of Furkapass we rode by John, Loren, and Stan who gave us a "round 'em up" signal as a greeting.  We all interpreted it differently but lingering in the back of our minds was "did that mean we need to turn around?"  We rode all the way down Furkapass, through another herd of cows, and stopped to rest a moment in Realp when some of the locals told us that the Sustenpass was closed due to an avalanche.  Our plan was to ride over Sustenpass on our way to Interlaken... Oh well... June in the Alps!  So we rode back over the Furkapass (hence twice) and took this picture of the valley where the Grimselpass heads up to the right. The road from the Furkapass to the town of Gletch that we are heading toward is on the left.  We caught up with Leslie, Richard, and Pat who were just heading into the glacier, warned them about the Sustenpass closure, and said we'd meet them at the top of Grimselpass for a cappucino.

While waiting for them to finish the glacier tour, ride to the top of Furka, and make their way up to the Grimselpass (AGAIN), we went to go check out the marmot compound that we had missed on the first two crossings.  Look closely and you can see the member of the rodent family in front of the hole on the left.  They were pretty shy.

Down out of the mountains into the Interlaken valley.  This is the Brienzersee (Lake Brienz) that borders Interlaken to the east.  Both it and the Thunersee (Lake Thun) are a glacial green that cameras don't do justice to.  See it for yourself!!

And finally our hotel for two nights in Beatenberg on the northern side of the Interlaken valley.  It looked out towards some of the most impressive peaks in the Alps:  Wetterhorn, Schreckhorn, Eiger, Monach, Jungfrau, Breithorn, Tschingelhorn and Schilthorn.  The lowest is Schilthorn at 9748 ft. (location of the futuristic stronghold featured in the James Bond movie, "Her Majesties' Secret Service."  The highest peak is Jungfrau (Young Lady) at 13,642 ft.  This is taken from David and Paige's room.  Brian had an even better view.