Our morning schedule is now set. We are up at 6:00 with breakfast at 7:00 and bags out to the van at 8:00. Then we can leave for our ride.
Today we woke to cloudy skies. So we packed our rain gear for insurance. Our ride started out on bicycle lanes and country roads. The bicycle road network in Austria is fantastic. Most of the time we share the roads with walkers and sometimes cars, but they have little traffic and they go through quiet villages, forested hills and alongside lakes. Today was no exception. The first lake we came to was Hallstattersee where we rode for several kilometers until we came to a bicycle/pedestrian ferry to take us across the lake. As you can see in the photo below, lakes are surrounded by steep hills.
The ferry took us to Hallstadt, a World Heritage site. Jeff and I decided to park our bikes here a walk around the town. One highlight of the town is the Bone House at a Catholic church. Apparently, grave sites are rented in the graveyard. When families no longer want to pay the rent, the bones are dug up. Skulls are cleaned and dried in the sun, polished and decorated with designs. The the skulls and bone are stored in the Bone House. Here is a photo.
When we left Hallstadt, it started to sprinkle. After about 5 kilometers it started to rain. We put on our rain jackets and continued on. After another couple of kilometers, we reached the climb of the day - 1.5 km at 18%. Soon after I saw a sign that read 23%, I decided that I had enough pushing my heavy Bike Friday and continued the climb by foot. Jeff kept going and barely beat me to the summit. The road leveled out but the rain increased. We put our rain pants on at this point.
After a short, steep downhill, we entered Bad Aussee where we stopped for lunch. We ate with Steve and Cynthia Hammer from Tacoma. Our meal was potato soup with sausage and a toasted ham and cheese baguette. Not real good, but filling.
We put on our wet clothes and continued on. Jeff and I took an option from the route and visited the village of Altaussee and its lake view. Jeff took some photos, one of which is below.
We got back onto the route and made a wrong turn which gave us a few hundred additional feet of climbing. When we ended up twice in someone's back yard, we knew we were lost. So we retraced our side route and got back on course.
The rest of the ride was uneventful except at the point where we gave up on the queue sheet and used the marked map instead. We got to the hotel last, which is a first for me. We had enough time, though, to shower, wash our clothes and hang up our wet rain gear to dry out. It stopped raining as soon as we got to our hotel - Hotel Kogler****.
It was a beautiful ride, though. Even though we put on extra mileage, we enjoyed it a lot.
Our route rap/happy hour is now at 6:00 and dinner is at 6:30. This was by popular demand. Dinner tonight was good, but not as good as last night. We started out with a pate with bread, avocado mousse and shrimp in a sweet and sour sauce. The next course was a consume with thinly sliced dough that is between a pancake and a crepe. For our main course, I had a vegetarian plate. Jeff had spaghetti with turkey schnitzel. Dessert was a plum baked in a flour/potato dumpling with crumbly sugar/cinnamon mixture.
Route Summary
| Miles | 45 |
| Max Speed | 33.9 |
| Average Speed | 10.3 |
| Moving Time | 04:22 |
| Total Ascent | 2821 |
| Weather | 50's and moderate rain |
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