Rally Day 4: Austrian Countryside

Today's travels were from Saalfelden to Pichlarn. We wanted to scale the mountain that "the boys" were going on (through a different pass). That mountain, Grossglockner, is the tallest mountain in all of Austria. Carved by glaciers, there is ice and snow even in summer. Unfortunately it was raining, so we couldn't see much from the top. The scenery below was beautiful. We managed to find a waterfall and some amazingly large woodworking tools (which, the woodworking tools turned out to be part of the woodworking museum).

We then drove through the valley to meet up with the boys at a coffee stop. This cute village hotel had a natural swimming pool, some amazing iced coffee (the ice = vanilla ice cream), fresh trout, and a robot lawnmower (which had its own hutch). To top it all off, there was even a tractor rally passing through town!

In addition to the terror of Grossglockner, we faced even more frightening mountain passes today en route to the hotel. Everyone seemed to enjoy going at breakneck speeds and since there wasn't any good place to pull over, Joice was forced to keep up by the rally cars behind her (she didn't want to affect their time). (We didn't intentionally drive on their route, we just tried to route to the hotel from the coffee stop and couldn't find another way through the mountains.) It did lead to a very exciting "car chase," though.

And to top it all off, we got to end the day with one of the brightest double rainbows I've ever seen in my life. It was spectacular to see it go from end to end of the valley!