Germany: Day 2 continues....

After spending the morning blogging and resting a little bit my grandparents and I went out on a hiking adventure. The community that my Uncle and Aunt live in is on a hill so all the streets are curvey and hilly. It's a very pretty place! We walked down to the main road and then went to a trail that goes to another trail that makes its way across the bluff along the Nickar River. Right as we were entering the trail I saw a sign that warned for "Frog crossing". They have to be really big frogs in order to watch for them. I'm wondering when I'll see one. :)

As we hiked the first bit of the trail I noticed that there is a lot of chopped wood. I mean A LOT! It's all over the place and it's stacked in big piles and long rows. Some of it is fresh and other piles are really old. We passes a pasture that used to have wild pigs, but they aren't there anymore. We also passes a big fenced in spot with wild deer in it. We hiked a little further and then the trail started along the bluff. From the trail I could see Neckar Steinach (a small town) and a lot of boat ports. There was a big barge that was on land and it was resting on there big metal rollers. My guess is that some sort of button is pressed and then the rollers go down the small embankment and into the water and the boat is then ready to move.

The trail was really beautiful and definitely one I'm going to run. It was fairly flat (no bumps) and a little hilly so I'm thinking it would be a fun run. It also had a nice layer of leaves which makes for nice soft running.

The trail followed the Neckar until the dam and lock that is there. It had a cool pedestrian bridge right over the dam and we walked over it. The sound was really loud and the amount of bubbling the water was doing was definitely impressive. I wouldn't want to get caught in those currents! There was one spot where the basketballs and soccerballs had collected and were being repededly sucked under and then pulled back up and spun around. They have probably been there for a while. We then walked across the bridge and into the town of Neckar Steinach. We walked a little ways into it and saw a few car delerships. We then stopped at a small Kiask and used their bathrooms. It's really interesting how you have to pay to use certain bathrooms over here. IT makes me more appriciative of the free ones we have in the U.S.; though these are always really clean!

We were rght next to the railroad tracks so we went in search of the station. We asked for diretions, but the man only spoke a little bit of English. We did find it though. We then started back and on our way across the lock and dam we saw a big barge in the lock transfering from the lower to the upper river. IT was really cool to see how fast the water comes up and the boats move through. We then walked across and I took a spiral stair case down to the bankside next to the dam to get some pictures, but my camera has been giving me some trouble and gives me this Error 99 message everyone in a while. IT has to do with the communication between the lense and the camera. It does it every once in a while and it was doing it then so I don't have a far away shot of the dam down stream. We met a group of kids from Mannheim that were on a field trip. They had a list of questions they had to answer about the towns and castles. They had all of them done except one that had to do with pearls. My grandparents and I figured out that the answer was Nickar Steinach because it's called "the pearl of the Neckar". I wish we could have figured it out earlier and told them.

We hiked along a different trail that was paved. It ran right along the bank of the river. It was really pretty. It then turned into a hill trail and we climbed 8/10 of a Kilometer up hill. There was a really cool stream with some waterfalls, but my camera wouldn't work so I couldn't get a picture of it. Maybe I'll get to see it again since it's nearby and snap a picture or two.

We got home and then spent the rest of the evening relaxing. I played Wii sports with my cousin Ana and then we had chicken curry for dinner. Which was really good. You can put a ton of different toppings on it; like pineapple, bananas, dried onions, raisons, cocunut and tomatos. IT's really good! (Like I said)

So that was my second day in Germany and it was a lot of fun!

My trip continues with.... Germany: Day three!