I Just Felt Like Sharing How My View Got Gradually Better At That Place Where I Was Staying A Few Nights

I just felt like sharing how my view got gradually better at that place where I was staying a few nights ago. And the pictures really do not do it justice. It's one of the few nights where instead of reading or watching tv on my phone, I just sat with my tent wide open and watched the Rhine, listing to the sounds of birds and water and people, and smelling the fresh air and the wet grass. It had rained heavily a few hours earlier, and so there were fewer bugs and everything felt fresher.

Today's hike. A tough stretch with a lot of literal ups and downs. The first picture is of a view I enjoyed while listening to Manowar. I felt very metal, walking through the German forests with the Kings of Metal album blasting through my head. It also sped me up a bit, leaving me completely exhausted when I reached the top. The next two pictures are of a plant that always reminds me of dinosaurs. I don't know why, but every time I see it, that's what pops into my head. I have this memory of either reading or someone telling me that during the time that dinosaurs were alive, these plants also existed. And then I saw a lizard! I kept snapping pictures of it, while going steadily closer to it, afraid it might run away. When I finally got this close, I started getting worried it might pounce on me and that it might be poisonous. I know pretty much nothing about lizards (salamanders?) so as ridiculous as the fear felt, I still drew away and walked on. Then there are some pictures of the trail. Someone pointed out to me that the strange square rocks in a previous post might be caused by natural erosion. So I had to look up what goes into building trails. If you want to know more, just Google it. Basically, I couldn't find any information on a rock-carving machine, but in a lot of places the trail looks like a wedge cut out of the rock in order to form a level road. And then on some dirt roads, like in the picture, the rock seems smoothed down to the level of the dirt. I have no idea how old these roads are, so it could be natural in some places and man-made in others. Or both. But one thing I figured out was the use of the metal ditches dug into the trail. They're to lead the water away from the trail, so the trail doesn't become the next river. I admit, this seems fairly obvious, but I hadn't really given it much thought beside "strange." I honestly don't think very deeply while hiking. My mind seems to clog with the exhaustion. At one point I couldn't remember how to tie my shoelaces. I really had to stop and think about it for what felt like a full minute before I could recall what goes where. As in, how to tie a knot. It was a hot day. And the last is an uplifting photo of Chanel rolling in something that's most likely very gross.

Goodbye, Rheinsteig. From here on, we will be following a Camino de Santiago path. Where we part is not officially the end of the Rheinsteig, but the last kms are going east and slightly north. The opposite direction of where I'm heading. So as much as I would love to see it through, especially because it seems to be going through wine country, we'll cross the Rhine tomorrow and head south on a more inland camino trail. It will eventually run along the Rhine again, but not for at least a hundred kilometres. The pictures are of the Rheinsteig, including a panoramic picture that I think turned out okay.

Jakobsweg (Camino de Santiago) from Bingen am Rhein to Worms. So far, not impressed. The last three days have all started out the same, with me finding the Jakobsweg and following it for a few hours before getting lost. It is very badly marked, and most of my initial ability in following it stems from lucky guess work. The arrows point in random directions, often making none or very little sense when there are more than one choice of road to take. So whenever I get lost, I have given up backtracking and have just started walking south, using Google maps to plot a route. Yesterday this resulted in having to cross a small ditch between two fields, as well as forcing myself through a couple of natural hedges. Cuts and scrapes on my bare legs. But at least I didn't have to walk along any highways, or be led around in random snake patterns by whatever morons were designing this #$@&%! trail. Nobody will ever get any use out of that trail, because it is so terrible marked. It just seems like a lot of time and money wasted. Okay, this wasn't meant to be a rant. I guess I'm just spoiled by the Rheinsteig. While the Rheinsteig also did redundant snake patterns, they were along beautiful scenery and with tough climbs. It was always well marked, and the trail was beautiful and upkept, without being along highways or through busy city streets. So now I'm making my own path. So far, interesting and I might have to look into downloading the maps onto my phone, since I'm using a bit too much mobile data. I have 3GBs for 30 days, but I've already used 2.1GBs in 18 days...

Despite the boring weather, it's hard to beat the place where we're camping tonight on beauty. That's Chanel's football at the lower right corner. It's in a net I made so I could strap it to the backpack. It was the first kind of toy I saw her enjoy, and since then I've only seen her get excited over sticks being thrown and footballs. She will prefer someone else's ball over her own. I had to chase her around a big field once when she found some kids brand new football and of course proceeded to bite into it. She seemed to find the chase simply fantastic, so it took me a while to retrieve their ball. Then I put it up a tree, between three branches, where the kids would be able to see it, and went towards our own ball. When I came back, the ball had fallen out of the tree (I thought), and the whole thing repeated itself. This time, though, as soon as I had put the ball up the tree, thinking I had pushed it firmly in place, Chanel ran up the side of the tree, bopped it out with her nose, grabbed it and ran. I finally got it so far up the tree that she couldn't reach it, and even though I got her to play with our ball, she'd still sometimes return to the tree and look up at the new ball, trying to solve the riddle of how she could get at it. I took a couple of pictures of Chanel and the ball tree, but they were on the phone when it broke, and hadn't been uploaded to Dropbox. So you'll just have to imagine it :)

When it's raining outside, there's really nothing to do but find a little German cafe and have a hot chocolate and a piece of cake for lunch.