A year in pictures...

I've not always been the best blogger this year but I vow to improve - heck, I'll have a brand new subject to take photos of come March!

As a response to a posted challenge on the photography board I frequent, I've assembled my year in review photo set.  It was a bit tricky because there were a few months in there where we had only one folder of photos!

Here goes nothing:

January - Hiking in Shenandoah National Park

February - Baby Shower #1 for my cousin-in-law, Jessica

March -My pasty white feet on their first foray in flip flops after a long winter.  Shot while in Miami, FL.

April - Washington D.C. Cherry Blossom festival

May - My first foray into TTV.  This was the lavender outside in my garden.

June - Trip to Germany and Switzerland.  Two weeks in the most amazing settings!

July - Surprise! We're expecting!

August - Macie, our Vizsla, was having a good time this day.

September - Last backpack trip for a while (18 weeks pg) to Yosemite National Park.  Fletcher Lake in the picture.

October - Jesse and Jessica's wedding (cousin and cousin in law).  Great pic of the family (yes, we're that strange)

November - Nephew B hamming it up for the camera

December - 30 weeks pregnant, home made maternity shots done in our foyer.

A little development...

So, I've been a bit lax in the blogging here but for good reason....there's been a bit of development at Kloepping Photography.  I think the photo below gives it away!

That's right, there's another little photographer on the way.  The pic above was during a backpacking trip when I was 18 weeks along (i'm almost 24 weeks now).  We needed to get away for a bit and decided that with the upcoming life change now's the time to do our last backpack trip for a while.  We headed out to the Yosemite backcountry for two nights and three days of disconnected bliss!!

We hiked up Lyle canyon to Ireland Lake and spent the evening.  We then hiked cross country over to Fletcher lake and the Voglesang area for our second night.  The image below is over Fletcher peak and lake just as the sun was setting.  It was an amazing evening and an even more amazing trip.

Fussen...

Fussen was our last big city (well, it's not a big city but...) on our trip. From here it was back to Munich to head home. However, we had quite a trip ahead of us before that happened!

Getting to Fussen was an interesting experience. Since we'd spent so much extra time in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, we got a late start to Fussen which was an 8 hr train trip - with 4 changes! First few legs were fine - Interlaken to Bern, Bern to Zurich, Zurch to Buchloe but once we got to Buchloe things got interesting. It was very late at night and in this area they're not as used to tourist so German is pretty much all you hear. Buchloe is a little run down train station that really only services local trains, we were all eyes and ears and just hoped we grabbed the right train when it got there. From Buchloe we were to take a train to Kaufbeuren and then from Kaufbeuren to Fussen. We finally arrived in Fussen at 12:30am and realized that it was teeny tiny little station with 1 track. We also realize that once we were there, we had no map and no clue where our hotel was! All we had was an address. Fortunatley there was a map at the station and we took a pic of it with our camera. Unfortunatley, it was of little help!

We started off in the direction we thought was the right one and walked for about an hour and realized that we couldn't have been in the right spot. So, at 1:30 or so in the morning we walked back to the last McDonalds we saw and asked two young ladies standing out front if they spoke english. One did a little bit so we asked her to point us in the direction of the hotel. Thankfully she knew and was able to give us directions - however, they didn't make total sense, so we went inside and asked for a map. No one inside spoke english so we were using hand signals and my very very limited German:).

Finally we had our directions and started off. We had to walk thru a very dark street so I pulled out my head lamp and walking stick. Not that I think Fussen is a bad area, we just didn't know. We finally found our hotel and were hoping and praying that they had someone on staff to help us check in. They did, but he spoke NO english - again, we were down to hand signals:) Finally in the hotel room we crashed!

The next days plans were to walk to Neuschwanstein castle and take lots of pictures. What we didn't realize was that it was a 5 mile walk from where we were to the castle. Regardless, it was a nice walk and we had some nice views as we approached the castle. We'd not intended to take a tour but figured that once we were there we figured we should do it - how many times do we expect to be at Neuschwanstein?

After touring the castle and the surrounding area, we caught the bus back to Fussen and went searching thru town for dinner. We managed to stumble on a great little Italian place that had reasonable prices and big portions. After that we made our way back to the hotel room and crashed. We still had half a day or so tomorrow to hang out and sight see before we had to catch the train back to Munich.

The next morning we did some sight seeing and then made our way back to Munich - amidst a monsoon. The last day in Munich was uneventful. We visited the Hofbrauhaus one last time and then headed back early get some sleep - our train to the airport left very very early.

Lessons learned:
1. The S-bahn doesnt run from 3am - 4am for some reason. The U-bahn however, does. It starts running at 3:00am - perfect for catching the S-28 to the airport for our 7AM flight.
2. Print out maps and directions to hotels from the train before going to the city - or arrive in the city earlier than 1:30am:)

The Eiger...

Well, it was a miraculous recovery for the weather! The weather man was right for once and things did as they predicted. When we woke up at 3:00am for a bathroom break, the clouds were still hanging around and that had us worried. But at 7am when the sun started streaming in thru the curtains I grabbed my glasses and ripped them open only to be greeted by robin blue skys!

This day marked our last day in the Lauterbrunnen area and since it was the first day of good weather we had to make the best of it. Our intended itinerary was just to hike the mountain trail back down to Lauterbrunnen and hop the train back to Interlaken to start our journey to Fussen. But, with all the beautiful weather, we detoured a bit and decided to extend our trip and do the tourist thing.

The hike from the pension to the cable car was beautiful! We had perfect vies of the Eiger, Monch, and JungFrau almost the entire way. The skys were blue and the clouds sparse! We ran into a herd of young male cows that were entirely too curious for our tastes. They followed us around and blocked our path in a few places. Thankfully they're used to humans and move with a bit of prodding. Once to the cable car, we headed down and boarded the next train up to Kleine Scheidegg instead of out to Interlaken. We figured we'd take the train up and over to the next valley and then on out to Interlaken. That way we get a good view of the Eiger and the rest as we ride the train.

Well, at the Wengernalp station, the view of the Eiger was so amazing that we just had to get out and have lunch. We sat on a brick wall overlooking the hiking path and looking directly at the Eiger, the Face of the Monch, and the shoulder of the Jungfrau. After lunch we just couldn't get back on the train, we wanted to hike the rest of the way to Kleine Scheidegg - about an hour. We arrived at Kleine Sheidegg and found that we had about 30 min until the next train left so we just wondered around and took picks. This station was the launching point for folks going to the top of the Jungfrau via train (about 100 Eur round trip from this point - and something like 2 hours). We didn't have the funds nor the time for that so we hopped the train back down to Lauterbrunnen and then Interlaken so that we could catch our train to Fussen.

Now, that was a trip that was interesting - to be told in my next entry.

Lessons Learned:
1. Sometimes it's okay to do the tourist thing - taking the train up and over was the best decision
2. Be flexible - we'd planned on taking the train the entire way up and over but decided to hike - another great decision!

Blumenthal...

So, after a few days of just sitting around in the valley and waiting for the weather (and the food poisoning!) to clear we finally decided that come hell or high water, we were going to stay in a mountain hut even it if meant we had to hike through the clouds to get there. So, after a quick stop at the tourist office to make a reservation at our inn, a quick bus ride to the lift station and a lift ride up the cliff, we made it to the first of two stops for us that day - Gimmelwald.

Now, all the books and articles I read talked about Gimmelwald and how quaint and sleepy it was and they were totally right! Even with all the clouds moving thru it was cute and quaint and just an awesome place to walk thru. It's a working alp so there were farmers tending to their farms, cows, chickens, sheep, and the like on either side of the "street" (which wasnt really wide enough for anything but a tractor or golf cart. Now, it's built into the hill side so anywhere you walk you had quite the hike but it was so worth it. The pic above is of the hostel just off the lift - the Mountain hostel which is apparently a very popular place for young backpackers to stay as they hike their way around the valley.

Our destination for the day was up a bit higher outside of Gimmelwald in Blumental. It's definitley quite the hike up the hill but the pain was lessened by the scenery around us. The cows were cordial and the clouds that were running thru made for an ever changing set of scenery.

The above pic is looking down on Murren from our path up to Blumental

Lessons Learned:
1. Clouds don't always mean a runined day
2. Taking the trams up were totally worth it!

Lauterbrunnen Valley...

So, the clouds had socked us in and it was time to move on from Zermatt to our next destination - the Lauterbrunnen Valley. This valley would turn out to be our base camp for all activities in the Bernese Oberland. The original plan was to spend a day in the valley and the ascend the cliffs and spend the rest of the time hiking alp to alp and staying in mountain huts and inns. Well, the weather and food poisoning had other ideas which we'll get into later!

We arrived in Interlaken Ost to much rain. We wanted to walk around Interlaken a bit and find an internet cafe to check out the weather and figure out where we were going to stay that night. Interlaken is an interesting city and was much larger than I thought it would be. We had planned on seeing the lakes but they were so far away from where we were we decided against it. Instead we walked around town just to check things out and then headed back to the train station to catch our train into the Lauterbrunnen valley (another train that isn't covered by our Eurail pass - but is deeply discounted with it). Once in the Valley we dropped our packs and headed out to explore. We located the internet access, coop, and tourist info center and continued on down the valley to view some of the waterfalls (of the 70 odd falls they claim to have in the valley!).

As we reached Stechelburg we saw the boot with lavender above - it seemed to be a trend in the area. This one was at the post office/bus stop but we saw a number of others during our travels over the two weeks. At that post box there was a great place with all sorts of maps, hiking information and what not. We filled up on paper and continued on our way. One of the maps was a quick (or was supposed to be a quick) hike to three really nice waterfalls.

We decided to try to do the hike with the limited daylight we had left. After about a hour of going up and up and up we realized that we'd only made it 1/3 of the way to the first falls and decided that we're better off heading back and finding dinner (because it was at least a 3 hour walk back to town!).

On our way back we passed the Avalanche shelter above. Most of the valley had natural protections built into the hillsides and above the other towns, however, this area of the valley had very steep walls there they couldn't plant any tree breaks or affix any avalanche fences so they have to provide a place for folks to shelter in case there was an avalanche. These were every .25 miles or so for a while and were within a quick dash if one needed. Fortunately, it was summer here and there was no snow to be in any danger.

Anyways, the walk back to the hotel was uneventful. We capped our night off with some awesome fondue and a few beers (which, by the way, beers are cheaper than water in these places!) which was the perfect way to relax. We headed back to our room and just crashed. Hoping for better weather tomorrow!

Lessons Learned:
1. Internet connectivity at the tourist center is rip off!
2. The campsite at the edge of town has the best food prices - too bad it's an hours walk from our hotel.

Matterhorn Glacier Hike...

Well, today was supposed to be a bit of a rest day - small hike and recovery but we were wrong! After a quick trip to the Coop for Mark to get blister fixins and a short time for me to bandage up my poor feet, we were off and running again! The weather had come in as predicted so we were fighting with the cloud cover. We thought that if we went high enough we'd get above it so 60 CHF later we were on the cable car on our way up.

Well, there was no getting above this so we made the best of it. At times visibility was 50ft which made for interesting hiking but also made for really cool pics. The goal of the hike was to get to the base of the Matterhorn and walk along the glacier and back around to the valley. Well, the weather had other ideas. We got to a point where the trail was snow covered again and this time it wasnt passable (big cliff on the right, boggy glacial moraine to the left) so we had to turn around and come back where we came from. Fun part was that we got to glissade (kind of ) down a snowy part of the trail. It was actually quite cool!

Once we got back to the lift we had a few options to get back to the valley. Since we didn't buy a round trip ticket on the tram and we had a bunch of time left in the day, we decided to walk it. Clouds or not, we still needed to get down. The long way down consisted of walking from Scharwzee to Stafelalp then on down to Zumsee and Blatten. On our way we passed Zmutt which was a quiet little alp with lots of grass roofed houses. We even passed a reservoir that looks like a big bowl of milk!

We made it down just as the sun was setting which made dinner challenging but we did manage to find a place that served Brockwurst and typical Swiss/German fare (which by this time was getting a tad old:) )

Lessons learned:
1. You can still have a fantastic hike in the clouds
2. At a place the specializes in fondue - dont get the tortellini

Gornergrat Glacier...

Well, the next day started out with glorious weather! Absolutely blue skys and lots of sun. We got a late start because I forgot to turn on my alarm but we still made it to breakfast (which is included in the hotel price!). I had breakfast under the shadow of the Matterhorn!

We headed into town to procure lunch supplies and found the Coop - food on the cheap, yahoo! Today's hike started up high so we had to take a train up - a funicular actually - thru the mountain! Gotta love Swiss engineering. It saved us like 3000 feed of climbing which allowed us to do more in the day than just trudge up a big hill! From Sunnega we hiked up another 1500 feet past Blauhard to the first of the 5 lakes. On our trip up we were able to snap this beauty!

The trip up was steep - just like everything in Zermatt - it was straight up. But the views totally made up for it. You just hike slower, take more breaks and more pictures! The trails reminded us alot of the trails in Colorado, only steeper and bigger:) We saw free ranging sheep, goats, and chamois. From the first lake (Stellisee) we hiked down and around to Grindjisee and then on to what I think was Leisee (there were so many!).

When we go to the last lake we had a few choices. We could continue around the valley rim to Riffelap and then down on the train or just head down then or about 11 other permutations of that plan. I was starting to get really burned on my arms and was ready to call it a day but my fantastic husband fashioned a pair of sleeves from our coats (so i wouldnt have to wear the coat in 90 degree weather) and we decided to push on. We hit was we thought was supposed to be a hiking trail but instead ended up being an access road. I could have sworn we missed something but mark assured me we were in the right place. Thankfully he was right:) We reached the junction that would take us up to Riffelberg and on to Gornergrat or down to Riffelap and the valley.

We still had more time so we decided to push on. The last train down was at 7:40 and we started our hike up to the station around 6:00. According to the trail sign it would take us 1 hr and 15 min which meant there was little time to dilly dally. Unfortunately, the snow had a different idea. We lost our trail due to the snow and had to improvise. Fortunately, the direction was easy - up! At one point mark plunged hip deep in the white stuff and we were running behind on time! Seeing an easier path up, he took us cross country . It was worth it! We made it up with 30 min to spare and had plent of time to photograph the glaciers.

We waited around photographing and fixing blisters while we waited for the train down. It was 45 min down (which would have been a few hours if we hiked) . Dinner was kebabs (because that was the only cheap place open) and then off to bed. 9000 feet and 4+ glaciers - what a day!!

Lessons Learned:
1. Everything has a price - someone offered to buy our tripod while we were at the top!
2. The hiking times on the signs were pretty accurate for our hiking pace!

Zermatt Day One...

Today was our first day in Zermatt. I was watching the weather and saw that weather was predicted to roll into Zermatt later in the week but that I was supposed to be beautiful earlier in the week. Well, there's not much to Zermatt for hikers when the mountain is clouded in so we decided to switch up our schedule to take advantage of the good weather.

We boarded the first train out of Munich in order to have as much time in Zermatt as we could. Well, we learned a few things on our train trip. One, there is no route from Munich to Zermatt that doesn't travel thru Austria and because our Eurail pass did not include Austria, the very nice ticket man made us pay for our two stops in the country (all of about 12 Euro). Two, our Eurail pass does not cover private rail ways (which we knew) and the trip from Visp to Zermatt was on a private rail way (which we didn't know). 50 EUR later we were all set. The ticket man on the train was very nice and let us stay in first class but only pay for second:) Thank you mister ticket man.

After all our that back and forth we made it into Zermatt safe and sound. The trip from Visp to Zermatt was amazing! The train is a partial cog rail in order to get you up the mountains (imagine the things you see that pull roller coasters up the hills!) Many times you had to stop and wait for the train coming down because there was only one set of tracks in places. It gave you all the more time to sit and bask in the amazing scenery.

We arrived in to Zermatt around 3:00pm and promptly found our accommodations for the few days we were going to be there. It was quite a hike up but it was worth it - we had an unobstructed view of the Matterhorn from our place. We dropped our big packs and switched to day packs and headed out to find some solitude! We headed out on a circuit hike that connected you to 7 or 8 huts if you did the entire thing. We decided to do the first two and then head back down - just a little bit to get us warmed up for our bigger hikes later in the week.

Well, trails in Zermatt are basically straight up! They must not have know about switchbacks when they cut the trail (or the Swiss are just that hard core!) I'm really glad we dropped the big packs because it would have been really tough. Walking stick are mandatory to save your knees!

The pain of the hike was washed away by the amazing scenery we were walking thru. Waterfalls, mountains, wild animals! As we crested the hill at hotel du trift the sun started to fall in the sky. We knew we only had a few more hours of good light so after a few pics, we turned around and high tailed it down the trail into town. We arrived just in time for sunset (which was something like 9:40pm!).

We'd not eaten yet, which was a problem since most places close at 5 or 6pm, but managed to find one place that had food. Lesson for tomorrow - either take dinner or be prepared to pay thru the nose! Tomorrows trip will be to the 5 Sweeweng (5 lakes basically)

Lessons Learned:
1. You don't need a reservation with a first class Eurail ticket in Germany or Switzerland on most all trains (unless you're going to Italy or France or something).
2. Don't listen to the guys in the main station ticket booth - they'll sell you anything! Ours validated our Eurail pass but still made us reservations in 2nd class on a train where reservations weren't required. None of which we needed.
3. Learn what trains are national rail vs. private rail and be prepared to pay for private rail. We got a discount but it was still not cheap!

4. Most places take Visa!

5. Buying bread, meat and cheeze at the grocery store was a great way to have a cheap lunch on the trail. The huts and inns you passed were quite expensive.

Munich...

The next few posts will be a little different that the others. I'll try to keep them focused on photography but wanted to outline our recent trip to Germany and Switzerland. Each day of the trip will be a different blog post. We certainly did alot of photography along the way and learned a few things about how to get the whitebalance and exposure right shooting snow but you'll see that later.

First, on to Munich. Our flight over was uneventful. I managed to score us Economy plus seating on United which was really nice on the 8+ hour trip across the pond. I didn't manage to get any sleep on the flight so we were in for a very long day! With a quick stop over in Geneva and a near heart attack when our bags were not there to be loaded on the plane (apparently Lufthansa doesnt take much luggage from United and they have to go searching!) we arrived in Munich - bags and all!

Most all announcements and signs were in both German and English (and sometimes French, Japanese and Italian!) so we had no problem finding baggage claim and then transport. The Munich S-bahn is very easy to navigate - once you figure out the ticketing system. Fortuantley, we weren't the only lost ones, we watched two or three other groups as they tried to figure it out in front of us. The S8 train takes you right into Munich city center. We stopped off at the main rail station (haupbahnhof) to get our rail tickets validated and off we went into the city to see things.

Our first stop was the Marienplatz - the center of Munich where the Rathaus stands high above the square (picture above). Surrounding the Marienplatz were a number of historic buildings - churches and the like. All were open to the public to tour and take photos. We walked into a few and snapped off the one above. The architecture is amazing!

As we walked around we saw another church with a huge tower - the DOM! For 6 EUR each you could climb to the top of the DOM and look out over the city of Munich. The pic below was after our climb (with backpacks on!) to the top of the tower. We're looking over the Marienplatz.

After all the climbing we were hungry so we set off to find the famed Hofbrauhaus! It's off tucked away on the northern part of the city center but it was easy enough to find with a street map. It was a monday afternoon so the place was not crowed however it was loud and hot! Mark had a dark bier - a huge one and I stuck with Weiss (which was only .5L). He tried the Brokwurst and I had the Spatzel (i could find macaroni and cheeze anywhere!)

After our trip to the Hof we were full of food and beer and quite tired (last nights non sleep was catching up to me). We boarded the Sbahn and after a few wrong turns and a very long unnecessary walk, we found out hotel and crashed. We have every intention of just dropping the packs and heading back into the city for some night life but that never happened!

Tomorrow we're on the train for 7 hours to Zermatt! We made reservations at the train station when we got our tickets validated.

Lessons learned today:

Sleep on the way over!
You need to push the button on the train door to make it open, they don't just open on their own!
The S and U-bahn doesnt seem to check tickets, however fines are steep if they do and you're without one
Everything costs something here - walking to the top of the DOM etc...

80 degrees and perfect...

I spent my weekend and the first part of this week at a trade show in, of all places, Miami! Hafta say, leaving the 40 degree wet chill of NoVa for the glorious sunshine of Miami had its draw.

Unfortunately, the most sun I saw was on Saturday when we spent a few hours by the pool dozing before dinner. The reminder of the daylight hours were spent schmoozing prospective customers and getting them to try out our product.

I did manage to get a few shots each night before the sun set (on our way to dinner) and figured I'd share (and make up my post for this week - so far I'm on a roll!)

This is the first time this season that those tootsies have seen the light of day. My poor pale feet are badly in need of some seasonal maintenance but were just happy to be out of heels and into the fresh sea air!

Those tire footsies walked me over to Mambo's Cafe right in front of this awesomely colored building. With all the sights around I'm sad I didn't have my trusty SLR - for this trip my little Canon PowerShot made due. Not bad me thinks... No much creative power but takes an adequate picture and is super tiny so it fits in my purse.