Tuesday, 450 kilometers in one day.

     Up early today, in the car and on the road at 6:28. This was the big adventure day. Everyone wanted to go see Trummelbach Falls, which was somewhat south of Interlaken, Interlaken was somewhat north and a bit west of here, Italy was between here and there, and one range in the Alps that had no roads. Add to that the fact that most of the higher passes here have not been opened yet. Gottard Pass was just opened this week. To get there we had to travel through the Centovalli region, which is the same route that we took on the train to Domodossola. Since we were in the car this time we had a lot of stopping to do along the way. Before we were 30 kilometers from the house we had probably already gotten side tracked about 5 times.

     One of the first stops was a dam in the valley. They had a great diagram of how this particular system worked, which is typical of most of the ones here is Switzerland. Most of their power is hydroelectric. There are small dammed areas all over the country, in the unlikeliest of places. Several of them in an area will be connected through underground tunnels and in places you will see the tunnel come out high up on a mountainside and then there are large pipes running straight down to the valley floor.

     Next it was another white knuckle drive up the valley to the Italian border. We have done several border crossings this week and no one has asked to see our passports! This time the guard just said "You Americans?', when I said yes he just responded 'Go ahead'. A few miles later we came around a corner and saw a spectacular view of the town of Re, famous for its church and the story from the 1500's that goes along with it. (we'll write about it when we can find it). We spent about a half hour here checking out the church from all angles.The original was built in the 1500's, the part showing in the photo was built between the 1920's and the 1950's.

     We tried hard to stay on track after that, we still had a long way to go. Drove through Domodossola, then headed up to the border, back into Switzerland and over the Simplon Pass. Then down the pass and into the town of Brig. From here we headed west to Steg, only to head north again to the town of Goppenstein. Not far from here the road ends, but you can take the auto train under the mountains to pick up the road to Interlaken. Here, every half hour a train pulls these rail cars thru the tunnel. About 100 cars can fit on each train. Even tour buses were on our train. You just drive on the end and keep going until the car in front of you stops. Set your brake, turn the car off and get weirded out for the next 12 minutes. They are basically just flatbeds with canopies. When it first starts moving you want to hit the brake and grab the wheel. Then you are in the tunnel and it is totally dark. Before you know it you're back out in the daylight and on your way.

     From the train we pretty much drove straight thru to Trummelbach Falls. The parking area was packed so we drove past it a bit to another waterfall were we had a picnic lunch and took a walk through the wildflower fields to the base of the falls.The falls are quite famous as being the only falls entirely inside the mountain and still accessible. A small rail car takes you half way up, inside the mountain, then you can climb another 420 steps and several walkways up inside the mountain to few the various chutes of which there are 10 in all. Mom, who said she was tired, managed to do the whole thing. The views inside are spectacular, very had to capture on film. But it was definitely worth the long trip to get here. The wild flowers are just starting to bloom here and the fields were beautiful.  After out journey through Trummelbach we stopped for a snack at the local grotto and then headed towards Luzern, where we hoped to be able to drive over Gottard Pass in the daylight. We found the road to the pass and stopped many times to enjoy the view and even spent some time driving on part of the old cobblestone road near the top. The snow banks near the top were high and it was cold and wet out. We did manage to spend some time at the top enjoying the view. After that it was down the pass and thru the valley back to Locarno and home. Needless to say, we were all in bed pretty early. A long, long day, but worth every second of it.