Our little family in the great big state of Texas

The weather was beautiful and the scenery even more so, the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) was even better than I thought it would be.  It reminded me a lot of the Smokey Mountains, except they just call it a forest, not mountains.  :)  There are really dense patches of forest and then it will clear into a beautiful meadow with amazing homes on them.  I took a ton of photos, they are already on the photo site if you are interested. We left Friday about 4pm (after Kenny got home from work,he's usually home by 3pm on Fridays) and were checked into our hotel by 7:45, not a bad trip at all. That included a dinner stop on the way, we weren't sure what we would find in the town. We stayed in Triberg which is the tourist mecca for the Black Forest, but it was fun. Not too crowded that you couldn't do what you wanted to do. Lots to see right there, and now we are more familiar with the area. Our hotel had a great little balcony with table and chairs, we really enjoyed that. Saturday night we had Black Forest Cake (Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte) on the balcony and watched all the people wandering about the waterfall.  Germany's highest waterfall is located in Triberg, the base of it was the view from our balcony.  This also the home of the cuckoo clocks, as is evident everywhere you turn.  If you would like to see for yourself, check this store out House of 1000 Clocks, they were just downstairs from the hotel. You would not believe how many different types of cuckoo clocks there are.

Jacob calls them Pooh-koo clocks (as in Winnie the Pooh). If you watch the classic Winnie the Pooh movie Pooh has one in his house and that is what they call it, a Pooh-koo clock. He was quite fascinated with the ones that have people dancing, wheels turning and people working on them.
Here is Jacob in his new hiking hat, looks just like he belongs here doesn't he? The walk to the falls was nice, we took the easier route so Jacob was able to walk most of it on his own. The falls were very beautiful, and very noisy. There was a constant background noise of the water all weekend, very relaxing. I was reading some info about how it is supposed to be very healthy there and there were several theories on why. One is that the breaking water ionizes the air and that is helpful to the body. The other is that there is a high amount of radon in the air and that contributes to the healing. I thought radon was something we tested our house for when we sold it but who knows? Another is that all the trees act as a filter for the pollution so the air is cleaner. Whichever it is, the air is fresher and cleaner there, at least I thought so.

We also visited an open-air museum Vogtsbauernhof Sunday on the way home, it was old homes that either were built on-site or moved from other areas in the Black Forest.  Some were from the 1600's, and really gave you a look at how they lived in those days.  It was fairly crowded there, so I guess it is interesting even for the Germans.  They had most displays in German, English, and French so it was very informative, and they had some of the homes open and furnished. 

It was a wonderful weekend, and apparently we missed some major storms back here in Wolframs-Eschenbach.  Our satellites needed tweaking, and Kenny saw a lot of limbs down on the Army post.  Good weekend for us to be gone!