Today we motivated ourselves and went for a nice hike in the Pfalzerwald (the Palatinate forest), about 30 minutes southwest of where we live. Tons and tons of gorgeous hiking trails can be found in this forest. We chose to do a little over half of a 21km route called the "Hüttentour", which is a tour of 5 different huts in this part of the forest. The huts are the best part of hiking - they're a place to stop and rest and have a drink and a slice of cake or a full lunch, whatever you need. We only went to two of the huts - and one of them was closed today! So, we didn't have such a grand "hut tour" after all. But now that we're familiar with the hike we can always go back and get to the other huts, or, do the entire hike (due to the fact that we always always always get lost when hiking here (due to poor signage for the most part I swear!) we could never attempt a full 21km hike on the first try. We have to go and get lost a few times on shorter hikes so we know the way before attempting anything longer than 10-11km).
And, yes, we got lost today. We actually ended up doing the hike backwards from how we had planned it due to a wrong turn taken almost at the very beginning of the hike. But after that we managed to not get lost again.
Below are some pictures from the day. There were a lot of points with great views on this hike. For reference, in case you're thinking of trying this hike out, we parked in a hiker's parking lot in Gleisweiler right where the vineyards meet the forest and were easily able to access this trail from there.
Look at this big happy bear waving to everybody that comes to the Landauer Hütte! I wanted Martin to get in these pictures, but he refused. :(
