Once they earned their license, they took us out for a sail.

It was a little gloomy, and a little wet, and completely still - yep, that's Newenka, rowing!

Schwarzensee

There was also lots of swimming, rafting, and water skiing to be done on the lake.  For Joel's other favorite water activity, we went for a ride (on bikes) up the mountain to the Schwarzensee.  All of us non-mountain-dwellers pushed our bikes up the hill - Misch and Joel rode.  Actually, Joel pulled Anika! 

Quick chess break in Strobl

Before the hard stuff, when we still had the energy for photography!

Once we got to the lake, Joel and Tasha jumped in.  Anika found the fishing line tangles in the rocks on the side of the lake.  Joel found the hook in the bushes.  And voila - fishing! 

It's a tough sport, but Joel is happy to handle it for us :-)

Dorf der Tiere

We rode through the rain to the Dorf der Tiere with Anika.  She was ready to go home about 5 minutes after we started riding!  We prevailed and fun was had by all!  So much so, that we had to go back a second time with the rest of the crew.  Now this is not so much a Dorf (village) and not just about animals (Tiere).  It is all about having fun! 

Mischy fights off the goat for her snack!	I	Is that the cutest goat house you've ever seen?
Okay, one baby pig, who ran and jumped and rolled and dug nonstop!		Anika played with the bunnies for a long time - missing Babbit!

But now for the fun stuff: 

A (huge) teeter totter, couldn't you tell? 

Enough of the artistic - here we are eating dinner, in the rain!!!

On the Dachstein

The Dachstein is an alpine plateau out of which rise the amazing peaks around Hallstatt.  The plan was, ride a cable car up to the plateau, then hike out to a hut for a snack and hike back to the cable car.  This seemed very achievable, and easier on the knees than the alternatives.  We left the house early so we could get a discount on our tickets.  Then we found that the cable car we had planned to ride, which was a three stage system, was under construction and the middle stage was closed.  So we needed to take the Post cable car.  We walked down to the starting point for this car and the line was out the door!!!  Hey we've skied before, we know how this goes, these lines seem long, but they move, because it's a cable car, right?  Wrong!  This was not designed as most cable car are.  Here there were only 4 cars in use, two pairs of two.  And they ran in opposition to one another, like a teleferic.  The weight of the ones coming down helping to pull up the ones going up.  So each car holds 6, two cars at a time, that's 12 and they take about 10 minutes.  So that's 6 * 12, 72 people an hour.  There are about 65 people in front us on the line.  So that will take less than an hour.  So we wait and wait and wait.  We see cars coming and cars going, but the line is not moving commensurate with the number of cars.  What is going on?  As we finally entered the loading area, we counted the number of people in front of us - 12.  Perfect, so we'll be in the second set of cars.  A pair of cars comes and goes.  I count again, 7.  How can that be?  Ah, we are only using one of the pairs of cars, because the military is using the other set, and they don't have to wait in this line with the rest of us mere mortals.  So it takes another 2 runs before we get into a car!  In all it took us more than 2 hours to get to the Dachstein! 

Fortunately, the views were awesome! 

So what was the plan, ah yes, to hike out to the Wiesberghütte for a snack - it's only about 4.5km and a rise of 75m according to the tourist map.  Let's see, it's noon, and the hike is 2 hours out and then 2 hours back and the last cable car leaves at 16:15 (so much for a casual hike).  The other surprise was the number of ups and downs on the hike...we marched up 50m and then down 50m and then up 75m and down all the way to the Dachstien (all in all, about +275m and -200m one way)!  You may think plateaus are flat, but let me assure you they only appear flat next to the very tall peaks and deep valleys that surround them!  Thankfully we had packed a lunch.  When we arrived at the Hütte, we had a very quick drink and then marched back to the cable car. 

Of course there was a wait to get back down, but luckily the military guys had an overnight conference, so they weren't jumping in front of us.  We only waited about an hour on the way back down. 

Gosau und der Kleiner Grosse Donnorkogelklettersteig