St-Luc to Gruben

We woke up this morning to a ton of fog. We were so fortunate on our trip to have amazing weather. I met a couple guides who said they had guided tours on years where they never saw the mountains because the weather was so stormy. That would be so sad! This summer was also very warm and so most of the snow had melted and we really didn't have to deal with much snow which is a huge blessing. Snow in the winter is great but it can be so dangerous in the summer. This was the first day we woke up to horrible weather. The trail we were supposed to hike mentioned that it could be hard to stay on in bad weather. Because of some of our previous experiences I didn't want to chance it and get caught on the mountain and lost and so we took the bus around and did some hiking when we got closer to our nightly destination. It was great that this was an option. The morning fog.

 It was very thick but it started to melt off as we were leaving.

 We were fortunate on this day at the bust stop because as we were waiting the girl who was doing our luggage transfers saw us and she offered to give us a ride for part of the way. It saved us a little bit of waiting time. We had not anticipated using public transportation so I quickly had to learn how to read the bus and train schedules. To someone who lives in a big city I am sure this would have been easy, but there was a learning curve for me because I never use public transportation. We rode the bus to a town called Turtman and then took a gondola to a city on a hill called Oberems. The view from the gondola.

There were no buses that went up to Oberems so the gondola was are only option. Once we reached the top we learned that there were only buses twice a day to Gruben, the small place where our hotel was. Luckily it was only a little over 5 miles away so we decided that this could be our hike for the day. There was no fog on this mountain and it was a gorgeous day.

A church in Oberems. I really liked all the old churches. Every town had at least one, they were all old, and all fascinating buildings. Not to mention those clouds.

  More mountains and little cities on hills.

 The views were amazing as we hiked on the road to our destination for the day.

 There were some beautiful waterfalls and a river the entire walk.

 It turned out to be another great day for hiking.

Gruben is a small town that has one hotel and no amenities. They do have a lot of cows though. The hotel Schwarzhorn.

I enjoyed a lovely evening walk after dinner. Gruben is in a small canyon and it was quite a bit cooler here which was a nice change. An evening selfie.

While there was only one hotel there were a lot of summer cabins. They were cute little things.

We learned that the town of Gruben only operates in the summer. It completely closes down by the end of September and no one stays there until the snow melts in the spring. Very interesting.