Dayhike in Switzerland

Tom talked me into taking a hike with him on Saturday and it wasn't quite what I expected. I was thinking that we would hike 2 (maybe 3) hours of moderately difficult terrain and eat about an hour into the hike. Boy, was I wrong!

We got to the start of our trail about 2:30 since we had slept in and then needed to go to the store for some hiking food and a map. Note: if you know anything about Tom, you know that he can't stand to be anywhere without a detailed map of his surroundings! Anyway, we started out and were immediately challenged with a rather steep climb. After awhile, we came to a gate. I didn't know this, but apparently in Switzerland, you hike all over land that belongs to others and they don't really care - as long as you securely latch the gates behind you. The ever-present yellow trail markers point all through personal property. Beyond that gate, we were in cow land. Not only did we walk by cows for the next few hours, we also hiked through the evidence of cows. Let me just say that cows must eat a lot...

After about an hour of this, Tom said - look, you can see the top (of this part)! I missed the latter part of his comment. So, that wasn't so bad...rather steep and a little messy, but I'd survived. Let's eat! Then we turned a bend and I saw what we were really trying to get to the top of - oh my. We finally made it to the top of the ridge a little after 5 and it was time for dinner. It was a really pretty place to picnic, and the food was very welcome. Now nourished and rested, we were ready for the descent. We made it back to the car in about 1.5 hours after passing through quite a few more cow pastures and one full of sheep. The moon came out on our way down and was just beautiful. All in all I got a 5.5 hour hike and learned that Swiss hikes usually come with a lot steepness and quite a few cows! We had a beautiful day for a hike though and Tom was a good encourager and patient with my slow pace. We ended up ascending (and then descending) about 2,500 ft, though, so it was a rather significant climb. It was a nice afternoon overall, but I propose we visit the chocolate factory next weekend :)

Oh, I almost forgot - my favorite part of the day was when we saw "the cows come home." This time of the year, the cows are brought down from the higher pastures in preparation for the winter. It's a big tradition and both the cows and the people herding the cows dress up for the occasion. We were driving when a guy on a motorcycle waved us to the side of the road and behind him were about 20 cows - all decked out. What fun!

Baby Kitty

After much debate and some good searching, Tom and I finally brought home a new kitty. She's a 6-week-old, long-haired calico and absolutely adorable! She and Maggie are still learning to be friends, but we have high hopes that they will be best buds someday soon. If you have any names suggestions, we're all ears. We were thinking something that sounds French would be appropriate, but are open to anything.

Tom is smitten with her :)

Our cat search story: It was much harder than we expected to get a cat here. After we decided we really wanted one, the search began. I assumed that we could just call the humane society, go visit and pick out our new cat. Wrong. After our neighbor called the SPA (the equivalent of the humane society here) for us, we went to visit Romeo - the one cat they said we could have. Though they had over 200 cats up for adoption, based on our criteria, he was the only one that matched our situation (we have a 2 year-old cat and don't let her outside). Well, Romeo was a nice cat, but he was very large - probably 20+ pounds, so 3x Maggie's size. He was also very quiet - not what we thought would fit Maggie's active inclinations. The SPA also told us that, if we adopted from them, they would come visit the animal every once in awhile until it died. After we heard that, we weren't too sad not to adopt from them! So we drove the 45 mintues back home without a cat.

Our neighbor made a few more calls for us since we are not yet fluent in French and German and found a few more leads. However, after one promising conversation, the woman never called back and then another place sounded like they had restrictions similar to the SPA. Argh! We then mentioned to some friends at church that we were looking for a cat. It just so happened that their friend's cat had just had a litter of 4 kittens. We went to visit them and, viola, we had a cat! We've had her since Thursday and are looking forward to getting to know her and see what kind of personality she has. Just let us know when you want to come meet her!

Welcome, Cambelle!

Cambelle Grace Burgess was born on August 29 in Fribourg, Switzerland!

Congratulations Dave, Lu and Big Sister Kacey!