beemerdave

Geo: 46.3413, 7.01233Saturday the group left the French Riviera via the autobahn, splitting up in Aix en Provence. Dave and Janet took to the country roads on a nice ride through the Luberon despite threatening clouds, overnighting in Gap after visiting Lourmarin, Apt and Sisteron along the way. The following day they headed for the higher elevations, with alternating sunny and cloudy skies, over several more passes on the way to Grenoble. Road closures and a 15km detour put them off course, causing them to miss seeing the Grand Goulets, although the alternate route provided a wonderful ride on a great little Alpine road near St. Martin en Vercors. As the storm clouds turned to rain, they found a quaint “guest house” in Ugine, just outside of Albertville, dinner and breakfast included. On Tuesday, they started ... read more

Geo: 46.0252, 9.05328The ride from Cortina to Lake Lugano was eight hours of bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go, for most of the trip down to Milano. Throw in some high temps and even higher humidity - plus Europeans ending their August summer holiday - and you have the “perfect storm” for a miserable ride. If it wasn't for some lane splitting and following other bikes along the shoulder we might still be on the road. We finally arrived in San Mamete, Italy to discover that our accommodations felt like a wonderful, small “villa” overlooking Lake Lugano. After a totally exhausting travel day, we took the next day for kicking back, lounging around our wonderful grapevine-covered terrace, and catching up on our reading. Long naps were also the order of the day. On Monday, we headed about 20 minutes east ... read more

Geo: 46.5376, 12.1413Saturday saw us on another ride to a new destination – this week: Cortina, Italy. We left Hallstatt, Austria with fond memories amid broken skies, making our way around the mountains, south and west to the little village of Bruck, and the start of the Grossglocknerstrauss amid sunny skies. The 50 km toll road is adjacent to the Hohe Tauern National Park, which consists of 300 mountains and 246 glaciers, of which the Grossglockner is the tallest peak in Austria. This magnificent road goes through the Fusher Tall, a lush, green valley, up and over the peaks of the Grossglockner Pass with its series of switchbacks and serpentine roads. We stopped at the top of Edelweiss Spitz amid a crowd of motorcycles, cars and the usual number of cyclists to take in the awesome ... read more

Geo: 47.2838, 11.1333Breakfast in Switzerland coffee in Liechtenstein, and dinner in Austria. The day started out sunny and warm, then after passing through numerous tunnels, we hit serious rain and thunderstorms as we neared our destination of Flaurling, about 20km west of Innsbruck. Flaurling dates back to 763 and just celebrated its 1,250th anniversary in 2013! Saturday night we enjoyed a live “Johnny B Good” rock and roll concert in the courtyard of an ancient church on the hillside a few blocks from our new home. We've enjoyed getting to know our town hosts, some locals at the concert, and the mayor of Flaurling who gave Guenther a bottle of “1492” beer from Salzburg. Sunday we toured the local area, found a McDonalds in Telfs with Wi-Fi (none available at our lodging) and took the opportunity ... read more

Geo: 46.6329, 8.59482We left Lauterbrunnen under cloudy skies and headed southeast, passing again through one of the longest tunnels (nearly 5 miles long) towards Meiringen. Our first stop was at the Reichenbach Waterfalls (where Sherlock Holmes fell to his death). We opted not to take the tram to the top, instead took a few photos of the lower falls. From there we started our climb up to Innertkirchen. Our motorcycle guidebook suggested a detour 18 km up a narrow dead-end valley road. After paying a 4 Chf toll, we continued through a high meadow to the Engstlen See, where there's a hotel, camping, and a wonderful cheese factory (which we visited and stocked up). On the way down the narrow road, Guenther was run off the pavement by a speeding driver. A retaining wall kept him ... read more