After the museum search turned up nothing, it was time for some bike riding. Unlike Salzburg, this time I got a real bike. It was a fairly decent German mountain bike, that is possibly a notch up from mine back home.

I used the bike to visit several towns/villages in the area to the west of Fussen. I covered a huge variety of terrain from from roads and paved bike paths, to unpaved (gravel/dirt) bike paths, including several kilometers of real mountain bike trails like we have back in the Rockies. Actually, at times I had to remind myself where I was because it felt like I was in the Rockies. It was a long day, with lots of ground covered and plenty of water consumed. The down side to biking is that I did bother to stop too often for pictures.

One thing interesting about today was that I went to Austria, twice. The paths I took brought my a several kilometers into Austrian territory.

Here's the bike I rented today. Compared to back home, the rental cost is cheap, 8 Euros ($12 Can) for 24 hours. I image if the bulk of their users did strenuous mountain biking all the time, the price would be higher and closer to was we see back home.

The next few shots should give you taste of some of the nicer scenery I came across today.

This is the first time I crossed the border into Austria. This shot is looking towards Germany.

This shot is looking towards Austria.

The first village I encountered in Austria had a large processing plant for something they were mining near by. What was interesting was that they used this cable system to get the ore from the mine to the plant, a distance of about 3 kilometers.

Here's the processing plant. The mountain I was hiking on yesterday is in the background.

Here's were they are doing the mining. I didn't bother to investigate what they were mining for, but I suspect it's gypsum or what ever it's called they use to make concrete.

Some of the bike paths I was on today paralleled roads like this.

Sometimes those nice bike path come to an abrupt end when you reach a village.

This is the boarder crossing going back into Germany, ending my first trip into Austria.

Typical small town stuff. Road construction holding up traffic, including a tractor, and traffic control or warning signs of any sort are no where to be seen.

Around Germany and Austria there seems to be many water fountains like this one that provide great clean drinking water. The problem is they usually aren't around when I need them. I refilled one of my water bottles here. But later when they were both dry I had no choice but to by water. I tend to refill my plastic water bottles rather than through them out and buy new ones. In fact, the ones I replaced today date back to when I was in Italy or Spain and they were due to be replaced because the caps were starting to get worn out.

A castle off in the distance. I contemplated going over there for a look, but I didn't think I would get a much better view than this without covering a lot of distance so I didn't bother.

This is Lech Falls. It's half way between Fussen and the Austrian boarder on the road that goes to Reutte.

Just another variation of the bike path paralleling a road. This one is on an old rail line, at least part of it.

This is where I finally turned around and headed home for today. This is near the center of Reutte, Austria. The sign points to the road that continues on to Innsbruck. Reutte is Rick Steves' preferred place to stay, but it only works if you are traveling by car.

Like yesterday, I am providing a track of my path today for you Google Earth users out there. It was extracted from my GPS device. Just click on the following link to download and open the path in Google Earth:

060614-bike.kmz

If you play around with the tilt and rotate buttons in Google Earth, you should be able to figure out what it's showing you. Note that the track filled up my GPS, so it stopped recording on my path back to the Bike Rental near Lech Falls.

Tomorrow I am either going to head to Interlaken, Switzerland, or Stuttgart, Germany. The train departing Fussen is the same for both, then I switch to other trains at different spots depending on which way I go. Interlaken is up in the Alps, so I will probably do some more hiking there. Stuttgart is the home to a few major car museums like Mercedes Benz and Porsche, so going there will be a slight change of pace and a good break after that last couple days. Right now I leaning towards Stuttgart, but I'll decide in the morning and possibly on the train. The next World Cup soccer match in Stuttgart goes on Friday, so it will be interesting to see how that affect the accommodations.