Planets, goats, sheep and an airplane crash

Ahhh...here we sit sipping on wine after a wonderful tomato pesto and fettuccine dinner with green beans on the side.  All of this luxury is well-deserved as we completed over 13km of hiking today.  We took the train out to Laufen and followed the Planetenweg all the way out to Liesberg.  This was probably the most challenging hike we have done so far as the majority of it seemed to be uphill.

This is what one is commonly faced with when getting off the train to start hiking.  Switzerland has the most amazing system of hiking trails we have ever seen.  We haven't tested it yet, but we think it is possible to hike all the way from Basel to the Alps and then through the Alps on their trail system which is complete with cabins and yurts.  The signs tell you which direction to go and how long it will take to get there.  These times are based on Swiss averages, so be prepared to work hard if you want to meet those times!  As a side note, check out the jazzy going-down-the-stairs guy on the blue sign.

Here is the start of the Planetenweg (Planet Trail).  The trail is an approximately to-scale model of our solar system at a 1:1,000,000,000 scale.  As you can see, it was a gorgeous day in the region, with temps above 10 Celsius.

You follow the trail and each of the planets is placed in its location at the appropriate distance from the sun.  It was a great lesson in perspective as we encountered the first four planets in only a short time, but it took over 3 hours of hiking to get to Neptune!  Here is V with the planet Venus, which is populated by tough-skinned monsters, aka women.  One of V's many nicknames from Jon is Venus, coincidentally.

Giant Jon get hungry.  Earth is SNACK!!

Here, Jon is pretending to be sad because he has just stepped into a giant pile of cow shit (note where he is pointing).  V knows that he is really sad because the 'man' planet is not as cool as Venus.  Austin is so happy here because in about 5 minutes, he is going to roll in a bunch of poop.

After applying a fresh layer of poopy to his coat, Austin was really into walking on these felled trees.  We call this photo 'Log on logs'.

All that rolling in manure and running on logs makes Austin thirsty for fresh spring water straight from the tap.

Somebody stole Saturn's rings!  Must have been Uranus!

We caught these goats spying on us.  Every time we looked their way, however, they looked ahead as if nothing was going on.  Then if we looked away, we could see them staring at us in our peripheral vision.  Silly goats!  Where are your boats?

These black sheep were also mesmerized by us.  Then even started following us for a little bit.

Ha-ha!  I caught V touching Uranus.

These chaps were out in the fields flying their model airplane.

Up, up, and away!!!!

And SPLAT!!  After about one minute of flying, the plane's engine died and it took a nose dive straight into the ground and shattered into pieces with a loud "THUD".  About 10 seconds before that, Jon had declared "Oh, it looks like they are doing tricks."  Turns out they had just lost control of the plane.

Where did Pluto go?  Perhaps after those jerk scientists stripped him of his planet title, he climbed aboard the model airplane and performed a kamikaze mission?  Or is he hiding behind Uranus?

Off to the left of this photo is Liesberg, the town in which we finished the hike.

What a beautiful day to enjoy an exhausting hike!  The three of us were filthy and smelly at the end of it.  It seemed as if half of the people on the train back had also been outdoors, so we weren't too out of place.  In fact we are starting to feel less and less "out of place" and more like we found a nice little place to call "home" for awhile. The rest of the pictures are in the Flikr set here:
Planet Hike

 Now, we have to finish this here wine.


Ciao!
Die EuroFadoks