So, we had scheduled a day off to give ourselves a break. When I was speaking with Marigona at Balkan Adventure, she included a short 8.5 km "day off hike" to keep us busy during our rest day!
Of course it was optional... but we decided we needed the exercise, and it was such a beautiful day!
The guest house where we stayed two nights.
Notice the construction. Just about every guest house we stayed at was expanding in some way or another.
This short hike took us up to Dash Lake. Fed by an underground spring, the water level at Dash Lake is consistent year round.
We stayed in one of the cute little triangle shaped huts.
Pretty waterfall with a swimming hole at the base of it.
Scenery along the way.
The hills are literally covered with wild blueberry bushes.
We were two or three weeks too early.
Ruth, heading up through the blueberries.
We had set out at 9:00am, and made it up to the lake at 10:15am.
It was hard to take photos through the flies!
I mentioned the other day the problem with the flies. They're just house flies... they don't bite, but they're so annoying. Some days were better than others, but this day was particularly bad.
Me, at Dash Lake.
Ruth stripped down and went for a swim, just to say she did it! The water was ice cold... I'm sure she was in and out in less than 30 seconds!
I got a photo to prove it!
View of Dash Lake.
We were close to the Albania/Kosovo border, so we decided to head up a little higher to get a view of Kosovo.
Look at the flies buzzing around Ruth!
A little patch of snow on the ground overlooking Dash Lake.
Looking towards Kosovo.
I took a video for you... turn up your volume...
Trail intersection.
At just about every guest house we stayed at, we said to ourselves that we could spend a week at each place and do different day hikes every day. The trails and the scenery are just stunning.
Heading back down.
A horse, of course.
Mom and her little one.
We relaxed in the afternoon, and did some hand laundry. Another day, I'll show you what we had carried in our packs for the ten day trip.
Dinner. It was actually quite good, and we got seconds.
The food overall has been quite good, but a bit repetitive. Lots of cucumbers and tomatoes! Most places are very helpful with Ruth's gluten intolerance. One place even made her a special corn bread.
Our hiking friends are now one day ahead of us on the route, but we were about to meet some new people.
Coming up next... hiking Kosovo's highest mountain!
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Good deal on this Collapsible RV Sink.
And in Canada...
What kind of soup was that? Looks good but also suspiciously like tripe (hope not!) I wonder why there are so many houseflies up there; seems like such an odd place for them to be so numerous. It's not like there's a big landfill or lots of garbage cans around, which is where you usually see many. That would be super annoying to me! The one place we encountered lots of flies was in the Abacos. I loved it there, but the flies were hard to tolerate. A lot of those were horseflies, though, which you see a lot at the beach. And they bite...owie!
ReplyDeleteI think if I remember correctly it was just a vegetable soup, it definitely wasn't tripe!
DeleteWe have no idea why there were so many flies up there but there were and there were horseflies as well, The horseflies like Kevin, he did get bit a few times and yes, they sure give a big bite!