(Written 7/2/2011 – Sorry for the delay, the keyboards here are really different!)

Bonjour,

First of all let me say that we both have fallen in love with France. Where else can you hike through alpine meadows in the morning, paraglide into a random village, enjoy a pastis in the afternoon and find a field to camp in before dark? The people are joyful and down to earth and can melt my heart with the way they sing their greetings and thank yous. We are learning a bit of French, but must rely on hand gestures and good humor to get information (few people in the places we are traveling speak English). This has proven to have quite lengthy and tiring consequences from time to time.

Like yesterday, for example, when we asked a couple different local people whether the trail on our map continued over the top of the mountain and if it was possible to hike from there down to the village in that valley by hiking trail (sentier randonee – a key phrase). Several hours of hiking and about 4000 vertical feet later, we found ourselves peering over the edge of a loooooooong sheer cliff as far as we could see in both directions. Hmmm. If it wasn’t for the farm cheese, marmots, mountain goats, sheep, wildflowers, paragliders in the distance, crazy views and hiking with my husband, that sight of the trail we were trying to reach on the ridge below thousand foot cliffs might have really brought me down.

Navigating has been challenging. Now we really see why the X-Alps teams are comprised of an athlete and a ground support to tell the athlete where to hike. We need one of those guys. In one town, there was a sign with the name of a trail we wanted to hike and no one knew where the trail head was! Our map is too course and the trails on the topo aren’t all there. Everywhere we have been has been awesome and each day brings hilarious and wondrous experiences, but we are just on a bit of a different course.

So, we are learning a little lesson from the wind and drifting along. We are jumping around a bit now to try to find a good place to jump back on the trail.

More soon!