An Easy Day

We stayed in a lovely old (151 years old) hotel in Arolla. It seemed like everything in the building had a bit of a slant to it, but it had great charm and the staff were wonderful as was the food. We headed out today with the Brits. It had rained overnight and the forecast was for more rain during the day. We altered our route to avoid a section that was not advised if wet. We were out of the wild terrain of the last few days and walking once again through forests and on paths and tracks. We made our way uphill to beautiful Lac Bleu which reminded me of Grassi Lakes in Canmore. Tami went for a swim and declared it to be almost as cold as Bow Lake (which is right below Bow Glacier). Unfortunately the charming views that we were to see from the lake were largely obscured by clouds. Then downhill to La Gouille for tea. Leaving La Gouille we encountered a group of about 20 adventurous souls riding scooters (kind of like bikes without seats but with a place to stand between the wheels) downhill. Seemed an odd apparatus to me, as they would be fairly useless if trying to go uphill. We wandered in to Les Hauderes for a leisurely lunch. By the time we were done there it started to rain ever so lightly. The directions in the book were less than clear so Tami & I took the scenic route via La Forclaz to our destination of La Sage. It was a nice, leisurely walk today - 610m up and 905m down. The only disappointing part was that the views were impeded by the clouds. La Sage looks like a prototypical quaint Swiss alpine village with lots of timber homes with flower boxes at every window. I love our hotel - very quaint and cozy, great views and marvelous food (although no working wifi at the moment). Tomorrow is a scheduled rest day for us and I think we picked the perfect spot for it. It will be sad to lose some of our companions from the past week. We're the only ones staying here an extra day. In addition some people are taking various route options over the next few days so we likely won't see most of them again. On the other hand, Jennifer & Jason (from Calgary) took a rest day in Arolla yesterday so will catch up to us tomorrow. News flash!! Tami stayed up past 10 tonight!!!