French German border hike

Okay, I promised more pictures and info, so here we go. This Sunday, I went on a hike of the German-French border (no, not the entire border; that would be crazy!) . Along the border there are about 500 ruins of castles/houses. Some were carved right into rock faces. The hike was somewhat more strenous with more ascents and descents than other hikes, but the total distance was shorter.

Here is the first castle from a distance.

The castle in just over the border in France and is called Fleckenstein Castle. It hasn't not been used since the 17th century. You can get a sense of how large it is; that's me in the bottom of this picture standing next to it.

Okay, these figures are kind of cheesy, but they're used to demonstrate what the different rooms were used for.

This is the amazing view from the top of the castle!

This is a view of the castle from the distance as we traveled to our next destination. If you can't make it out, the castle we were at is in the center of the picture. (See, we really did climb a fair bit!)

And this is one of my favorite pictures because the architecture makes me think that I've been transported back to the 1700's!

We did make it to the top of the next castle and had this beautiful view! Behind us is Germany, to the far right of the picture is the beginning of Switzerland and behind the person taking the picture is France.

At the end of the hike, we all got to be kids again. We ended in this park; here is the entrance.

It was complete with a zip line (okay, not the most flattering picture of me),

swings (note one of our Captains and Lt Colonels swinging here!),

a scary entrance to the slide,

a hamster wheel (I don't think this is what you're supposed to do here!),

interesting carvings,

and little horses (or is this a deer?) to ride on.

All in all it was a great trip!