Camping Brienz

A couple of weeks ago we went camping in Bernese Oberland with our good friends, the Hiatts. We spend Saturday at Ballenberg, which is an amazing open-air museum. Can I just say that I am a sucker for open-air museum? This one was really amazing with imported chalets from every region in Switzerland and dating back a few hundred year. We really had a blast.
If you wonder what Daniel is doing in this photo, he is being the Heisman trophey.





Evan, keep your head in!
With all the amazing things to see, I think this slug may have been the kids' favorite..




Jonas yelled, "Hey, Donkey! Don't eat the caca, okay?"
The Roundy's were able to meet us in the afternoon. Through some miracle, Daniel actually managed to get control of all six of these kids for about 30 seconds. Definitely picture worthy.


We visited the small chocolate factory at Ballenberg. Jaxon was enthalled watching this machine stir the huge vat of mouth-watering chocolate. I admired with him for a moment, thinking of how delicious it would be to dip some strawberries in that pool of chocolate. I asked Jaxon what he wanted to put in there. "I want to me in there," he replied. "And eat ALL the chocolate!"
Here we are at the campsite. It had a great park for the kids and an unbeatable setting. However, Jaxon's favorite?...
The elephant shower. My favorite? Being able to put all the kids to bed and be able to hang out just with the adults.
The next day we headed over the mountains to visit Lucern. We took a little time out to eat our lunch at this beautiful spot.

Lucern was fabulous and beautiful.





I absolutely loved the building facades.


The Hiatts left that evening from Lucern, and we stayed one more night. We had had the great idea of bringing our fondue pot to make pasta, since we had not yet bought a camping stove. The idea was good, however the pasta was a little soggy since the water never really reached a "rolling" boil.
The boys played in the lake at our campsite. I think I managed to capture to some degree the blue of this alpine lake. It is stunning.

We didn't let the rain keep us from a hike up some waterfalls the next day.



Okay, so this was something I definitely had never seen before: a slug eating a mouse. Gross, but strangly intriguing. Jaxon said, "Wow, that is a fast slug."



It was a great 3-day weekend!