Garmisch Trip

Somebody write something about what's going on with you! Larry, how are boards? Jared, why didn't you go to the VTC yesterday, Paul, put something on here as well as your other blog, Tom, do you wish you had joined the Army so you could be a Captain, instead of just a Lieutenant? Justin, how is the practice going? Are you making money yet?

This last weekend we went to Garmisch, which is the site of an Army resort way down in Southern Germany. There is a chaplain in our neighborhood, and he gave us all a heads-up on a marriage retreat that was going to be put on down there, so of course the whole neighborhood signed up. It was super nice, an all expense paid vacation in the resort down there. It’s a lot like the Shades of Green in Disneyworld, really nice rooms, an indoor pool, etc… Even our meals were paid for, but the best part was… free child care!! We dropped off the kids in the morning on Saturday and had the whole day to ourselves. Now, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we do this a lot, but it was nice just to be alone for a while (not that that stopped Carissa of thinking about them all day). There were about 3 hours of marriage classes, which were interesting; nothing revelatory or earth shattering, but interesting, and the rest of the time was ours.

There is a lot to do in Garmisch. Besides the activities at the resort itself, you can spend all day going up and down the mountains which pretty much surround the town. There are quite a few cable cars, and a train that takes you practically to the top of the tallest peak in Germany, the Zugspitze at 2962 meters, (that’s about 9000 ft.) There wasn’t enough time to do that trip, so instead we went on a smaller series of three different cable cars with some hiking in between. It took us up to about 2050 m. We actually did quite a bit of walking, if you include getting to the base of the mountain in the first place.

There were a lot of hikers on the mountain, so you don’t have to pay for a great view if you don’t want to. There were even quite a few Para gliders. We saw some of them sitting on the mountain with the chutes all spread out behind them. Then they just started running down the mountain, and takeoff!, they were airborne. Up at the higher elevations, there was a bit of snow. Not a ton, but enough that at the restaurants they were shoveling it into big snow banks. We took a walk downtown, but didn’t really see a lot of interest. Once you’ve seen one Christmas store or Cuckoo clock store, you’ve pretty much seen them all, unless you’re actually serious about buying something. Some of the other things to do nearby are Neuschwanstein Castle (the fairy tale castle) which is actually a couple of hours away, and Dachau, which is again a couple of hours away. The kids were happy to spend as much time as possible at the pool, which kind of makes you wonder why you’re paying to stay at a hotel, but hey, we weren’t paying anyway!