Sneaking into castles and restricted military training grounds...

The past three days have been Justin's so called "vacation" that he earned by working on his days off (as always)! Usually this would warrant us to take some sort of extreme trip but I sort of dropped the ball on planning. I'm blaming the fact that we are still recovering from our Fasching celebration... It is just so hard getting old. Even though we had nothing previously planned I was determined not to let this time go to waste, despite sleeping in and getting late starts almost every day. My main request during our time off was to see another castle. Luckily there just so happens to be one only 10 minutes away!

After a sketchy drive on tank roads and through military (german and american) training areas we arrived at the trail head only to find the main pathway leading up to the castle was closed. Do you think that stopped us, of course not! Being the adventurous, resourceful couple that we are we found an alternative route that led us up the backside of the ruins.

There were multiple trails stemming from the ruins and we found the most interesting one to take exploring. The hike was beautiful, I felt as if we were walking through an enchanted forest in the middle of s fairy tale. I can understand how the Grimm brothers were able to draw inspiration for their stories from this gorgeous countryside.  The trail came to an end suddenly and were left with the decision to turn around or else make our own trail. We of course decided to make our own and Justin figured the best way to do that would be to clamber straight up to the top of the mountain. Which we somehow managed to do without dying only to realize we had ended up on military training land where "firearms" would be used on trespassers. Awesome. Using our limited survival training  aka follow the river downstream, we were able to get back on original trail unharmed.  By this time I had had just about enough adventure for one day and we carefully made our way back to the car.

On the way back from the castle Justin took me through the town of Reichen and past the house of "sign guy", you may remember me mentioning him from an early post as the guy who wears army gear, thanks all of the soldiers and loves the United States. Him and his family were loaded onto trains bound for a concentration camp during WWII when American troops intervened, saving everyone on the trains. He has now made his house a shrine for peace and love.

It was the perfect ending to the perfect day. Don't worry there will plenty of more adventure to come!