After lunch Bradley took us two towns to the east and up three lift sections to the very top of the area...Planplatten. We saw hang glider packets and hang gliders, enjoyed the little museum inside which included an alpine horn which Doreen and Donovan blew on. Doreen was also rather tickled to see the sign of Berlin way up there. Before we went down a thoughtful couple from Florida took pictures of (half) the family on a rather narrow mountain top.
We enjoyed seeing several of our older kids while we were sledding. Though I didn't get a picture of the boys, it was fun to see them in action. Dustin and Danika also enjoyed going down on their bottom sides when the sled was in use. :) Right before going down for lunch we got a shot of half the family in direction of the lake.
The three little ones and I met Bradley, Dustin and Doreen and went up the mountain together. We had sleds along which they enjoyed on a relatively empty and steep decline!
The first evening Kevin was able to get a room big enough for both camp groups together at our facility. After good singing and Bradley's message, the kids enjoyed some refreshments and then hiked back up for a game time together back at the youth house.
After lunch everyone went up for more fun in the snow. By 4 p.m. the sun was setting behind the mountains. By 5 p.m. the last lift came down. So, sometime during that last hour the kids would catch the public bus down to the camp house or come to the vans and be driven down in shifts. (Top-bottom: Donia and Lavonne; in the lift together: Bradley, Dustin and Dalene; Doreen and Lavonne)
The camp kitchen sets up tables with soup and veggies to go with the breads everyone made in the morning. Candy bars and fruit are offered as dessert and snack for the afternoon. This year the snow conditions were good enough to ski all the way to the parking lot. This was Dustin's and Doreen's first time on skis.
When the kids first go up it is still dark, but soon the sun peeks over the mountain tops and bathes the winter wonderland with its beauty. That second pictures shows Devon (on the right) on his snowboard. The next pictures were taken coming down off the mountain for lunch. This time the picture of the valley actually shows the airstrip and the Brienzer Lake in the background. Here are Lorraine and Danae.
To get from the parking lot to the YMCA houses (our camp group had its own separate house) we had to cross a bridge beneath which was a creek that was frozen over. High above us we could hear and see the water cascading down. Danika, Donovan, Danielle and I bundled up a little bit later and went out mid-morning to the fields below the houses. We were with three other couples and their kiddies. Donovan and Danika went right over the edge into the branches below and had to be pulled out of the their upside-down positions. At that point we decided to move over a ways to a safer spot! I was so thankful that they were neither hurt nor scared off from going down again!
On the first morning I drove Bradley and the kids (down through Dustin) up to the slopes, so that I could have the bus to go up at lunch time with the little kids. The steep and narrow roads were always a challenge, and I was so thankful to the Lord, that I never met traffic going the opposite way at the wrong time! I also never had to drive on icy roads! The one day it did snow, I stayed home and we kept busy outside. :)
The picture of the girls was taken right outside our dining room window, the next one as we walked up to the bus. The last three were taken after I had dropped them off. Hohflu is the name of the little village we were in, the valley and lake below are the Brienzer See towards Interlaken (at this time of day you are only seeing clouds :)), and the little hut is the bus stop. Our ski passes doubled as bus tickets in the whole ski area.
Based on the desire to "buy out the time", the skiers and boarders hit the slopes by 8 a.m.. By that time they have gotten ready, had breakfast and a group devotional and fixed their own lunch packets. Our campers are always among the first to hit the slopes.
Fourteen hours after leaving home we arrived in Hasliberg, Switzerland, dropped off Devon and Donia who were able to stay in the youth house, and the rest of us went down to the other house five minutes down the steep mountain. We were welcomed with a nice supper and got settled into our room. It was perfect for us!
On Wednesday Bradley and Donovan readied the car for the trip. Little did we imagine that only 22 miles down the interstate on Thursday morning Bradley would call me on our walkie-talkies (which had been our Christmas gift for each other and can be used up to a distance of three miles) asking me to pull off immediately. He had lost complete engine power. I was ahead of him, so I inched backwards along the very busy German Autobahn. Once there we hooked up with our towing rope and slowly made our way to the next exit. At shortly after 6:30 a.m. it was still very dark, but we were able to see a pull-off at the first intersection and waited there for the tow-truck Bradley called. Doreen, Dustin, Donovan and Danika all sat up high in the truck on their trip to the garage. (Donovan was worried because the truck didn't have enough seat belts for everyone!) The driver later told me they had been singing their Christmas program songs as they drove along. The car was declared irreparable (a broken timing chain), but we asked them to let it sit until we returned and could have it checked out. They also had a very small rental car which we were able to use for the week. So we re-shuffled everything and were on our way again three hours later.
