1 July 2007

Kirchzarten, Germany to Steinach, Germany
A partly sunny sky greeted us this morning. We experimented with some "just add milk" pancake mix. The first 2 we made were pretty thick but tasted fine stuffed with Nutella and bananas. The next 2 were a little better, but we decided that the mix was really a crepe mix and probably would never satisfy our longing for the pancakes that we know.
We picked a route last night that looked like it might give us some panaramic views, but you know what that means -- a lot of work! And a lot of work it proved to be. The first 8 kms were flat and then the climbing began when we made the turn north toward Stegen and then Sankt Peter. We thought that parts of this climb were very steep until we continued on past Sankt Peter and hit the steepest climbs of the trip so far. It was about 20 kms of climbing before we arrived in Kandel at 1242 meters. There was a panaramic overlook there where we settled in for our lunch break watching the parasailers taking off from just in front of the parking area. In the distance we could see that the weather looked a bit hazy and probably rainy. There were many motorcycles parked up there, too. We had noticed many of them on the road with us today.
Before leaving we bundled up for the huge descent into Waldkirch. This was also very steep and we passed many crazy cyclists making the climb just as we had been passed on our way up on the other side. This was one of those steep, windy descents where you need to stop once in a while to give your hands a rest from braking so hard and so often.
At the bottom we had about 10 kms of flat riding in a valley following the Elz River (is that name a coincidence?) before making a turn just before the town of Elzach. Of course, the sky was now cloudy and as we were enjoying an ice cream in the valley it began to rain lightly.
The light rain continued off and on as we climbed very gradually at first and then more steeply. We weren't exactly sure that we had turned at the correct road near Elzach, but as we continued and saw the signs for towns pointing to the left and right, we were convinced we were going the right way. We enjoyed another panaramic view of some of the Black Forest hills shortly before another nice descent into the outskirts of Steinach where we camped. We set up and showered then had to wait out a rain shower in the tent before walking into town for a nice dinner in the Italian restaurant.

Kms 65.96
Time 4:41:18
Avg 14.0
Max 53.9
Total 2650.3