28 June 2007

Flaach, Switzerland to Steinen, Germany
It was cloudy but not raining. We hoped to make it all the way to Lorrach today to our warm showers host which meant a long day, so we enjoyed a nice, early breakfast with Ruth at the B&B and were on the road by 8:20 cruising down a long hill through town. Then came the climb that we had started yesterday before turning around. We cruised quite well, following the well marked trail signs. We decided that either the signs are getting better or we are getting better at spotting them or maybe a little bit of both.
The sky was threatening rain all day but we only had a few short sprinkles off and on. We crossed the river to the Germany side at Kaiserstuhl. We had a nice lunch on a bench right next to the Rhein and had a bit of a second lunch shortly afterwards when we turned the wrong way on the trail and found ourselves not too far from a grocery store and bakery.
Our steady pace continued. We made a brief stop in Bad Sackingen for a look at the St. Firdolin Munster (chruch) and we made it to Rheinfelden a little after 4:00. We crossed over the river into Switzerland to get to the old town section of Rheinfelden where we thought it would be easy to find a phone and call Dorothee (our host) at her office in Switzerland. The only phone we could find was a card-only phone which didn't help us at all. So we crossed back over into Germany and found a phone after asking a few people. Our original plan was for us to ride into Basel, Switzerland where Dorothee works and meet her somewhere. Well, we were a little overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of Rheinfelden and weren't very confident that we could find our way to Basel which was close to 18 more kms, so we told Dorothee that we would follow the bike route to Lorrach, which we saw a sign for on our way in, and meet her there.
So off we went and soon we were lost. The signs no longer showed Lorrach and we were riding next to a very busy road and didn't know when the bike path on the side of this road would end and we would be on the road with the cars, a situation that seems to be unheard of here in Europe. This main road would have taken us directly to Lorrach, but instead we followed a hiking path sign (these are everywhere in Germany, too) toward Lorrach that a gentleman on the street confirmed was probably the best way to go by bike. At Eichsel we turned left following a sign that pointed to Lorrach, but then the road split into 3 and there was not another sign anywhere. We asked a farmer which of the 3 roads would take us to Lorrach and he directed us. We climbed a bit on this road until it turned into gravel. Then we came upon fork after fork in the road and all there was to guide us were wooden signs with hiking trail names on them. At this point John was fuming and it took Marie's c!
ool head to strongly suggest turning around before we got really lost in this forest area. We went back to Eichsel and were looking at the map again when a man tried helping us. He told us that the way we had gone is the best way to get to Lorrach on a bike. He showed us a map of these logging roads, but there was no way we were going to go back that way. Marie calmly asked if there was another way, perhaps on the road we had come in on. He said we could go that way but there would be cars on this route (heaven forbid!).
So we climbed on the road over the small mountain and had more challenges as the road split again in 2 places. Finally just before 7:00 we arrived in Lorrach and rode around a bit looking for a phone. Dorothee graciously volunteered to ride back into town to escort us to here home which was 7 kms away. She had waited for us in Lorrach earlier for a bit but then went home figuring that we might have found our way there. She came rather quickly and we were finally in Steinen just before 8:00. This was our longest day of the trip so far and we were beat, so Dorothee's shower, nice dinner and great conversation was truly appreciated.

Kms 123.84
Time 8:00:33
Avg 15.4
Max 44.3
Total 2530.9