Saturday, April 27, 2019

Drachenhole and the Nature Adventure Path, Furth im Wald, Germany

Natalie had a few fun trips planned with the Girl Scouts this spring, and one of them was to see the world's largest walking robot (superlative!) followed by a nature hike so I quickly volunteered for that adventure!  If there's a superlative involved, I'm there!


But first... an Easter photo at church!


And second, a pic of my little buddy up at bat in his baseball game!


The group took a quick group picture at our first stop, the Drachenhohle.  


The Drachenhohle is a small, but really cool little stop.  It contains the largest walking robot in the world!  Superlative!


There's a little museum that shows you the history of the Dragon - we got a big kick out of this photo from 1900.  You're not fooling anyone!


Every year they put on a big production at the Dragon Slaying Festival, which they've been doing since 1590!  In the play, the knight must save his wife from the fire breathing dragon.


Suuuuuper creepy.


Cutie girls with the dragon, who is interestingly named Traddino (but he's not a dinosaur!)  This dragon has a wingspan of 12 meters and he's 15 and a half meters long!


Traddino was "born" in 2006 (although this is his predecessor and my kid) and was certified by Guinness as the largest walking robot in the world!


The best part was that he was soft.  I kind of wanted to jump up there and fly away on him, but I'm not a Targaryan, so he probably would have just burned me alive.

Next up, we drove closer to the nature path and enjoyed a picnic lunch.  The girls in my car (Aili, Natalie and Lily) ate on a log outside of my car.  For peace and quiet, I ate INSIDE of my car.


Our next stop was a beautiful hike at the Nature Adventure Path!


The Wildgarten had a bit of a flooding problem back in 2010!  But really, isn't this the best use of a floodplain?  A hiking trail!


Helpful little maps tell you which direction to go and what you can see along the way.


The first big stop was the pond you could view from under the water.  You can see some fish, but it's pretty murkey.


There's also a bunch of random metal statues of animals all around.


They have a little area where they raise tadpoles into frogs.


You can then follow the trails through the forest - this particular section bounced as you walked across it.  The kids had fun tossing us around!


The trail is very easy and almost entirely flat as it's solidly in a floodplain.


Hello there little frog! I see you spying on me!


The area surrounding the floodplain is hilly and beautiful.


Did you do a no rise certification on this structure over the stream?


OMG y'all.  I was SO excited when I saw this. I mean, other than the fact that they put a structure DIRECTLY OVER THE RIVER.  But look!  It's on pilings! And the pilings were EFFECTIVE against the flooding that happened in 2010!  The structure didn't flood!


The little hut, as it stands today.


Little cuties hanging out in the trees.


Agh, it's just so pretty!  I'm so happy to finally see green again!


The little ones found a big swing near a little hut and everyone took turns swinging.


Meanwhile, Mommy took a break and enjoyed the scenery.


Michele and I were missing our friend Justine, so we sent her this selfie of us with Pennie.


Continuing on the trail, we spotted a wooley mammouth made of... sticks?


Honestly, this trail kept getting more weird, the farther we went.  Here, let's put a Grim Reaper statue right here in the middle of the stream.  Sure.


And then we'll randomly have a fake dinosaur skeleton waaaaay in the back.


And next to said fake dinosaur skeleton, we'll throw a fake skull on a post right in the middle of the stream, too.


As we made our way around the trail, we came across a really cool tree house that the girls all went in.  It was called, "A Castle in the Air" and it was "in keeping with our philosophy, 'Courage to Wilderness' from oak and larch as grown."


We had the girls line up and snapped a quick pic of all of them.


Whoa!!!  As we were about to leave, we walked past this super old tree that had fallen in a (somewhat) recent storm.  How big must this tree have been?


Before we left, I had Michele snap a pic of me and my girl.  Notice the forecast called for rain all day.  And so we wore layers and rain jackets and snow boots (because hiking in rain boots would suck.)  And of course it was sunny nearly the whole day.  Germany with it's crazy weather!!!

Until next time, Drachenhole and the Nature Adventure Path!

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