Wednesday, 13. July Part I: The Angry Dragon

13 July:  The Dragon and the Castle

Frau Heller had bought Kristen tofu for breakfast since Kristen is a vegetarian.  She had put smoked seasoning and paprika on it and then pan fried it so that it resembled sausage in appearance and somewhat flavor. She gave us some to taste the night before and said that we had to eat it all. She didn't want any--it tasted like shoe leather to her. It tasted like that to us too, but we ate some and put some in a plastic bag in my pocket so that we wouldn’t appear ungrateful, leaving just enough for the next day. 


 Then Frau Heller dropped us off near Sangerweise at the start of the Drachenschlucht (Dragon Gorge.)  The original intent was to make a complete loop, crossing over the main road and coming back through the Landgraffen Gorge which would have taken us about 3 hours.  We did start doing the Elfen Grotto detour, which is near the beginning of the Drachenschlucht, but after about a quarter mile decided it was starting to rain heavier, and we needed to stick with the planned route.  The sky was looking threatening,  and it was already starting to spit when we left.  Frau Heller was clucking anxiously over us going out in the rain and told us to call if it was too wet to do the entire route.  We left the tofu near the start of the trail to appease the dragon, but it must have given him a tummy ache because about 15 minutes into the trail, the heavens opened, and it started pouring with rain--one of the heaviest rainstorms we've ever seen.  By the time we reached the end of the Drachenschlucht at  Hohe Sonne an hour and a half later, we were drenched!  I had waterproofed a  jacket of Kristens, but it  didn’t work, and parts of the gorge were too narrow for our one umbrella. (the narrowest part of the gorge is about 26 inches wide)  

My raincoat was reasonably waterproof, but it rained so hard that I got wet anyway.   At the end, we put the umbrella over the backpack and resigned ourselves to getting wet.  We called Frau Heller from Hohe Sonne, and she came to pick us up.  “Bad, bad, bad.  Not good.  Bad”  was accompanied by much shaking of the head and clucking.  She washed our clothes and put our shoes on the water heater to dry.