Another overcast, yet beautiful morning.  The forecast was for sunny and 80’s, so we welcomed the 60’s and overcast to start.

What did concern us, as it always does, is the immediate downhill once we’d biked out of the small town of Lieheim.  As we’ve learned, what goes down, MUST go UP; and up it did.

Actually, we had a nice steady climb up (not easy, but not ridiculously steep) with beautiful countryside,

after our early downhill fly; this we could handle………‘this’ would not last.  Still, we cannot forget to mention the required churches nestled in every town along the way or

a glimpse of the Rhein.

Today is actually one of those days we should just let the pictures talk (and they would say it was an awesome day), but then you would miss out on the Incredibly steep hills we had to climb.

And you can’t have a really steep incline without a ridiculously steep fly down from the heights we had struggled to climb for so long.  But the view at the bottom was awesome,

unfortunately, the ridiculous amount of pictures we took of this waterfall at Rheinfalls,

will never do it justice, but we try, nonetheless.

The climb from the Rheinfalls was the toughest, 14% or better, and it went on and on.

But it was the only way out and there was so much more to see.  And if we forget, in all the climbing, to say what an incredible day of sights it was, please note that it was unbelievable!

Again, a day full of bikers and finally an opportunity to take a picture of some of the young ones.

We stopped for our picinic lunch on a bench along the road and took in the sights of Diessenhofen, Switzerland

from across the river.

okay, just one more…..

We crossed the German and Switzerland border numours times, luckily, they no longer check passports at every crossing.
Throwing in a little contemporary architecture,

before we return to the Enchanted Forest
and then Stein am Rhein…..this is where you should just click on the pictures.

Scattered among the incredible towns and beautiful fields

were steep but short climbs, then we drop to the Bodensee/Lake Konstanz, the start of the Rhein and one of our goals.

It is a huge lake

and we wound around through parks,

villages and farmland to our destination, Radolfzell.

Unfortunately, every single hotel (and there are dozens) was booked.  We decided to bike on to Singen, which was the direction we had planned for the next day.  As we followed the bike path out of town, the sign said we had 17 kilometers to go …….not good, we were tired. The highway sign, however, showed 10 kilometers.  Sitting at the intersection, apparently looking very confused, Michael

comes zooming to a stop beside us, asks if he can help and then leads us the shortest way into Singen.  It’s not a tourist destination stop, but it was a hotel, a hot shower and dinner, as we were hungry.
We were still trying to figure out which way to go;

>These are the signs we desperately cling to along the way <

and we were rather disappointed that we had reached the Bodensee and only spent a couple minutes there.

THE Bodensee is the beginning of the Rhein, the culmination of the beginning……if that’s not too grammatically and geographically incorrect…… We had actually completed the “Ride of the Rhein”.  The Bodensee, it’s where it all began and it was over in a flash.

So tomorrow morning we will start with backtracking the seven miles we did last night, and spend some time touring the Bodensee.