Alpine vacation

On Thursday July 31, we drove from Olivet to the small southern Alps town of Saint Firmin (southeast of Grenoble and just North of Gap, if you're looking at a map), where we stayed nearby for a week in a mountain chalet owned by the woman who also owns our apartment in Olivet. This date is significant because it was neither August 1 nor August 2, the traditional start of many French vacations and the first Saturday in August, respectively. On these days, the roads heading south from Paris toward the Mediterranean become parking lots. Saturday was the worst, mostly because most week-long rentals run from Saturday to Saturday; we saw later on the news that even the Parisians who thought they would beat the traffic by hitting the road at 4am on August 2 found themselves stuck in traffic.

Oh, the mushrooms? Not the Alps, but rather a strange highway rest stop playground we stopped at on our way south just outside of Lyon.

The chalet was wonderful, not really near anything at all other than a swimming pool and playground, both of which we used extensively during our week in the mountains. We were two kilometers from town -- i.e., Saint Firmin, not exactly a booming metropolis -- via walking paths and we had a great view (see below). We didn't have internet and never switched on the television for a week. Instead, we did things like catch grasshoppers and traipse through mountain meadows, as shown in these two pictures (Betsy is wearing an elastic jump rope around her waist, because you just never know). There were delicious springs bubbling into old-style stone tubs of different heights, presumably for horses and laundry back in the day, that we happily used for refilling our water bottles with just-out-of-the-fridge-temp sweet water.

We also spent quite a bit of time simply sitting on the balcony of the chalet and looking out or reading. The view pretty well speaks for itself. We looked out on numerous mountains, a cute valley far below us, and the clouds, which drifted by below as well as above us. To the left was the peak called Le Banc du Peyron (9110 feet), shown here. To the right was a whole chain of peaks (up to 8400 feet), which is what Cricket is looking at in the next picture.

When not trying solve back issues of the New York Times Crossword puzzle with Cricket (thanks, Alan and Linda), Dave played around with joining two digital photos together to make one, with moderate success as seen here:

All in all, it was a week of not a whole lot doin', which was really great for all of us!