Return To Skocjan Cave, 1

We spent a rain day and an administrative day in Ljubliana, the capital of Slovenia, before preceding on to Skocjan Cave and the end of our brief Balkan re-adventure. We visited Skocjan on July 8, 2018, and pronounced it the best cave ever (http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2018/07/skocjan-caves-best-ever-period.html); and thus our return. The cave was a bit mistier than in July, due to warmer river temperatures within, but the tour was pretty much the same as in July, a two hour subterranean hike, across excellent ground, half of which was the usual stalagmites and stalactites, and such, and even a couple very big rooms, and half of which was in the underground canyon carved by the torrential river Reka as it wends its way, entirely underground, to Italy and a spring near the Adriatic. We even had the same guide, Gregor, who seemed not to notice that I hung back from the crowd. What was different about this visit was that, after turning off the sound, the flash, and the screen of my iPhone, I took a number of pix, a number of which turned out pretty well, considering. See below and next post.

Preliminaries

Helpful model #14,509

At Skocjan, you can see all the stalactites and stalagmites
you'd ever need to see; unless you're a geologist or
spelunker 

But then you round a bend and climb some steps and begin to hear the roar of the
Reka; and then you begin to make out the contours of the canyon ahead; canyon,
in a cave

And are told the canyon and cave, despite their immense size,  have nearly flooded
on two recent occasions; one just last February

Be that as it may, your eyes follow the lighted trail, which hangs out over the
left bank, as it were, a couple hundred feet below

The Bridge of Khazad-Dum, as Vicki calls it

The river below

One of the older swing bridges, still hanging in there

Torrent, again

Now much further along, looking back at the trail

Vicki

More Croatian Scenes

A few more Croatian scenes...

Driving along in the northern mountains, one sees several underpasses like this

Which turn out to be animal overpasses: bears and wolves returning to the area;
we've seen a few of these in Montana and other such places

Easter eve we stayed at Kamp Zelina Dolena, as we did back in July; it's really
more an agricultural sosta, an orchard run by a farmer and his wife; he seemed
to remember us, especially after I recalled his fondness for the Golden State
Warriors, and he again brought us a couple glasses of his home-made high-test
plum liqueur; next morning, as we were departing, he brought out a couple Easter
eggs his wife had painted; a Slavic Easter custom, Vicki said

After doing Plitvice, we spent the night at the Plitvice Holiday Resort; pictured
above is its Indian village and playground

It's still under construction and expansion and typical of the development going
on all around Plitvice; we passed several such that simply weren't there last July

In addition to budget, regular, and luxury RV sites, Plitvice Holiday Resort has
tree-house cabins

Lakeside cabins (actually a sink hole)

Golfing and other recreation area (not to mention restaurant, lounge, general store)

More wilderness and Indian paraphrenalia, yet to be installed

And still more tree-house cabins; Plitvice has been discovered and soon, we
predict, will be going to a reservation system, like some popular US national
parks; you heard it first here...

Return To Plitvice Lakes, 2

Continuing our second visit to Plitvice Lakes national park, in Croatia...

On the ferry

You'd think they could just paint the thing green

Part of the ferry flotilla

More great color

 

Near the top

Great experience, again!

Return To Plitvice Lakes, 1

It hadn't been a year since we did the Plitvice Lakes (and waterfalls), way back in early July of 2018, but, as I explained earlier, being as close to them as Venice, we had to do them again. They're that great. The previous blog posts are: http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2018/07/plitvice-lakes-and-waterfalls-1.html and http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2018/07/plitvice-lakes-and-waterfalls-2.html.

It was Easter Sunday, April 21, and we figured that all the Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, Montenegrans, Bosnians, et al., would be in their respective churches, worshiping and celebrating. Well, maybe not the Bosnians. We thought we'd have the Lakes pretty much to ourselves. Our first clue that something was amiss was noticing that all the churches we passed driving to the Lakes were empty; closed. The second clue was the long traffic line to get into the parking lot. The third was that we had to drive half a kilometer to find parking. Then, when we finally got to the ticket office, we were told everything was sold out until the 1PM entry time. The place was crawling with people, unlike our previous experience, which was a weekday. This now was on a four-day European weekend, and there were license plates from Switzerland, Netherlands, France, wherever.

We got in at 1PM, still plenty of time to do the walk. For this edition, we wanted to start at the bottom and hike up to the highest lakes and falls. The angle of ascent is pretty mild, and this approach seemed better for Vicki's knee. The other difference from our 2018 experience was the season. It was high summer when we were at Plitvice before. Now it was early spring, prima vera, and the green, tiny leaves were just beginning to give the place a special glow. The day was relatively clear and cool but the light was a little brighter than before, even harsh in the early afternoon.

So much for the differences. It was still a great hike in a great place, and still among our best such experiences.

We're doing C

Starting with the biggest of the falls

An interesting shot of what it's all about...water cascading from limestone
plateaus over a 9 kilometer run; here you can see, in the distance, 4 different
little lakes and falls; there are scores at Plitvice

The color of the pools is incredible

Tiny green leaves...

A bigger lake

And more waterfalls

You can walk the largest of the lakes, but it's common to take a ferry; here, the
line is getting pretty long; I think the park service was surprised by the crowds,
but they adjusted and we never had to wait very long

Prima vera