Hikes in the Jura, June 2009

Dwight Peck's personal website

Kristin's visit: June 2009

Maddening months at work, trying to migrate a very large Web site to a different technology, and no end in sight. It's time to take a break and, as luck would have it, Kristin's coming for a visit.

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

Additional summer hikes in the Swiss Jura

We're back from France now, what a lovely place that is at its best. Now for a few weeks preparing ourselves for the USA.

Today we're out looking for weird erratic boulders with trees growing out of them (20 June 2009).

There's one. We're in the Creux d'Enfer near Grand Cunay, good hunting grounds for weird boulders.

Here's another. Whole ecosystems stuck on a rock.

Kristin warming to the chase for strange erratics.

And another, with a neat tree.

This is one of the super karst holes in the Jura, along the side of Grand Cunay with a nice wall carefully built round it to prevent injuries.

But what are walls for, anyway? Over we go.

A good view down into the calcareous depths. Not me. I never get within 2 metres even of the wall.

-- But that's what curiosity is all about. -- No, it isn't.

Here we are, another day (21 June), in the Amazon rainforest: Teny and Kristin and the jungle canopy closing down on us.

-- Where are we, really?

-- This way.

Not really the Amazon, it's just the depths of the Jura at its most luxuriant.

Pesky barbed wire in the way

Pesky cows in the way

Cows in retreat

Another day (5 July 2009), the Reguéla meadows

The farm at Les Frasses

A nearby summer hut

Kristin's gone to Wisconsin now, and today I'm out searching for deformed trees in the Jura. That's Lake Geneva from the ski club hut above the Correntine farm, 12 July 2009.