Adventure Day

September 5
Today is our first Saturday in Swaebish Hall. Mickey cooked some scrambled eggs for everyone this morning. We decided to go on a hike/walk together this afternoon. I suspected it was going to be a long one because most of our group is the “get up early and run around” type. And so our 4 hour hike began at noon. We didn't have a specific direction we wanted to go, but we saw the nearby castle up on a hill so we set that as our target.
The castle was a cool little place. We got around to the inside but they were doing some repairs to the street. We couldn't find another good way up so we climbed up on the the inner part of the wall, which is a walkway all the way around the castle. We took a break next to the big church in the center of the place. It wasn't open so we couldn't go in.
From the top of the walls we could see hang gliders off in the distance by some kind of tower. It was a long ways away, but we decided to try to walk up there and see what we could see. We had to walk to the next town, which is where we had to change trains on the way to Swaebish Hall. It was called Hessental.
From Hessental we caught a brief look at the tower up on the hill and just started walking in that direction. We saw two little hedgehogs on the side of the road and played with them a little bit.
The road we took split off into a nice looking trail and the main road. The trail was going in the right direction so we took it. It turned out to be very muddy and steep. After a horribly tiring climb we finally got to the top and rested. We still had a little more road to cover, but then we got to the top of the hill.
I wish I had some pictures to show, but I don't. Everybody else took pictures and I'll get them later. The top of the hill was a nice grassy field with a great view. The tower that we saw earlier was part of an old church with only the walls still standing. The tower was open though and we got to go in and go all the way to the top.
We played around at this little park at the top of the hill and took some pictures and then tried to find a better way back to Swaebish Hall. We took a more direct route through a field. It was a steep trip down but on the way there was an apple tree. I was the only one in the group who hadn't brought an apple with me so I picked one from the tree. Most of the apples were bad, but I found one and it was fantastic.
The trip back to our rooms was long and my feet had really started to hurt. I was so tired when we got back around 400 that I took a shower and then a 3 hour nap. When I woke up me and Jesse made some spaghetti for dinner. It was probably around 9 by the time we were done. One woman came into the kitchen to make some food. I think it's Ramadan, because she was there around that time the day before.
I hung out in the kitchen with Jesse, Mickey, and Amy for an hour or two and then went to sleep.