More Mountains

My favourite phrase lately - Good Grief!
This surely suits for this day's travel arrangements. Most of you do know by now that I'm terrified of mountains don't you? I must love Gerhard.

After Venice - we went through the Dolomite Mountains which run from Italy to the border of Austria. It's the only way to get there from Venice. The range is unlike any you will see in the world. It is wild, rugged, pointy and beautiful. Gerhard has decided to call them JoAnne. Words escape you as you are treated to one peak after another and can't possibly snap pictures as fast as you drive.
As we passed into the Austrian Alps, we started to ascend the mountain range towards the Grossglockner. Good Grief! In the morning we had news that one of the passes was closed. I was starting to relax thinking that we wouldn't be able to go up but to no such luck. It's a national park which has 36, count 'em, 36 switchbacks. Now, to anyone who has ever taken a switchback - especially on a bus - one is way too many. 36 of 'em was my undoing. To tell you how high and dangerously close we were to going over, Gerhard said that he would never do it again. He said that it was exciting and thrilling, but........
The snow was 4 meters high and small avalanches continued to make their way down the mtn sides to fall onto the main highway. We had to stop our bus two times as we saw the slides and had to wait to ensure that the snow would not fall onto our bus and turf us overboard. The snowplows and blowers were on constant guard. One side of our highway was covered with huge banks that had become so heavy with warmer snow that they couldn't keep their place. Up at the top was 7 degrees plus a wind.
We got to the top and stopped for lunch where I promptly had 1/4 bottle of wine to soothe my nerves. Would have taken valium if someone had given it to me. At the top, we had a snow ball fight being sure not to hit the bus driver in his ever-important eyes. We descended the next 22 switchbacks where I could finally stop watching the floor. We stopped in the Austrian valley at a chalet for the night where I had a huge nightmare - just guess the subject of that dream. That's it for mountains for me!!!!!!