On July 4 2009, Emily and I were in the Swiss Alps with our 4 month old daughter when the storm pictured above rolled in. Despite living 4 years in Portland and 2 years in Bavaria (where it gets alot of rain), we found ourselves unprepared for the wet weather. If this sounds familiar, see our July 4th 2008 blog, or just keep reading.

This picture is from our July 4 2008 experience in the Italian Alps. Notice the approaching storm and the naive, silly Americans who didn't bring any rain gear for themselves or for their young kids.

July 4th 2009, Swiss Alps, yet again-no rain gear. This is after some kind lady took pitty on us (as we were huddled beneath a tree trying to keep Lyndi dry) and insisted we take her rain jacket--which was a nice North Face rain jacket. We were very grateful, but felt embarrassed and basically expected the next passer-by to give us the crappy parents of the year award. I'm happy to report that we can be taught and bought a rain jacked and umbrella later that evening. (In our defense, the skies were blue in the morning and I'm pretty sure Lyndi enjoyed the rain and learned a valuable lesson that she will probably never forget.)

It's easy to see which one here stayed dry.

I loved seeing cows up grazing on the high mountian grass, with bells ringing. The barns/stables (the locals call them Alps) are where the cows are kept at night and where the cows are milked twice daily. Check out the large ceremonial bells that are kept beneath the eaves. The cows only wear these big ones when they are being moved to or from the winter lowland pastures/barns.
The farmer is trying to move his stubborn cows into the stable. With his alpine walking poles he certainly doesn't have the typical American Cowboy look. I kind of felt like I should help him get the cows in, but the tourist in me forced me to get the camera and camcorder out.

Tough guy and tough 4 month old girl with the "Valley of Waterfalls" behind us.

Emily and I really loved Trummelback Falls. Basically this is a river that drains snow and glacier runoff from the Eiger, Monk, and Jungfrau mountain range. Lots of water with lots of power.

I basically had a really serious look and a death grip on Lyndi the entire time. This really isn't a river you want to fall into.

With the amount of power behind all the water, one could imagine how, over thousands of years, this river could cut a very narrow ravine through hundreds of feet of rock.

The river drops about 460 ft in elevation in a series of 10 waterfalls (deep inside the mountain)that one could walk right up to through caves. The waterfalls flow at about 20,000 liters of water per second (that's a lot of water loosing a lot of elevation very quickly). Each year the river carries 20,200 tons of swiss alp rock off of the mountian--that's why the Alps are getting smaller every year and in several hundred thousand years they may be mere hills.

This really isn't in order. The above pictures were from the later part of our Swiss Alps trip.

I will post the first part of our trip later.