Originally posted on Thursday, September 29, 2005, 04:48 AM NST.
2005? What is this?

The Dolomites are a range of mountains within the Alps that are actually a coral formation that poked up thru several thousand years ago. You can tell you’ve entered the Domomites because they appear very sharp and craggly in comparison to the large, sweeping Alps around them, as seen below…

Our base for the last two days, Cortina, is smack in the middle of the Dolomites. As you drive slowly down the mountain switch-back road (back and forth for what seems like a hundred times), all-of-a-sudden, the town is in a valley right in front of you. It was “put on the map”, or at least made reasonably reachable by land travel, in 1956 with the Winter Olympics and it’s ski hills. Lifts go in every direction. Apparently it’s a busy spot in the winter and, from what we can tell, a pretty wealthy one. In the last few decades, the area has also served as the backdrop for several movies. Despite all that, the municipality has halted further development.

We took a ride in a tramway – one of those ski-lift things, but this type holds multiple people and is enclosed – it’s route is practically vertical up to 9000 feet. Kim was “sh*tbaked!” (her words) every time I moved during the ride, but seemed fine at the top. I think the fact that she was able to take photographs while walking around up there (the glass of the car stopped her during the trip) distracted her from the situation.

We’re leaving today but still haven’t decided if Cortina is as far as we’ll go into the mountains. We’ve seen a good bit, so are considering another change of scenery and heading back west and down to the other lakes. Plus, the weather can change rapidly up here, and continuing on means heading north, further into the Alps – and entering Austria to get back out.

Randy

EDIT: Soon after this post, a closer examination of the map revealed that we could have gone north and, with a turn just shy of the border, eventually found our way back to the Adige River Valley. As will be seen in the next post though, we decided against it.

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