The Roaming Robots

Day 5 we woke up and lazed around a bit at our campground. The first bus into Courmeyour wasn't until 8:55 so we had plenty of time to be lazy. Since we didn't know how long it would take to get to La Fouly we made sure to be up by the time that first bus came. While we were waiting a bunch of cows came by. They were really interested in our stuff and one started licking my hiking poles. I bet those were good...there was a guy at the end of the group making sure they all kept going down the road. The bus was really late and took a bit of time to get to Courmeyour since the cows were herded down the road, but it was fine. I was surprised how easy and cheap it was to get to La Fouly. You can pretty much take a bus or train the entire way around the mountain except that one pass between Italy and Switzerland. We took the bus back to Chamonix, then a train to Martigny which was really beautiful. Also really steep with great views of all the mountains. It was odd lookin

Day 4 started out well. A bit of downhill, a walk through the valley floor, then a steep, quick, uphill section before leveling out until lunchtime. Gorgeous views of the mountain from at or near the highest point on the trail - 2420m. On the steep climb up I am really slow and Raymond was just walking behind me cheering me on. Like you can do it! It was like my own personal cheerleader! After the climb up the path is just gradually downhill or level with beautiful views and lots of cows. It was so nice that it wasn't a hard, steep, uphill climb. It does end up going down to Mason Vielle restaurant where we stopped for some cold beverages and ate our lunch before continuing on. Unfortunately the afternoon was just super steep downhill to Dollone and Raymond ended up hurting his knee on the way down. It was a few hours of that steep steep down and was really hard on my joints as well. After Dollone you head across the river to Courmayeur where

Day 3. Les Chapieux to Refugio Elisabetta. It had rained all night and sounded super windy up in the mountains, there was fresh snow on the high peaks, but it was starting to clear up by morning. Since we have the uphill section first we always tried to get up and going first thing so we could get as high as we could before the sun came out of the clouds or over the mountains and made it a much slower climb. The first part of the morning was a gradual road walk up to La Ville des Glaciers - those buildings on the left hand side of this photo. Yep, but that is it. It had a dot on the map, but there is really nothing there. Continuing on we stopped for a break at Refuge des Mottets with my new bff donkey. He came over to say hello while we were sitting there. After this the trail climbs steeply up to the France/Italy border. On our next break there were a ton of sheep being herded all over the place. This guy and his sheepdogs got them all moved