In order to stay cool last night, we decided no fly would've necessary on the tent. This was a great idea until 5:30am when the sun rose and beat down on our tent. No one was able to sleep past 8:30, Matt got up just to put sunscreen on.

After a lazy European breakfast of bread, cheese, and meat, Matt set out to find another bike shop to figure out what was going on with his back brake. The grease and new cable did not do the trick.

There is one bike shop and town and the mechanic barely spoke English. After he replaced the brake cable once again (after a failed attempt to explain it had already been done) he noticed the housing for the brake lever was bent a little and the brake lever was catching on that. Problem solved!!

On his way back Matt ran into the rest of the gang and they headed into town for the day. The only highlight of the town is a Benedictine abbey. It's a huge abbey (one of the largest in Europe) and has a beautiful church inside. True to Benedictine culture, there were no priests in sight.

After a quick lap through the abbey, we tried to find some lunch. Nate wanted more Donner Kabab (big surprise there) but Matt was getting pretty sick of Donner and wanted something different. So we began a search...

... and ended up at a Donner place. Thankfully there were other items on the menu for Matt.

We met a couple nice guides/carpenters (guide by winter, carpenter by summer) who gave us a couple great places to checkout on our route. It seems like half the people in this town work in construction, and construction on the roads is worse than Ann Arbor.

The rest of the day was filled with beers by the river and cooking dinner.

It turns out that this river is a popular place for panning for gold and there were many people here looking. We met a nice man from Holland who is using part of his holiday to fulfill a childhood dream of finding gold. He was going to leave today but claims he might have found something so best of luck to him!

Tomorrow is a long and grueling climb over another pass and then down to Andermatt!

This morning we woke to the peaceful sound artillery fire (our campsite was right next to a Swiss military facility.)

Nate and Mark rode into Chur to pick up some more vitamin I for Nate (has he talked about how old he is lately) and a spoon and some glue for Mark (shoe is coming apart.) Matt held his post at the campground charging phones in the bathroom. By 10:00, we were already to leave, and we started our ride up the Rhein Valley (not sure if I spelled that right.)

After a full day of downhill yesterday, starting back uphill was grueling. Luckily, the first part of the ride was on a slight grade, and fairly easy.

However, as the valley narrowed, we began some serious climbs. The Swiss seem to like bringing the bike route up to every little mountain town. At times it felt that they used the valley as a giant half pipe, biking down one side and the up the other as we continued up the valley.

Are original destination today was Ilanz, but we made it there by noon and so found a local place to have lunch, and continued to Desentis. We made it here by 4, grabbed dinner at the local grocery store, and then biked down to campsite, setup, and cooked dinner. It's not even 9 yet, and we're all ready for bed.

Tomorrow we have a rest day. We'll go up to into town, and figure out something to do. No plans yet. We're all getting ready for our ride up and over to Andermatt in two days. Should be an intense ride.

Today started with Matt running to the bike shop to get a new back brake cable installed after we learned it's difficult to shove a cable back down the tubing.

Thankfully the bike mechanic was a nice Scottish man (so he spoke English!) and was able to repair the cable in 30 mins. Though it didn't solve the problem with the back brake, he suggested that just applying some grease would make it go away. We'll report back on that tomorrow.

With just an hour delay we were on the road at 9:45 heading to Chur. The first excitement happened just 10 km out, with Mark skillfully bobbing and weaving through a heard of cows (some of which were excited to see one another...).

Chur is in the Rhine Valley and requires biking through a pass. It was a 625 meter climb that seemed to be quite popular with the local bikers and didn't have much traffic. It was a grinding climb, but we all got great pics at the top so worth it.

The downhill was a blast. We reached speeds of 60 km/hr (but we were safe Dad!). Besides one more small climb the rest of the ride was mostly downhill. We went about 100 km today but probably 75 km were riding downhill.

The scariest part of the trip wasn't the hills but the two 1km long tunnels the route put us through on a 60 km/hr road without a shoulder. We pumped hard to make it through that!

The descent offered some great views but we were going to fast to take pictures so we just have a couple.

We're in the tent down, about to snooze. Tomorrow we're up for another climb (these alps seem to be pretty hilly). It's a beautiful campsite though so it makes it all worth it.

I'm going to keep this short, because my battery is going to die soon, but today was a rest day in St. Moritz. It was raining in the morning, so we waited until 10 for the rain to stop, then rolled out of bed and ate breakfast. At the campsite headquarters we found maps of the area and found a tram to take up to around 10,800 feet. After much debate, and realization that neither of the maps we picked were oriented with north at the top, we found the bus route we needed to take, and got ready to go.

Just getting the bus was an adventure. There's a bus stop right outside the campground, but we walked 20 minutes in to town so we could buy tickets at a kiosk instead of talking with a bus driver. Unfortunately, the kiosk's credit card reader was broken, and didn't accept credit cards. We tried putting the card in forward, backwards, and upside down. Whoops! The card got stuck in the machine upside, and required Matt to walk back to camp (40 minutes round trip) to get the leatherman while Nate and Mark explained in broken German/French/English that the machine was broken to others trying to use it.

The credit card came out with no issues when Matt came back with the leatherman and we waited for the next bus. Unfortunately, the bus only runs every hour, so we walked back to the campsite, just to eat up time, and waited for the bus there.

After 2 hours in total, we finally just bought our tickets from the bus driver and took the bus to the tram. We bought tickets for 69 CHF (gag) and rode two trams up to 10,800 feet. The tickets included lunch, so we got lunch and beer at the restaurant there, and looked at the beautiful view. (Well, actually the cloud, but every so often we could make out mountains).

After lunch, we met some other Midwestern folk from Iowa and chatted with them for awhile (during which we decided touring through Iowa might have been a better idea) and then took the tram back down and the bus back to the campsite.

In the afternoon we walked through St. Moritz. It's a really nice town. Every single designer brand clothing line you've heard of has a shop here, and some lines you've never heard up. We weren't that interested in spending more money today, so walked back to the grocery store, picked up some more beer, and walked back to the Doner Kebab cart for dinner. Dinner was Doner Kebab again, and afterwards we walked back to camp to drink some beers and relax.

Nate did some excellent repair on his panniers by sewing some patches on them. Matt attempted to repair his brake cable that was getting a little stuck (stuck shut, not stuck open, so that's good at least) and the great combo team of all three of us destroyed the brake cable, so first stop tomorrow is a bike shop. (We have some extra beers, maybe they'll take that?) but after that, we'll be on our way to Chur. Or maybe spend another, cheaper day in St. Moritz.

Anyway, my phone is nearly dead, so I'll let Matt upload photos. We're all having a great time! Nate even seems to be enjoying it, during the trip, which is a rare event. Until tomorrow, or in s few days when I get battery.

Tl;dr Lots of up

Though it did rain a little last night, we woke up to a sunny clearing. After a light breakfast of bread and granola we started the day with a nice 500 meter climb. Thankfully there was a beautiful view and whatever the German word for ice cream parlor at the top.

That was the worst of the climbs but there were more to come. On the way down we set up a picture of all three of us and also found a small castle which we later deemed to be a look out tower.

After two hours we had only gone 20 km, due to all the hills, we had 55 more to go. The next 40km were the same. Unlike the Austrian paths, which were paved and took us along the river, the Switzerland paths take us from mountain town to mountain town along dirt roads. With the sun out, it was sweat city for us. Thankfully all along the paths in both Austria and Switzerland they have these drinking water pumps. It just took us 3 days to figure out they were drinkable.

As we approached St. Moritz the path leveled out, but a strong head wind took over. Even with Nate's bomber lead, we were still averaging 15km/hr on flat dirt roads.

With 10 km to go we were all feeling it, and so bought some Swiss chocolate crackers to cheer us up.

We decided to bike through St. Moritz to get to our campsite instead of staying on the north side. After all the path followed a stream, how hard could it be? Turns out the stream was more of a water falling creek and there was a lot of hard pedaling to insure we made it up. Whoops.

Thankfully we made it though (also, shout out to Mark's superb navigating) and have the tent all set up.

Everything here is extremely expensive but we were able to find some cheaper Donar Kabob (much to Nate's delight) that filled us up for dinner.

It's beginning to rain again so we're off to bed. Thankfully tomorrow is a rest day to prepare for another climb after that.