The Black Forest

Here is a map of our drive through the Black Forest, and then back through Colmar and a little of the Alsace Wine Route.


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View Black Forest in a larger map

While this didn't cover the mileage of our Normandy, Mt. St. Michel excursion last year, it may have been more taxing because of the windy roads of the Black Forest.  

Crossing the border into Germany was a non-event.  The passports that Gina had on her lap stayed there.  There was no border patrol, no one even seemed to be spot checking.  It is harder getting from New Jersey to New York.  When we crossed back into France we did see some French border guards randomly stopping a vehicle, but there was no wait.

I used this site as a starting point for this day trip - 10 Things to See in the Black Forest, beginning with the view of the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse.  You go up for miles to get to this view, and at times the car looks to be too close to the cliffs for comfort.

I can sum it up in one sentence from Bean . . .  "If you don't want to have words, please drive slower than you normally would."  This involved pulling into some convenient pull off zones to let faster drivers pass.

The time it took to drive a short distance curbed our ambitions for the day.  We originally planned to go to Baden Baden, the Triberg Waterfall, as well as a visit to Freiburg, we cut all three of these destinations (although we did drive through Freiburg).

After the ascent into the Black Forest, we headed to the Hohenzollern Castle, which sits on an isolated mountain that can be seen for kilometers as you approach it, much like Mt. St. Michel.  

There is a parking lot about halfway up this mountain, the rest you have to walk up.  I questioned whether we wanted to spend the time hoofing it up, but Gina was determined after driving all this way.  (This was the furthest east that we went)  It took about an hour to walk up and tour the castle, then walk back down.  There were hundreds of steep steps, far too many to count.

We did get a few good pictures of the view.

We were happy we did this . . .

But we probably won't be back. 

After this we headed to Colmar, but didn't realize that we first had to descend from the mountains of the Black Forest.  This took much longer than we anticipated, requiring many Oohs and Aaahs from Gina, when navigating between trucks driving alongside us.

We made it back into France, and headed to Colmar (that will be another post).