(Most of) the luggage has arrived

Today two of the remaining three suitcases were delivered to the hotel where we ended our ride.  Marko is still odd man out, but we are hopeful we will see it tonight.  Upon opening my bag, I realized I had packed too much - although I hadn't planned on wearing the same clothes for almost 4 days!

Today's ride was from Logarska Dolina to Kranj.  It was really beautiful.  The ride started out challenging - about a 9km climb with grades ranging between 6-7% and 10-12%.  A steady uphill, with not really any flat parts.  But it was up through a forest, on a rode with no traffic.  When we got to the top, we are in Austria.  Nothing at the border; an old border crossing station was boarded up with no one in sight.  The downhill was quite nice, and that led to another uphill climb for about another 6-7km in Austria.  And that was it for climbs today.  There was an option to do a killer climb at the end of the ride, but I wisely chose to head back to the hotel along with probably half   of the group.  There are 4 days left of riding and they will be hard.  No need to have left it out on the road today.

We are staying at a lovely resort - the Hotel Brdo in Kranj.  It is a lovely setting, in a park in which there is a very modern conference center.  The weather continues to be spectacular (hope I didn't jinx it), and even though it starts off a little cool each day we have seen sunny skies and the threatening clouds that occasionally appear have not yet delivered.

Tomorrow we go from Kranj to Bled.  It is a long day with what appears to be 4 significant (read - steep) climbs.  The climbs here are shorter than the ones, for example, in the Pyrenees, but they can really be steep.

One observation - everywhere we have gone we have seen stacks and stacks of firewood piled ever so carefully.  And it is not just a few of the houses, it is every one.  In keeping with the general neatness of the country.  I have seen two pieces of litter over two days of riding.  Amazing.

I'll post a couple of pictures.

 A view from the Austrian border looking back into Slovenia.

A village on the road to Kranj.  And below the view looking the other way.

More pictures that Tom took.

Also, there are these religious "shrines" all around the country side.  Many of them seem quite old; others are very new (which makes you think that the newer ones came in only after the Communist regime left power.