On July 13th, we had one of our most fun travel days going from the city with one too many J’s to Crnivec, which is a tiny town near Lake Bled, Slovenia. Typically our travel days seem to take up the whole day, even if the travel itself isn’t supposed to take very long. Because of that, we typically don’t plan anything on travel days aside from maybe strolling around our new city and getting the lay of the land. Well, on this particular Monday our drive was only 35 minutes, and there is SO MUCH to do around Lake Bled, I planned a very aggressive first day of fun in addition to our drive, and it really paid off!
It helped that our new landlord had the place ready for us whenever we arrived, so we were able to drop off all of our bags and briefly settle in when we arrived at 11:25am. Our place in Crnivec (pronounced CRNIVEC) was so idyllic! Our place came with a nice-sized yard that had a little swimming pool and trampoline, and we were surrounded by farmland with the Julian Alps off in the distance. We even saw a baby cow and a baby horse on separate neighboring properties as we were pulling up.
After an hour prepping for phase 2 of the day, we took off for Vintgar Gorge for a 5.25-mile hike that took us about 3 hours and was one of our best hikes of the trip. The first half was on a wooden boardwalk that zigzagged over the Radovna Valley River and reminded us a lot of our canyon trek in Bali, and the second half cut across a mountain side with unbelievable valley views that eventually led us back to our car.
(story continues below after a lot of pictures…)
With energy to spend, we drove 15 minutes down to Lake Bled and started the 3.75-mile hike around the lake. Again, the views were absolutely incredible, and due to the current downturn in tourism, we had the trail mostly to ourselves. At about the halfway point, I had tentatively planned a separate offshoot hike up the mountain on the Mala Osojnica (pronounced STEEP HIKE) trail. We got to the trailhead at 5:30pm and everyone seemed on board, so up we went! My journey on that trail ended with a bout of vertigo on step 59 of an 80-step 70-degree ladder, but the rest of my family powered through and were rewarded with incredible panoramic views that I am only now seeing for the first time along with you all on this blog post.
We got back down to the lake at 6:50pm and limped our way for the final 2 miles of the circular lake hike where we rewarded ourselves with some delicious dinner at a nice restaurant called Pizzeria Rustica. We didn’t get back to our place until 9:15pm and couldn’t believe we had done all this on a travel day! Our total foot-mileage for the day was over 14 miles, which made it one of our longest walking days of the whole trip. It was truly amazing, our bodies were exhausted, and we couldn’t wait for what the next few days held since we had booked a total of four nights in this magical place in Northwest Slovenia.
“Pronounced STEEP HIKE” – LOL – beautiful pictures and fun post to read. Thanks for bringing us virtual travel this summer!
Thanks for joining along on our journey!
Amazing views! I am in complete a of all of your boys but especially Keegan for being such a trooper to hike that far!
Also thanks for sharing that it in such detail. So fun to read about and see all the pictures!
Yes, he is such a trooper! They all are, but it’s always the youngest whose endurance is most surprising 😄
14 miles?! I am utterly impressed Hartshorn family! The water looks far too tempting to just have to walk by. How beautiful!
It was so hard not to jump in…there were a couple areas where the river was slow and the water was plenty deep to jump in from the wooden boardwalk. We all agreed it would’ve been amazing to get in, but alas, rule-following won out over our impulses.
Beautiful pictures!
Thank you! I took at least one of them, minimum.