Umbria Take 2

It's been a while since I posted anything on our blog, so Kristen kind of called me out in her recent blog post about our trip to Umbria by saying I had more photos.  OK...she's right!  Here's a quick blog post from me with some more photos from our trip.

The first shot on the left is another view of the Pian Grande up in the Appenine Mountains in Umbria. The peaks of the Sibillini Range completely surround this high elevation, flat, glacial plain.  Right now, the plain is covered with white, yellow and purple wildflowers. A really special place!


To the right is another shot of the Pian Grande, this time looking towards Castelluccio which is the highest town in the Appenines.  This mystical looking alpine town sits on top of a small peak at the end of the plain, with a backdrop made up of some of the highest peaks in the Sibillini Range.

We stopped for lunch here in Castelluccio at this food shack on the side of the only road leading into town.  The name of the place was "il Sentiero del Lupo", or "the trail of the wolf".  There really are wolves in these mountains...our cook showed us a recent picture that he took on his cell phone of a wolf right there on his property!  I personally found it very funny that this old time shepard living in a remote Italian mountain village whipped out a smart phone to show us a picture of a wolf.

The food here was really unbelievable by the way!  Homemade sausage grilled out in the rain...lots of fun.  That's Kristen, Filippo, Annemarie and Isabel having fun!

Our base for our Umbria adventure was a Dutch campground in Castelvecchio (a different mystical castle town).  The Sibillini mountains are known for witches and hermits...these photos show you why people have long thought that this was the place to come to put a spell on someone, or to get one removed.  Left to right:  our luxury cabin, the foggy gorge we drove through to get there, and the nearby town of Preci peaking out of the fog.

We really enjoyed hiking in the mountains and fields of wildflowers, and visiting the many medieval hillside towns in Umbria.  Here a few final photos of our trip:  a mountain field of wildflowers, Kristen's muddy foot from the trail in that field (that she mentioned in her blog post), and my favorite shot from our visit to Norcia (the sausage and truffle capital of Italy).