Relaxing In The Alps

Pam and I met lots of friends during out time in Anchorage. A few knew of our romance before I left the USAF and we married. (We’d had to keep things secret before that.)

I can’t even remember how we met Brad and Lana, only that we immediately became close, close friends. (The header photo on this blog is from a canoe trip we took together with them.)

Brad and Lana came over to visit us while we were living in Germany. We took them lots of places during their visit, but high on our list was a trip to Tiers, a wonderful spot right in the middle of the beautiful Italian Dolomite mountains. Yes, the same spot with the terrifying ski lift I wrote about earlier.

We stayed at the same penzione Pam had found a couple years earlier. It was a wonderful, amazing place that she’d stumbled across in some oddball travel book.
Brad and Lana fit right in, and the stoic Gasthaus hostess immediately took them under her wing. Brad and Lana both came from farming backgrounds, and somehow that connection seemed to fly right over language barriers.

The husband half of the Gasthaus host team was also the leader of an alp horn trio. We were lucky enough to be there one evening as he and his group ran through a practice session.

Words can’t describe the haunting beauty of alp horn music echoing off the narrow canyons in that area. No, Ricola commercials do not do it justice. No recording could. Thankfully we got to experience it live, right there on the front patio of our little hotel.

Just this week I got a card from Brad and Lana with a few wonderful photos of our times together. This one of Pam, I, and Brad enjoying the evening practice was one of them.
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