Day 7: HIKING in Monta

Keeping true to my promise of no food pictures today, we start out after breakfast by driving to a town recommended to us by Alessandro...known for its Sentieri (or hiking trails).  The trail we selected, after wandering in the town center for a while, was called Sentiero Religioso.  A 3 hour either straight up or straight down hike that covered 7 or 8 kilometers (nearly 5 miles).  The Italians rated this hike, on a 1 to 3 scale with 1 being the easiest and 3 being the hardest...a 1...are they noceto?  We went down through wooded forests, along a ravine, up through mountain side vineyards, down through another forested chute and back up again where no tractor could attempt to go...yet there were vineyards there too.  I can't imagine what they would rate a 3?  Probably the hard side of the Matterhorn...

 Dan enjoyed waiting for us most of the hike... We came across some beautiful flora and fauna (mostly flora) and these looked very much like fennel plants...and they were everywhere around the ravine that we followed for part of our journey.  In other parts there were tons of butterflies, since this hike was right next to the butterfly and bee path...guess why we didn't pick that one :)))

 Where we think we hit the half way point, there were a few benches and we were able to look back on Monta..our starting point...which you can see just over Dan's right ear.

 It was at this point where the name of the hike made sense.  All of a sudden, we found ourselves in the midst of  13 separate small buildings, each of which housed a Station of the Cross.  The individual buildings were designed simply, yet the life sized sculptures in each one had a profound effect, and caused my heart to praise the Lord for His sacrificial death on a cross for my sins....

 The initial sculpture, again fully life sized, was of Jesus in the Garden of Gesthemene praying.  You can see the angel giving Him strength, while on the back right side, his disciples were sleeping, and in the far back is a group of soldiers coming to arrest Him, being lead by Judas Iscariot.

 We finished the hike around 4:30 and in the center of town was a gelateria...couldn't have been more perfect.  Since there will be no photos of food we ate today, I did at least want you to see the quality of the artwork they put into their gelato.  There were ice cream desserts fashioned after plates of spaghetti, after various types of pizza, and this one colored and shaped after a burger and fries.  keep in mind this is all made of gelato ice cream!!

 We ended up with a small panini sandwich and ice cold water..until we returned "home" to the Casa Ressia..showered and had some time to catch up on email.  I think I caught Peg relaxing with the Netbook and writing to Sam...

 Just as dinner time was approaching, in rides our hero, Alessandro, also our host at Casa Ressia, to give us a suggestion for wood fired pizza in the local area.

Nice Ducati Alessandro.....this could explain the room rates:)))  The road to our pizza stop had words across a barrier saying "Interdito"...which I took to mean, "go slow as you figure out how to get around this barrier and keep going on the road".  Well it must be my Italian translation skills needing a bit of work, because we quickly came upon one half of the entire road being collapsed from floods. Never knew they made these Ypsilon Lancia mini cars as 4 wheeling monsters...The wheel clearance just made it up the broken gravel "ladder", just barely, and at a higher rate of speed than would have been suggested in the manual :)))  With all of my Italian translation skills, I took the next set of taped barriers and big red X signs to mean, "keep going again, because it can't be any worse up ahead..."  Hmmmm, did I miss interpret those too? The entire right side of the road had dropped about 4 feet over a 30 foot length, and there was enough room for my little car to hug the left side, next to the field of mud and grasses, and barely make it through without causing further destruction to the road bed.  Had that happened, or if my car would have been wider than an ice chest, I would not be writing this blog, nor would we have had pizza, nor would we have been found yet at the bottom of the ravine.  Thankfully, we chose not to return on the same route after dinner....a wood fired selection of 3 different pizzas...all excellent, but enough about the food already!  Did I mention the pounding Dan took in our pre-dinner Scrabble.  Now dad sleeps well tonight!!!  One more day hiking around (to Barbaresco), and then on Thursday we get to pick up Ben in Geneva, and immediately head for Grenoble where he spent his formative 7-9 years of age, to enjoy memories and more great times....We will be staying with our dear friends, Phil and Grace, who we knew back in the late 80s, who we worked and worshiped with and who had befriended Dan this last year..to bless him greatly...more than they'll know!  Lord bless them, Ben's flight and may our upcoming days all together be joyous and give glory to You!!!  Ciao Bella!