Several years ago on a trip to Switzerland, Heidi and I took a gondola to the top of a mountain outside of Appenzell, near St. Gallen, Switzerland. We hiked down the mountain in front of this lake, called Seealpsee. It is indescribably beautiful there - one of the most beautiful places on earth, in my opinion. I have wanted to go back there ever since, and to hike to the top of Mt. Saentis. On the day after school got out, Nash, Grant, and I drove down there. When we crossed the border from Germany into Switzerland in the mid-afternoon, it was raining a bit. We stopped at a Migros grocery store to get some "provisions" -- Rivella, Cremeschnitten, and Zopf. We drove about another 45 minutes and parked the car in Wasserauen, just south of Appenzell, and luckily the weather had cleared up. We hiked about an hour up the valley to Seealpsee. In the center of the background of the photo above, off in the distance, you can see the top of Mt. Saentis - about 2,500 meters.
This whole area is cow grazing pastures. There are a couple of guesthouses on the lake, as well as many barns and farmhouses.
We walked around the back side of the lake and bought some cheese from the farmhouse in the center-left of this picture, then we started hiking up the hill.
Here are Nash and Grant, about half-way up the cliff, looking back on Seealpsee, and further back down the valley where we had parked the car.
We're just at the top of the cliff now, and you can see a few buildings off in the distance, in an area called Meglisalp.
The hiking trail went across several fences like this...
...fences to keep the cows in.
Yes, there really are a lot of flowers in the mountains, and yes, the cows all have cowbells.
Here's a better view of Meglisalp. The white building in the middle is the guest house, where we stayed overnight.
The only other thing in the village besides the guest house is a small church and farm buildings.
Nash and Grant enjoying their Cremeschnitten.
The next morning, we got up and started on the hike to the top of Saentis.
Clouds started moving in pretty quickly.
It started raining, and we ran into several patches of snow. 
But we eventually made it to the top. It was cold, rainy, and windy, so we only took this one picture at the top, and then went into the guest house at the top to have some hot chocolate.
Here are some pictures of the trail from the way back down the mountain.
We finally got out of the rain and the clouds, and down to an area called Mesmer (we took a different route down than the route we came up), with a large snow field in front. We went quite a bit slower than the 4 farmers we saw from the farmhouses at Mesmer who walked down the snow and the rest of the trail at about 4x our pace.
The trail is marked by the white-red-white stripes on the rocks and/or signs.
Grant, crossing a stream with the run-off from the melting snow.
The Seealpsee valley.
I have been dreaming of playing frisbee in this valley for more than 10 years. By the time we got there, we were all so exhausted and our legs were practically shaking because we had climbed 4,500 up and 4,500 feet down in less than 24 hours. We threw around the frisbee for a few minutes, then kept walking.
While we were walking from the back side of the lake toward the front, the farmers were all gathering their cows into the barns for milking. A short, old farm woman was walking down the hill, about to cross the trail in front of us when she asked us if we wanted to see a flower that the cows hadn't bothered to eat. It took me a few minutes to fully understand her because of her thick Swiss accent, but we said yes, and walked up the hill a little bit and she showed us this flower, which she called a Fire Lilly. She said the cows had eaten all of the grass and other flowers around it, but had left that flower there uneaten. She said it is a really rare flower, and called it the queen of the mountain flowers. In this photo, above, Nash is looking at her as she was telling us about the flower.
As we were coming around the side of the lake, we had to stand to one side of the road to make way for the cows. Cows generally have the right-of-way, we found out.
We then saw the 4 farmers we had seen earlier, booking it down the hill from Mesmer at an amazing pace. They had been down below in the Wasserauen area, and were bringing some of their cows back up to graze near Mesmer.
After getting back to the car, we drove over the border into Liechtenstein. We drove into the capital, Vaduz, to check things out. Apparently the prince of Liechtenstein still lives in this castle, above the town of Vaduz.
We walked up the hill to the castle and to get a view of the valley. Here's a shot of Grant and Nash, with a view of Liechtenstein, the Rhein river, and then Switzerland in the background.
