ghost of nature.

in this last round of pictures from our france visit ( before we moved on to the tiny federal state of saarland ) there are more mountains involved, and due to bad preparation and the worst memory you can imagine, i can't locate a few of them anymore. i'm also seriously wondering what else we managed to do in those last few days, except of wandering around aimlessly. on one of the last days we visited an agricultural fair as well, but as i had to realize i haven't even documented that properly ( except i did, but not with the camera, more with this tiny gagdet called smartphone ;P ). on another day we met up with our renters in the afternoon to eat delicious blueberry pies and visit a cascade and another mountain - la planche des belles filles, plank of beautiful women.  we started with foggy weather on our last day. our goal was ballon de servance, but on our way there we stopped a few times to check out some different mountains - we did a lot of ballon hopping that...

on my birthday i wanted to do a little bit of hiking ( in my case that's more a strolling around than real hiking, though ) and on our way to many of our destinations we had seen signs of something that had to do with a land of 1000 ponds. i was really intrigued to find out what that was about and soon learned it's basically a geographic area spanning from luxeuil-les-bains to the servance mountain with lots and lots of tiny little ponds and lakes.  by now you probably know that i'm a huge loner and need a lot of freedom and that's especially the case when my birthday comes around. so for my birthday all i wanted from my parents was an exploration through this magical land, the land of the thousands ponds , which is actually a pretty remote place - a little bit out-distanced and forgotten. and it was truly that, mystic and a little bit eerie and haunting. i think this was literally the place i always talk about when i'm in a misanthropic mood, the place i want...