Slovenia Mountain Trail - Day 17 - Long Distance Hiker

7/24/2022

Daily Miles: 10

Total Miles: 175

It rained overnight, which we were happy about…it seemed that the rain would be bringing in cooler temperatures. We managed to sleep until after 6am when other hikers in the hut started to stir.

We sat with a hiker from Germany for breakfast. He had recently been hiking in the Triglav National Park (our next section), so we asked him a bit about the trails.

We had to buy water from the hut this morning. This is something that is hard for us to wrap our heads around. This hut didn’t have running water for the hikers, and there was no water listed on our route for today. Spending 10 euros for 3 liters of water is a hard pill to swallow, but there wasn’t a choice.

We headed out a bit after 9am. The trail today was the most pleasant and most enjoyable of the whole trip. After a short and mild downhill at the beginning of the day, the trail mostly followed the contours of a long ridge. The air was cool, the trail was flat and in good shape, and we had great views down to Lake Bled and to the peaks of Triglav National Park. For a bit, we had wispy clouds come in and obstruct our views, but it was ok because it made the air even cooler.

Parts of the trail today were right on the border between Slovenia and Austria. We have noticed a major increase in German speaking hikers in the last day and a half. Most hikers don’t respond when we greet them with “Dober Dan” but when we switch to just “Hello” we might have a better chance at a response.

We ended up having time in the afternoon to lay in our hammocks. There were some nice spots to hang about twenty minutes from the hut. It was really relaxing to hang and read or listen to a podcast for an hour in our hammocks. It felt like a treat since we haven’t been able to do it many times in this hike.

We got to the hut a bit after 4pm. We got a cold drink, sat on the porch and had views back over the route we had walked today. We eventually went up to our room and got cleaned up a bit. Thankfully this hut has running water, so we can wipe ourselves down…it has been 5 days since we were able to shower in a hut.

We were happy to see that Leah is staying at this same hut tonight. We haven’t seen her for about a week, so it was fun to have dinner with her and catch up with each other. As we were finishing eating, a French couple that Leah has been hiking around arrived and sat with us while they ate dinner. It was such a fun evening of chatting. We didn’t leave the dining room until 8:30pm which is quite late for us, but we were having such a great time.

The hiking today and the great views made today our favorite day of the trail so far. Hanging with good people at the end of the day was the cherry on top.