Day 10

Day 10 The Wild Wild West So after fretting about the threat of rain and the closure of Plitvicka National Park, we decide to stick to our best laid plans and head into the mountains for a day of trekking. Lovely drive up into those limestone mountains we have been looking at the whole trip.

Park is an aberration of nature, topography and chemistry. Seems moving water over limestone allows for the formation of calcium carbonate while still water remains supersaturated. As a result you get the Yellowstone effect at waterfalls where it precipitates out to form white coverings on rocks. In this case we didn’t see anything like Yellowstone except what seemed to have deposited on the bottom of the electric boats used to ferry you around and the painting of what looks curiously like an American Native American in the Hotel lobby.

Geology has created 16 lakes cascading off the Eastern side of the mountains and an amazing set of waterfalls connecting them. Because of the recent heavy rains many of the trails were closed so instead of 6 we got 3 hours and an electric boat ride on our little friend Slap here and didn’t even need to have CaCo3 scrapped off our bottoms. With all the time we saved we went back to the hotel and took strategic advantage of this great little corner shower with small tub enclosure to do a very much-needed “load” of wash. The Italians will not be able to smell us coming now.

Rain holds off for the day but boy what a lighting storm after midnight. Windows flashed all night. Kept waking me up so of course I would have to check on the progress of the Hawks with each flash and somewhere around 3:30, way to go Hawks. Now if the M’s could just close the deal. Oh, and it seems the curse is broken. Internet still up and running. Maybe I better not push my luck and just post this. According to Wikipedia: Calcium carbonate is a common substance found in rocks in all parts of the world, and is the main component of shells of marine organisms, snails, coal balls, pearls, and eggshells. We didn’t’ see any coal balls either but we are keeping our eyes open just incase.