Zabljak

Red with white spot marks the trail.

Back to the Durmitor National Park today and a hike up into the mountains to try and complete a loop that hopefully brought us back to the carpark.  

By the topographic map I had it looked like about a 5 to 6 hour hike through the tree line and into the snow.  Being super well organised we started at about 10.30am.  

(These early starts are killing me.)  

Took a while to find the trail as we blundered about in the forest but find it we eventually did and we made our way up the hill and through the snow.

Jablan Jezero - Poplar Lake  

We walked for quite a while and after about 2 hours stopped and had a picnic lunch on a piece of snow free grass.  Even the most basic ham and cheese rolls taste fantastic when you've been huffing and puffing for a while.

Checked the map and decided that we'd have to move quick if we wanted to complete our loop so off we went.  

Down the wrong trail.

Jablan Jezero - Poplar Lake 

Somehow we managed to miss the marker up the hill and instead ended up down at Jablan Jezero instead of well above it.  In any case the lake had a thin layer of ice on it which was novelty as we've never seen a frozen lake before.  Underarmed some snowballs onto the surface and watched them skid across which kept the kids amused for ages.

We backtracked after we left there and found the missing turn that we'd bypassed earlier only for Max to declare 'yeah, I saw that before'.

What?!  Speak up lad.

By now we were well and truly behind schedule and I had no wish to spend the night in a snow cave Bear Grylls style so we decided to push on for another 40 minutes or so to clear the canyon, have a rest and retrace our steps back down.  

Reached the top and had a bit of a commune with nature enjoying the views that stretched on forever.

Turnaround point

Back down was a lot of fun even though everyone's shoes were now soaked through as we engaged in running snowball fights until Captain Sensible ended everyone's fun.  (And one child was in tears.)  All up about 12kms walking in total.

Got home and put about a years worth of carbon output for the average family onto the fire and emptied the hot water system with steaming hot showers all round.  

Dinner at a restaurant about 200m from our place.  This time we got on the front foot and asked him what they had instead of choosing first.  

Dinner.
What would you like?  What have you got?

Just like a couple of nights ago 90% of the menu wasn't available.  
It didn't matter in any case as what little they had was all delicious and cheap.

Stray observations:  Don't ambush your Dad in a snowball fight because it could will end it tears.