It was hard to leave Campiglia Marittima, but with Marion and Ron we headed by train north to the mountains.

We settled for a week in Corvara, a small town in the Dolomites north of Venice and just south of Austria.

After the stone villages, olive groves, and vineyards of remote Tuscany, the mountains offered quite a change.

The rides are just as dramatically different from the friendly, rolling Tuscan countryside. The mountain roads feature plenty of climbing, some of it really steep for long long stretches.

Steep down too, high speed for 20 and 30 minutes.

Much of the climbing is civilized by the kind of switchbacks that make a cyclist's mouth water.

The tight turns can be pretty thrilling on a descent.

Many of the passes have numbered turns--nice for counting down as you work your way up.

And sometimes you can look way ahead and enjoy the switchbacks from below.

Along the way we encountered tunnels; thank goodness the pavement in them seemed to be consistently solid as it could be dark in there.

There are plenty of different things to look at other than pavement, such as beehives:

And alpine cows:

We were amused by this pair, neither of them chargeable of course, in the rare Tesla slots:

You can usually reward yourself for climbing a pass by stopping for coffee at the hotel-bar that is feature of almost every summit.

Mark had wisely advised us not to skip the strudel.

But there were plenty of other treats on offer.

Though hotels and restaurants seemed not to crowded, June turned out to be a very popular month on these roads. There were hundreds of other cyclists but also every other kind of traffic--more than once we waited among the cars and trucks while a giant tour bus negotiated the switchbacks. We especially had to get used to sharing the roads with big groups of fast motorcyclists, drawn to the area for same reason we are, of course.

By chance, our visit coincided with Sellaronda Bike Day, when a loop of 58 kilometers (36 miles) over four passes is closed to all other traffic. We were looking forward to joining this circus but cold rain moved in and we are old and experienced enough to know a hard ride in those the conditions isn't any fun--we've done plenty of them. We were pretty impressed by how many tougher or more naive cyclists took to the road anyway.

This is how it looked on the way up the Passo Gardena, though, and at the top:

Pretty much all the riders went into the bar at the summit to get something warm and steam a while. Harlan found one guy in the bathroom holding his cycling kit over the warm air from the hand dryer.

Hiking is a happy alternative to cycling out of Corvara. If you don't want to spend time getting to the heights or back down, you can take the lifts.

Of course the upper areas are also set up for skiing, so there is infrastructure including maps with various ways of presenting information

And strudel!

Even short of getting into technical climbing in the highest heights, the terrain and the wildflowers are gorgeous.

Harlan and I had an extra day after Ron and Marion headed home so we were able to fit in a bit more hiking, taking advantage of a long ride on the lifts.

A short hike got us to the Franz Kostner hut.

Real climbers get shelter here, and also, of course, coffee and strudel.

And they can take advantage of what has to be one of the world's most beautiful clotheslines.

We had wondered on our way up what this patch of artificial turf might be for:

OH! It's a take-off spot.

On our way down from the hut we stopped to watch a tandem launch, a kid with a guide. The parents were there; I'm not sure how they could stand it. After the take-off, as we walked together toward the lift down, the father told us he thought it would be a lifetime experience for his child--and had "fibbed" that he would fly too.

Well saturated with mountain miles and strudel, Harlan and I headed back to the US with a stop in Ohio on the edge of Lake Erie, west of Cleveland. By pure luck we were there for the perfect annual conditions when the mayflies emerge from the water in an overnight flight. In the morning we found surfaces covered with them.

And lawns:

And trees:

And the steering wheel:

And glasses frames:

This all seemed to be nearly ho-hum for the locals, maybe because it involves a fair bit of sweeping up after.

It just goes to show you can travel the world but come on home to find wonderful things too.

Finally, a wave from our little gang in the high passes:

And a shout-out to the photographer!