August 6: Southern Switzerland

We woke to a beautiful morning at our campground 

We first headed back north to Interlaken in order to go around the lakes and mountains and head further south towards Zamatt.  We drove through secondary roads over mountain passes where the roads were excellent and through little villages that had extremely narrow roads with house and building overhangs threatening our ability to make it through.

This lake created by the dam in the background was near the top of one of the mountain passes

The lake and roads as we left the lake to finish going over the pass

We aren't the only motorhome parked at the top of one pass

The German names are tough to read....

Beautiful flowers, ridiculously narrow roads with building overhangs that we had to watch for.  No, this is not a side street in the town, it is the main road!

Huge difference in building materials from France's stone and brick to all wood - heavy and dark, old and sturdy

Most town homes are dark wood, but the church is bright white

We saw many of these wood outbuildings with an open space between the two floors - never did learn the whys or whatfors.  They may have been early homes with animals downstairs and people upstairs???

We stayed the night in central southern Switzerland with every intention of going to Zamatt and the Matterhorn the next day.  But early the next morning, we had no electricity.  It was not any of our fuses or circuit breakers and the campground electricity was fine.  Something was very wrong.  Without electricity while staying at campgrounds, our batteries would eventually drain and then we would have problems keeping the refrigerator and water pump working.  (For the RV literate, our generator would recharge the batteries, but generators are not allowed in campgrounds and if we were not driving long distances, it would be cumbersome to find a way to run a generator long enough to recharge.)

We were planning to visit friends in Italy, just south of Rome in a few weeks.  I spoke with them and they said they had a local friend who was an electrical whizz that could help us. We decided to skip Zamatt and headed due south to Italy. Jack eventually found the problem - our magical voltage converter box failed - the wires inside were actually melted together.  So, it became an issue of our friends fixing or replacing the box when we got there.  Simple.