Flizmoos

Sitting by the campfire watching a storm brewing over the dachstein mountain range. Ok so its the mountains opposite dachstein as ants just corrected me but anyway its promising to be a good storm. We moved after 2 nights at 'camping am see' seeking something a little more private as although a lovely site we were a little too close to our neighbours. We headed up the cable car to go to the ice cave - oops i forgot to pack ants fleece so he braved the minus celcius for a whole hour for the benefit of the children tho jem was a little worried that ant would freeze to death and thought we were 'very lucky' that he hadn't with daddy doing alot of the driving plus it would be very unfortunate to freeze to death scrape the van and get food poisoning all in 3 days. Bazaar experience of 'extreme' piano tuning down the ice cave which ant heard early on to which i said he must be mad then there it was a grand piano down a cave and a guy tuning it! Cable cars close early here though so our trip up to the next level was a little too short to walk to the glacier which was a bit of a downer. There was the opportunity for the kids to go sledging though which was a huge hit as they toboganned down the slope in shorts and t-shirts. Got back to the van and did 5 weeks worth of washing and drying. Seeing the baskets stacked again and laundry bags empty was rather satisfying if not a little sad. Anyhow 108 euros down in camp and laundry fees no fishing no glacial walk (tho ant was happy that he'd managed to charge his toothbrush after some minor modifications to a travel plug), charlotte said goodbye to her straight haired friend that she'd made and shared sweets with (who needs words?), we hit the road. The phone is getting a bit wet now so may need to huddle a bit closer to ant and the fire as the storm has arrived. I do wonder what people think of us sitting under an army tarp tied onto a very large (biggest on this site) camper with climbing rope. Oops few tweaks needed to the tarp as ant just found himself sitting in a puddle better go and help....(2 hours later)..
Tarp tweaks amounted to a rapid dismantle of my carefully tied knots...individually planned indoors and executed with precision so as not to look an idiot in front of the real climbers watching with intrigue as i encased the van with an intricate rope structure. They where clearly envious of our tarp/awning and warm fire and hopefully had scurried into their tents before version 1.0 showed its weaknesses. Safely in the van, now looking like a marsh, heating switched on, floor mopped, integrated little boys room, feet up, whos laughing now climber boy :-)
All that's needed now is a plan for tomorrow and hopefully a reduction in the % of rainy days in austria which is currently at about 60%