Exploring the forest in snow

The cars being running so well (touch wood) and I've even named him 'Gunter' as it suits. Yesterday we decided to drive from Kaltenbrunn, where we're staying, towards the Czech border and the Bavarian State Forest. Zac just typed in 'mountain peak' into the GPS (which is using Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice ofcourse!) and one came up as being just over 20km away so we thought we'd just try it out of curiosity. Even just the drive getting there was beautiful with some amazing views from hilly areas right over the Czech border.

Actually where we're staying is slightly north of here, but you get the idea...

So many cute little villages everywhere and many streams, rivers and lakes.

This lake is still frozen in the middle

We kept following where Arnie told us to go until the road changed into an unsealed road and was covered in snow so, even though Zac was egging me on to drive through the snow I didn't want to get stuck, so we then got out and walked the rest of the way.

The end of the road for Gunter but beginning for us on foot

It was beautiful walking through the forest with snow on the ground and it was surprising how thick the snow still was and was quite deep in some areas so we had to be careful our socks didn't get wet because we were both just wearing our sneakers. Although at one point Zac stepped onto a 'frozen' stream which broke under his footing so he had wet socks within 20mins of leaving the car, boys eh?! 

A little cabin/bunker we found

lynx?

These hunting posts are all through the forest

Zac took this photo with a new filter he brought so I can't take the credit for it

 I can't remember the last time Zac and I went hiking together, we were exploring the forest for around an hour and walked maybe 3 kms or more. Zac was full of energy the whole time and kept remarking on how good it was to be able to walk so far and not get sweaty at all. I saw an opportunity to slip in a remark about how if we lived here permanently, life would often be like this, pretty sure he saw straight through it but I don't like to miss an opportunity...