Our stake presidency chose a theme for this year “Ascending Mountains” to help inspire us to set and attain goals. As a culmination of this theme, they asked us to join them on top of a mountain located within our stake boundaries. That took place this last Saturday. We had the option of either hiking up the mountain, or riding the cable car up. At first, I wanted to hike up, but Chris pointed out the fact that our children are very bad hikers. They will walk all day long around Disneyland or Paris, with nary a peep. But suggest a walk through the forest around our house, and the groans start immediately, and don’t stop until just before we get back home, when they suddenly LOVED the walk. (eyeroll) Didn’t sound like a particularly inspiring activity to us. So then just Nicholas and I were going to hike up, and the others would take the cable car. But the logistics of that were a nightmare. The hikers had to be there at like 9 in the morning, the actual activity wasn’t until 1:30, and the cable car ride took all of 9 minutes. So the whole family would have to be there super early, and then Chris would be stuck with the rest of the kids, trying to entertain them for 4 hours by himself, 90 minutes from home.
So, we decided to just take the cable car all together. But we still had to be there somewhat early, as the tickets had to be purchased before 10:30 in order to get the special subsidized price. And naturally, we left the house much later than originally planned, so it became a race against time. Fortunately, the tickets weren’t purchased from the official ticket office, but from a table out front manned by someone from the Stake Presidency. So we were fine. Whew!
Of course, we now had a couple hours to kill, before we needed to head up the mountain. If it had been a warm, sunny day, we would have gone straight up and walked around, enjoying the view. And it was a warm, sunny day back home. But near the Austrian border where we were, it was foggy, windy, and cold. And even though we had dressed pretty warmly in anticipation of the bad weather, it still didn’t sound like our idea of fun. So we headed over to Appenzell and did a little window shopping instead. A stop at the bakery for some croissants, and a detour at the toy store where the bear is STILL blowing bubbles up on the roof, made the excursion a success.
Back at the mountain, we paid a farmer 3 franks to park on her field for the day, along with several other carloads of people, and headed up to the cable car office. 
We decided to take advantage of the bathrooms, since there weren’t many at the top, and then we were off for our ride through the clouds.
The kids waved goodbye to all the cars and cows in the fields as we went up and up into the clouds.
The mountain doesn’t go straight up to the top, of course, so the cable has a series of transfer stations, where it can change direction. It causes the car to sway quite a bit and make a slight jump up each time. If we could have seen the transfer stations coming up, we could have prepared ourselves, but each one was completely surrounded by fog. So every time it happened, we were caught off guard, our stomachs would leap up into our throats and the kids would let out a loud squeal. And no, we weren’t in the cable car alone. 🙂 But it was affecting every one else the same way, so they just laughed nervously along with us.
We got to the top which was completely underwhelming, what with there being absolutely no view.
Fortunately, our children are easily entertained with hamming it up for the camera.
We saw another family from the ward, and they offered to take Nick and Noah down the hill a bit to the cavemen cave. The rest of us huddled inside the cable car building, out of the wind and munched on cold sausage and the rest of the food I had packed for our picnic. For some reason I thought there would be a fire to grill on, and a few other families did as well, but no such luck. Oh well, they tasted good cold, too. 
We eventually braved the weather and went outside for a look around. At certain spots, the building provided a break from the wind, and it wasn’t so bad. 
We also saw several people wearing shorts, probably who had come from the same sunny place we had. It made me cold to look at them, even though I was dressed properly. 🙂
Finally it was time for the meeting with everyone. We all gathered on the hillside, huddled together like penguins to block the wind and sang hymns. I have to say, it was pretty neat. Although, not all the kids were as interested as others.
Then the Stake President passed out copies of a dedicatory prayer he had given a few weeks earlier to bless our stake for missionary work. He read it out loud again, and then we sang a few more songs. 
Just as we were finished, the fog began to clear, and we even saw the sun shining on the mountain across the valley from us. Gorgeous!
We watched the hang gliders who were crazy enough to take off in the iffy visibility, had a bit more of our picnic, and then we got in line to go back down the mountain. 
All the people who had walked up, were now riding down, so it was a bit of a wait, but eventually it was our turn. Happily, we could now see some of the mountain on the way down, which made it much more interesting and less scary. 
Here is the cave the boys walked down to. And it wouldn’t be a Swiss mountain without a farmer and a cow! 
I felt kind of bad seeing that. Surely if a cow can get up the mountain, our kids could have made it. Oh well.
On the way home, we decided to bypass the freeway and take the scenic route instead. It.was.gorgeous! And only 15 minutes extra was added to our drive time. So worth it. Quaint villages, gorgeous mountain pastures, fields full of farmers haying, lots of horses, and green, green, green! Oh, and the sun was out in full force as well. We truly live in a magical place.