Time for another microadventure!

In the meantime I maintain a note on my smartphone where I take short notes of places suitable for microadventures. A microadventure means a one night camper stay somewhere not too far away from home, that starts Friday after working hours.

The most important thing for microadventures is planning parking alternatives that will save your nerves on a Friday night. Germany is not “wild” camper friendly at all. That has to be kept in mind – being spontaneous may end with high fines for illegal parking or people knocking on your van in the middle of the night.

I am searching for legal parking options using park4night or google maps.

Ok, so next stop: Hausen im Tal. We wanted to try to get a spot at the camping area Wagenburg but as summer holidays started the place was absolutely crowded.
So at around 8 PM, we headed to the parking space I spotted close to the hiking route. And voila, no parking restrictions and surprinsingly no other campers (later a VW bus joined us).

As most of the time the hike route inspiration comes from outdooractive where I in the meantime even decided to get a premium membership for more routes and topo maps.

The ruins track in the upper Danube valley delivered what is promised in the description.

Above the valley of the Upper Danube once stood numerous smaller castles, mostly only on rock spires.
Often little is known about their history, the preserved remains of the noble residences are sparse. From Hausen im Tal we look at the well-preserved Werenwag Castle. In contrast, Hausen Castle of the Margraves of Baden, which towers high above the village, was almost completely demolished in 1813, although it was only renovated in 1800 by the Salem Monastery.

The Neidinger Heidenschloss was considered a castle stable as early as 1446. The high-altitude hike leads to the Schaufelsen with the former Schauenburg castle.
Above Thiergarten, the remains of the largest castle in the Danube valley have been preserved: the Falkenstein ruins consist of the spur castle Unter-Falkenstein from the 12th century and Ober-Falkenstein, which was not built until the 16th century by the Meßkirch Counts of Zimmern.

On the opposite side of the Danube we find only a few traces of the ruins of Langenfels and Wagenburg, but enjoy the magnificent view of the Danube valley.

The hike really offers fantastic views alternating with sections within the the forrest.
We only had a bit trouble finding the right path back to the parking space as there were no signs. So we had to take the road for 1,5 km which was rather annoying because of the cars on the narrow uphill (and I guess we were annoying the cars as well).

I was wearking my new hiking shoes (great idea for a long route – right ?!?) and had to switch one shoe with Philipp in between (luckily my husband does not have the largest feet – while he’d say luckily my wife lives on quite large feet).

Back at the camper we took a shower in the tiny bathroom which I always find extra adventurous (you cannot really move in that bathroom). I prepared dinner and we later on decided to drive home again as the parking space started to get crowded.

This microadventure had no happy end as we detected that we have a new water leak in the van.
After the nightmare with the roof one can imagine how annoyed we were and still are.

We plan summer vacation from mid of August and now have an appointment at the workshop 4 days before we wanted to start our roadtrip. I guess we’ll need to seek for Airbnb alternatives, the water runs from the sink under the floor out of the trunk… guess all needs to be disassembled.