Dolomite Mountains, Tyrolia and Innsbruck, Austria

The day started gloomy with heavy overcast and lingering moisture from a steady overnight rain. This was my first peek of the Dolomites, and the realization came that the night's rain storm had sprinkled the peaks with fresh snow. What a moment for me! If the clouds would continue to break up, it would be a great day of photography. They did, and it was.

We had warm temperatures, and the snow melted quickly on the peaks. By the time the sun was fully out some of the lightly dusted areas had already melted off, but plenty of snow was left for good pictures.

Groomed ski slopes can be seen in the mountains behind Cortina d'Empezzo, Italy.

Chapel near Lienz, Austria, May 28, 2011

Street scene in Innsbruck.

This photo does not do justice to the impressive peaks shown. I was looking up a steep valley here.

Lake Misurina, Italy, looking west. The sweet air around the lake has not gone unnoticed-the Italian national center for treatment of childhood asthma is located here.

Ski resort of Lienz, Austria. You can see some of the slopes of the huge Lienz Ski resort at the left of the image, which has an impressive vertical drop of about 4500 feet.

The clouds slowly gave way to the sun that morning and in the process produced a variety of "peek-a-boo" mountain scenes like this.

Austrian roads were narrow but well kept. This is a major traffic corridor, equivalent to a U.S. Highway.

More clouds are burning away and the views got better and better. Not sure where this is-perhaps near Silian, Austria. Thanks to our bus driver Sabino, our windscreen was always spotless!

Some of the Dolomite valleys are quite steep as you can see here. We are heading south on a road that will take us to Lake Misurina, Italy and on to Cortina.

The water in the adjacent river had the soft, light blue color that only appears in glacial runoff.

The deeper we got into the mountains the better the scenery became. A proliferation of aging wooden stake fences along the roadside added to the ambience.

Lake Misurina, Italy. The lake was surrounded by rugged peaks. We stopped for about 20 minutes, and I used all of them to literally run from one photo vantage point to the next. I was selecting places to stand before the bus ever stopped. At several places I was the last to board the bus, but I always made the time window given to us by the Tour Director, Werner Hartlieb. You could not ask for a more kind and accomodating person to run the tour.

The Grand Hotel Misurina at Lake Misurina, Italy. The 1956 Olympic speed skating and other skating events were held right on the surface of this lake-the last time a natural body of water was used for that purpose. The Olympic host city of Cortina d'Empezzo, Italy is only about 10 miles away to the west, and popular hiking trails connect this lake to Cortina.

The high pass in the mountains still had overnight snowfall lingering. This was before we reached Lake Misurina.

Image may look tilted but this is the way it looked from the bus.

Looking south from the beautiful resort of Lake Misurina, Italy. The white patches in the grass are snow lumps. Two nearby battles in WWI took many thousands of lives and one lasted TWO YEARS, with opposing forces only yards apart at times on a near vertical mountainside.

Rugged mountains on the road (SP 49) to Lake Misurina, Italy.

The tiny wooden guardrail was not much comfort to a luxury tour bus full of people! I was hoping our veteran driver was familiar with the awesome views and had his eyes on the road. Every time I glanced at him, he did.

This scene reminded me of Maroon Bells in Aspen. With all that snow above melting each year, I wondered if there was a nice, blue lake around the bend..