Navigating the woods near Bled

This past Friday, we got up at 5:20am to catch a prevoz ride to Bled. We (especially Jedd) have been using prevoz a lot. It's a ride sharing app where people post times, spots available in their car, and their phone number. It's cheaper and quicker than taking a the bus to most place we want to go. 

Our adventure to Bled wasn't spontaneous, we had both been feeling desperate to get into the mountains and we had been invited by Irena to go on a little sightseeing tour through Slovenia's only National Park, Triglav National Park, and the neighbouring Parco Naturale Regionale delle Prealpi Giulie in Italy. There is a partnership between the two parks and many stakeholders to create a shared ecoregion across the Slovene-Italian border. More about this in another post.

Our prevoz driver was very nice and spoke near-perfect English. He seemed to particularly enjoy using colloquial phrases and swears. He was generous with ideas and his time as he picked us up and dropped us off at locations that were convenient for us. He is currently seeking his master's in security studies and doing a thesis on radicalisation. You can imagine the intense and interesting conversation that followed. I (Whitney) was very ready to get out of the car by the time we got to Bled--around 7am. 

We walked around the lake (approx. 20 minutes) and enjoyed the beautiful morning with striking mountain views, lovely reflections on the water, and views of the impressive Bled Castle and island. Using a map whose scale was much too big for our intent and a bit of reading from a guidebook, we ventured into the woods in search of a few trails to nearby small peaks and what we thought was a trail connecting us to another trail that would eventually lead us to the border of Triglav National Park: our adventure goal for the day.

Everything was covered in leaves and we were constantly asking ourselves if we were on the correct trail and consulting the map for guidance. Early on we spotted a group of chamois. Really--they spotted us and kept their eyes on us as we kept crisscrossing each other throughout the morning. They were incredibly beautiful and looked so special to us. We later discovered they are the most common mammal in the woods of Slovenia, but we don't mind that. We also both spotted, a few minutes apart, a few big-horned sheep who were much less interested in us and who quickly fled over the next ridge. 

We had several lovely views back down over Bled, enjoyed the woods and trying to understand the jumble of trail blazes, and the views into the foggy valleys below. A few hours later while we were still trying to figure out where the connecting trail was--we'd doubled-back at least three times, resorted to using google maps on Jedd's phone though he had no service, and consulted the map with a compass countless times--we found ourselves edging our way down a steep slope as we aimed for where we knew the other trail was. The problem was, we didn't know how to get to it. 

Though taking this bushwhacking circuitous route wouldn't be my first choice, a lot of lovely things happened along the way. I felt so much joy to be reminded of my childhood exploring through the woods, tramping around looking for the trail, and trying to figure out exactly where we were. I was very pleased with how Jedd and I managed to keep talking to each other throughout the struggle. We often thought we should take different paths or move in different directions, but we always found a way to keep communicating. In some ways it felt like a lesson in marriage. In other ways it just felt like another time we got ourselves lost in the woods by being prepared but not quite prepared enough. 

Once we found our way to the path, we laughed out loud at the *second* trail sign we'd found that morning and how easy it was going to be from them on. After eating our lunch of quiche and apples, we headed up the wide and well-marked trail a mere hour and twenty minutes from our destination in Triglav Park. As I'm guessing you can now imagine, this leg of the trip didn't go quite as planned either. 

Our path intersected with logging trails countless times. For a while we could justify it on the map, but eventually we got stumped when we ran into a road that seemed too new to be correct, a road that seemed to take us in the wrong direction, and two signs that might have pointed at each other, except that one had fallen down and nothing was perfectly clear. We made our way to a little town and though we could have taken the road to the border of the park, we decided to take another trail that would take us back to Bled. It was laughable how little time it took us to get back. What had been about an hour and a half in one direction, only took us about fifteen minutes in the other. Next time, we'll bring a better map. And maybe we'll read a few more trail descriptions first. Oh and just to be clear, spending 8 hours wandering in the woods, though frustrating at times, felt like the most wonderful way to spend the day.