A Day Trip to the Black Forest

A few hours southwest of our home in Bavaria, lies the famous Black Forest. You may have heard of it. Black forest ham, Black forest cake or cuckoo clocks ring a bell? Well if so, that's because all of those originated in Germany's most beautiful forest!

Earlier this month, I took a weekend trip to visit my friend Candice from the states who is also living in Germany at the moment. Her husband is studying abroad down in the town of Reutlingen, which is luckily just an hours drive to the Black Forest. We all decided that it would be a fun day trip if we drove on up to the Black Forest and explored. We weren't sure exactly where to go though since the forest is so large. We eventually found directions to a lake, popped the address in my GPS and made our way to Lake Mummelsee.

We took the famous Schwarzwaldhochstraße up to the lake and it was such a beautiful drive. Schwarzwaldhochstraße is one of Germany's best known drives, filled with panoramic views of the Black Forest. Although I was driving on the winding mountain roads and couldn't look out the passenger windows for too long (I've got to keep my eyes on the road!), I was still able to witness the magnificent views and scenery we were driving through.

When we finally reached Lake Mummelsee, we decided to check out a shop right by the lake that had traditional Black Forest snacks and souvenirs, including some impressive cuckoo clocks as well. 

After exploring the shop, we decided to check out the lake which to be completely honest, was a little disappointing. It looked more like a large pond than a lake. One of the interesting facts I learned though is that it's actually a glacial lake left over from the last ice age. We had seen an awesome photograph that had been taken from above, so we wanted to see if we could find a spot uphill where we could take an equally awesome photo. There were trails that led uphill above the lake so we chose to walk up there to get an overhead view. 

We weren't sure where we were exactly going but we just kept following the paved trail that we thought was going to take us there. After a great deal of walking, we figured out we probably weren't going to find that view we were looking for. But to our surprise, we found another magnificent (and unexpected) view at the top of the mountain. When we reached the top of the mountain, it looked like we were literally floating in the clouds. As we walked closer to the edge of a cliff, we were presented with an awesome view of the Rhine plains. Later on, I found out that we were at the Hornisgrinde, the highest mountain in the north Black Forest! I took pictures but they seriously do not do the view any justice. You just had to be there to see how awesome it was. 

Shortly after reaching the top of the mountain and taking pictures, we made our way back down to the lake. We were hungry and cold so we chose to get a little snack and some coffee at the Berghotel Mummelsee restaurant right across from the lake. I had some scrumptious apple strudel and a cappuccino. It was SO good! By the time we finished our snack, the sun was starting to set so we decided it was best to head back to Reutlingen before it got too dark. 

Even though we only saw part of the Black Forest, we really enjoyed it. There is so much more to the forest we didn't see and I can't wait to go back someday to explore some more...and hopefully with Nick next time!

Have you been to the Black Forest? What other sights have you seen in the forest?