Falling Water

We decided to take a daytrip into the Black Forest in search of waterfalls. There is one that we have been planning to find but when Bill looked on the internet to get directions he came across another one that is closer to us and has the ruins of a 13th century monastery nearby so we decided to head there instead. The waterfalls are called the Büttenstein waterfalls and are the largest natural waterfalls in the northern Black Forest. They are actually 7 different falls that zigzag through the ravine down 270 feet. The forestry department developed the area in 1840 with stairs and walkways along the water so you can hike all the way up through the gorge. Mark Twain even wrote about this waterfall in his book "A Tramp Abroad" where he said "It is beautiful--a mixture of sylvan loveliness and craggy wildness. A limpid torrent goes whistling down the glen, and toward the foot of it winds through a narrow cleft between lofty precipices and hurls itself over a succession of falls. After one passes the last of these he has a backward glimpse at the falls which is very pleasing--they rise in a seven-stepped stairway of foamy and glittering cascades, and make a picture which is as charming as it is unusual." If it is good enough for Mark Twain then it certainly is worth a trip for us!






It has been raining here for the past few days so it was very wet in the gorge. There was water coming down from all different places besides the main waterfall and the trees were covered in moss and there were ferns and all sorts of green things growing on the rocks and trees. I was fascinated watching the water dripping and made it my goal for the day to get a picture of a drop of water stopped in mid-air. I am still learning how to use the different features of my camera and it was pretty overcast so this might have not been the easiest goal...but imagine my excitement when we got home and I uploaded my pictures to find THIS:



After we finished walking up and down the waterfall we drove up the road to visit the Allerheiligen monastery ruins. How fascinating! They were first built in 1297 and were used in different capacities, surviving fires and lightning strike until 1816 when it was auctioned off for demolition and was even used as a quarry until 1840 when the Ministry of the Interior forbid further exploitation of the ruins. It is cool to walk around a place like this and try to imagine how it was when it was bustling with activity and in all its glory.



After that we headed towards home via the Black Forest High Road. We had to take a short detour and drove through a small village called Ottenhofen where we passed a brown sign for another waterfall. We had time so of course we had to check it out! This waterfall is called the
Edelfrauengrab Wasserfälle which means "the grave of the noble lady". Apparently it is like the other one and is a series of falls and we were kind of tired from our earlier climb so we only went to the bottom cascade. It turns out this is the one that the falls gets its name from because there is a little cave carved out of the rock with a sign next to it telling the story of the noble woman. Apparently the lady was unfaithful to her crusading Lord Wolf von Bosenstein. She ordered her maid to murder the resulting sons (septuplets!), but her husband returned just in time and secretly prevented it. Later she was punished by being walled up in the cave to starve, but then to give her a merciful death the stream was diverted into the cave. Delightful story huh? Well anyway...it was worth the hike up to there and we may have to return another time to see the rest of the gorge. I played with my camera some more and got an intersting shot of the waterfall going past the cave. Cool eh?