A treasure in Odental

We turned an 8 kilometer Geocaching tour into a 18 KM one, because the first day we tried it, I just couldn't go on, we'd already been caching for hours, and I realized that we were close enough to home to bring Baasha, so why should we do this area without him?

Today we got the chance to finish it, with Baasha. Since we were starting from our house at the other end of the loop, it was an additional 2 hours. Baasha was game to carry our backpack and lunches and water and camera.



We ran into a bunch of cute Icelandic horses.










"Come talk to us!"











They remind me of wild mustangs with all their hair and the way they bunch up so close to each other.








Like they have no personal space.










Check out the mane on this one!












I want the one with the beautiful hair: )




We also ran into lots of people out riding (galloping) Icelandics, since the big Icelandic farm is right there. One of the riders called Baasha a "big horse!" and I smiled cuz he's never been called that.

We stopped at a station where we had to answer some questions about a historical building called Kochshof. The sign out front said built in 1149. It was gorgeous! I was taking pics of the renovated barn and this man came over and said, "You're welcome to come into the courtyard and take more pics, and I'll give you a tour if you like." I was like "YES we're interested, but unfortunately I have a horse." The man said, "No problem, you can tie him up."





He pointed to the rain downspout and I thought, "No way am I tying any horse to a rain pipe" but then I grabbed it and realized it was no American pipe, it was really robust, and Baasha ties well, so there he stood.







The flag flying out front had a stylized bird on it, and the carvings around the place did too. The place is there for hosting travelling boy scouts, "The Order of the Migrating Bird" if I understood that correctly. I said, "Where are the birds?" and he said, "They're not literal birds."







It was like a museum, going in there.










Here we are standing on the second level looking down. There was so much pretty ironwork, and he showed me the outbuilding where the ironwork is made.










My favorite part was the bread house. It was a tiny house with an old bread oven in it.









I saw no fireplace and asked "Where does the fire go?" and he said, "In the oven itself. You clean out the logs, and then put in the bread!" He explained to me the order of the breads, you always make dark bread first, then white bread, and finally, cakes. He showed me this wheelbarrow looking thing where the dough rises, and the little wooden breadboxes are for baking.







The main building used to be a barn, from outside that is obvious, but now it hosts the boy scouts and their families.










There's Baasha, tied to an outbuilding where they do the ironwork.









I loved the tapestries.












Next to the breadhouse was a semi-outdoor fireplace area, and next to this was the chicken coop. "I found the birds!" I said. Black chickens?








Baasha pooped on the courtyard (of course) but the man refused to let me clean it up - he said he'll put it on the compost pile.

As we were leaving he pointed out the lantern is from a ship.










I love this type of simple, rough ironwork! (While I hate the fancy flowery kind.) I think the woodwork looks bavarian - you don't see that much in this area.









Finally we moved on, after thanking the man profusely. I am probably his most appreciative "tourist" yet. Germans are not known for friendliness toward strangers, but once you come out to our country town people really are different.











Back to Geocaching. I was getting tired of walking by this point, we took a nice long rest while my man puzzled over a geocache station. We had about 1.5 hours to go still.











All in all, we were out 6 hours. The sky was free of clouds, and the trees are still free of leaves. We didn't actually finish the cache, I should admit. The last station was missing, so we're gonna have to contact the owner to find the coordinates for the final.









When we got home, Baasha dropped and rolled in the grass right away, and then went to work eating the start of our spring grass in our pasture. I'm so exhausted all I can do is sit here and type and drink kool aid and hope dinner magically makes itself.