Five Year Blogiversary

Happy five-year Blogiversary to me! As of today, I’ve been writing this blog for exactly five years and so it’s time to check in on how it’s been going. And, it’s been very enjoyable!

I did a lot of hiking this year and I made good use of my Repeat-Roundups post. One of my favorite repeats that I did also added new content – hiking the Chubedensee Loop at Elm and adding the spur up to the Wildmadfurgeli at the top. Seeing those sparkling alpine lakes made me wonder about how many lakes are in Switzerland? Well, according to some sources around 1500! That’s a lot of lakes! And based on favorite pictures from my hikes this year, there are some remarkably beautiful lakes out there!

Aside from enjoying gorgeous lake views, do you want to know another super great thing about hiking in Switzerland? Having a hot lunch at a remote hut, or in the case of the Napfberg Hotel, a hot dinner and then staying overnight in the mountains. The food at these huts is not as pricey or as bad as you might think considering that they are supplied either by helicopter or by private service gondola. The älplermagronen (Swiss-style mac and cheese with bacon) at the Napfberg Hotel was some of the best we’ve ever eaten!

Staying at the Napfberg Hotel was part of our continued progress on the Alpine Panorama Trail (Route 3). So far, we have completed up to stage 14. (We have also done part of stage 15, but as we haven’t completed it, I haven’t written the post for it yet. Soon!)

Hiking all of Route 3 will probably take a few more years, which means I will have plenty of new blog content for the coming years!

We also did some travel outside of Switzerland and visited some interesting museums. On our road trip through Germany, we stopped at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, and on a trip I took to visit a friend in the Puglia region of Italy, I toured the Castle Dentice de Frasso. My favorite museum though, was actually one in Switzerland – the Luzern Transportation Museum.

Aside from a few museum posts, the non-hiking parts of the blog didn’t get much attention. However, I did add four non-hiking posts I want to highlight. First, a new post in the Festival and Events category about running the Zürich half-marathon because I am proud of myself for having run it. Second, one in the Cooking category. The cooking one is a bit of cheat though, as it is also sort of about hiking – the post-hike cheeseboard. Discovering local cheese out hiking is one of my favorite things about hiking in Switzerland and those cheeses are the perfect start to putting together a fun (and might I say so myself, beautiful) cheeseboard dinner. And the third and fourth posts are Lake Zürich adventures: stand-up-paddling across the lake and biking around the lake.

What about the technical side of the blog? Unfortunately, due to a bug, in January, I had to remove the Surprise Me and Post Spotlight features from the blog, which I was a bit sad about. But, this bug was just the motivation I needed to do a complete redesign of the site to freshen it up, give it a new look, and hopefully make it more usable. I started with a reorganization of the menus, which I first did in January still using the old theme. I’m very happy about this reorganization and think it makes it easier to find everything. I hope you think so too. Then in April, I switched to a new theme, this one is a child of the twenty-twenty-three theme. With the new theme I was able to re-add the Suprise Me! option (very fun), however, as the post spotlight feature no longer fit into the design, I won’t be reimplementing it.

Finally, what about my goal of not being so nervous about putting my thoughts out on a public forum or doing promotion for the blog? LOL! No progress, but, I am continuing to include myself in more photos. And as you can see, I am still having a lot of fun.

So after a five years of blogging I would still definitely say it has been a great hobby for me. Now to cook more, hike more, bike more, learn more, do more and keep on blogging!