One thing about traveling like I am, making plans one day at a time (and then making changes on the fly) and not really researching what I’m going to see along the way is that the day presents things that are often surprising. That was the case today as I climbed and began to see little pieces of high mountains, and then found myself flanking the edge of the Dolomites with their jagged beauty. Not expecting that! Amazing.
I had planned to camp tonight, which gives a lot more flexibility than staying in hotels since you don’t really have to make reservations. The GPS told me that I might have to climb as many as 3800 feet today, and so I planned on that… hoping for less of course. There was a campsite where I was planning to stop.
But as I crossed into Austria, over the high point of the day, I decided to take on the next stage of the EV7 which I saw was primarily downhill. And so, my 40 mile day stretched into 65, stopping at a really nice campsite at Lienz.
There was some whimsy today with roadside art that I stopped to photograph.
And the day was really not that hard, even though I rode 65 miles I only climbed about 2500 feet. I ended up descending more than I climbed today. 
I have the route of the EV7 on my cycle computer, but today the actual route as shown on signposts along the road was different than the route I had downloaded earlier. At pretty much every turn there was a sign indicating which way to go. And the new routes seem to be smoother, easier, and overall better. It seems there is constant improvement on these routes, which I really appreciate.
I spent a good deal of the day, just taking pictures of the mountains as they grew larger and larger in my view.
I almost stopped two times today, but felt good enough that I wanted to keep going. The first place (Innichen – San Candido) was a pretty touristy place, beautiful but crowded and I thought a quiet campsite might be a better place to spend the night.
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