On this day, we drove south from Bressanone to Val Gardena. It's a valley in the Dolomites of South Tyrol. The Dolomites, or Pale Mountains, are a mountain range within the Alps Mountain Range. The name Dolomites comes from the carbonate rock: dolomite. Val Gardena is a valley in the Dolomites and surrounded by the Dolomites. It's perhaps best known as a tourist stop for skiing, rock climbing, and woodcarving.

Our interest here, via our travel company, OAT, was to visit some small Alpine villages that are the center of Ladin culture. Ladins are an ethnic minority of about 35,000 people that live in five valleys in the Dolomites, including Val Gardena.

Ladin's developed their own language that is different from German or Italian and is the oldest language in Italy's Alpine region. We drove through the valley and made several stops. It was not the clearest of days and in fact, we hit some heavy fog several times. Often, we couldn't see the tops of the mountains. But despite it all, it was a beautiful day and a beautiful valley. Below is one of the small villages where we stopped.

Val Gardena has been known for woodcarving since the 17th century. It started with people whittling religious statues and altars. It has expanded today to all sorts of carvings: gnomes, mushrooms, statues of all sorts, bird houses, bird feeders, and every religious object. But my favorites at the one woodcarving shop that we visited were the cuckoo clocks. They had many of them and they were real beauties.

We met a Ladin Alpine guide, and he took us for a mountain hike. He guides hikes in good weather and teaches skiing in the snow times. He explained about Ladin culture, the mountains, and what we were seeing. All signs that we saw were in three languages: Ladin, German, and Italian.

Most trees were evergreen trees including Silver fir, Norway spruce, and several pines but the larch trees were my favorite. Larch are the only deciduous conifer tree. Their needles turn yellow and fall off like a deciduous tree. That yellow color was such a highlight in the mountains amongst the evergreen trees.

Like I said, I wished it had been a much clearer day, but we still loved every minute in Val Gardena.