The European Trip, Day 30 - To Tarvisio via Slovenia

Another hot day of riding, though it was cool enough in the morning hours as I left Cortina d'Ampezzo and headed mostly eastward towards my destination of Tarvisio, Italy.

Morning view from my hotel balcony, not too shabby.

Heading north out of Cortina on SS51, I soon reached the lakeside town of Misura which provided some nice picture opportunities:

Misurina, Italia

After Misurina, I continued on SS51 till it junctioned with SS48 back towards Cortina.  I couldn't resist backtracking a bit to capture a pass that I'd seen mentioned on the Cortina map the hotel issued me last night: Tre Croci or the Tree Crosses.  I managed to not find the actual Three Crosses though of course I managed to find the mountain itself.

Continuing eastward on SS48 towards Auronzo, there were these nice looking mountains as one crossed over the Rudavol Bridge:

Somewhere along the way to the Cadore Valley area, I spotted this vehicle as I was motoring along and had to stop for a picture:

The snow vehicle above was parked in a parking lot of a local 

ristorante I believe.  Sorry, I didn't record the name of it.

The view from the above vehicle's parking lot

Continuing to motor along, I was able to bag another pass:

It connects Lorenzago di Cadore in Veneto and Forni di sopra in Friuli

As you can probably surmise from the above, now I was riding in the Veneto region of Italy, heading towards Udine.

view from the eastern side of Passo della Mauria

View from Forni di Sopria

Rode through the towns of Ampezzo, Tolmezzo and Amaro until I came to the small town of Resiutta where the GPS indicated there was a road to Zaga, in neighboring Slovenia.

The road became a twisty uphill climb till I reached this point:

Just up from the above stop, I saw what looked like a biker friendly restaurant with a whole bunch of motorcycles and riders relaxing there.  I took it as a good sign.  Little did I know.

The trail soon became a one lane paved shelf road descending from the summit above.  So narrow, with steel guard rails robbing even more space but there to prevent you from plummeting several hundred feet down into the valley below.

It was a nerve-wracking 13 km of this narrow "road", fortunately, didn't meet up with a vehicle coming up this road.  If one had, one of us would have had to back up to a pullover spot (not too many of those) in order to let the other one through!

Finally, off that "road", I got to the border with Slovenia where SR646 becomes Road 401 on the Slovenian side:

Cruising along now on the Slovenian side, the small town of Zaga came and went.  Not much to report there, the houses weren't as colorful as the Italian houses but it didn't look vastly different, not a surprise in other words.

I did manage a wrong turn after Zaga, at the junction of 401 and 203 and ended up past the town of Srpenica.  

I would end up going through the passage between

those mountains ahead.

Backtracking, I got headed towards Bovec, Strmec and eventually the border with Italy at Predel.

Military Museum, I think.

Heading towards the Italian Border

Town of Log Pod Mangarton, Slovenia

At the border area, there were two old forts:

Looking back towards Slovenia

Traffic is constricted into this narrow funnel over-watched

by the above fortress

From the Italian side, looking back towards Slovenia

and the fortress

Then, some distance further into Italy, a smaller fortification, abandoned and unsecured:

What you see from the road

From one of the firing ports

A good coverage of the road from this vantage point

Interior hallways connecting the various compartments

of the fortress

Looking out the main entrance way

I didn't tarry, it felt a bit spooky inside this abandoned fort.  Continuing on, we soon came to the last picture of the day, a cool mountain near the town of Cave del Pedril.

Near Cave de Pedril, Udine Province

I got to Tarvisio a little bit after 3PM, found the hotel and got cleaned up and ready to work by 4PM.

Tomorrow, back into Austria, will be overnighting in Hallein with the idea of exploring the Berchtesgaden Alps area the next day.