Tuesday, September 17th

Today was a day trip from Klaipeda to the Curonian Split

Have to travel by ferry running every 20 minutes

12 Euro for a 5 minute ride with the car and price includes the return

Lithuanians calls their portion of this thin strip of sand and pine forests Neringa
 ...Kaliningrad, Russia has the lower portion

The story goes a female giant named Neringa was happily living  in the forest until confronted by a dragon wanting to marry her...Refusing the offer, she created this barrier of land

This story is told in wood carvings at the Hill of Witches in Juodkrante (great Tourist Info office)

Important to mention today was a mix of hard rain and brilliant blue sky

Striking and beautiful

Constantly switching back/forth

Every time we were outside, there was sun

Returning to the car, it rained. We had control of the Off/On switch ...I believe it's related to our visit to the Hill of Witches

And this wooded hill of pine telling an ancient story is a Parabolic sand dune
...Created by small washouts where piles of sand move inland forming horseshoe-shaped dunes
This was only the beginning of our sand dune education....A totally unexpected experience

There are at least 4 types of dunes on the Split...
...Nagliu STRICT Nature Reserve is an example of a Dead  or Gray Dune

STRICT because you cannot leave the boardwalk

You cannot walk on the dune - They are fragile, coddled & there are fines

But this dune is far from dead

It's stable, not drifting, because of a covering of lichen, moss and sand-loving plants 

Did you know sand is a light and friable rock?
...I thought friable might be a non-word in translated tourist literature,

It's real and means easily crumbled

Dunes move or travel by carrying small sand tranches, called wind ripples, until stopped by plants
  Tranches is another real word, meaning slice or small cut (15C French)

We've all seen sand ripples, impress your friends by calling them tranches

Followed the boardwalk to the top, there were more dunes beyond, but they were the shifting ones called White dunes because nothing grows on them as they move 0.5-15 meters a year
...Hundreds of years ago, shifting dunes covered trees and entire villages

Turning around, without taking a picture, from a height of 62 meters

Could see the Baltic Sea over the pines and another storm

Time to skedaddle

Before leaving, visited the Baltic Sea side
...Dreamed last night of finding a chunk of amber, Lithuanian Gold, rough seas wash nuggets to shore

Found rounded rocks exactly like those in Lake Superior - Took one of each color

Lunch was huge in the town of Nida - cold beet soup, perch fish nuggets, roasted potatoes, crisp salad
We were less than 3 miles from the Russia, didn't tempt them by waving

Returned home, Latvian brie melted on homemade bread with marmalade accompanied by a Svyturys wheat beer (served with slice of lemon) and fresh strawberries made a grand dinner

                       Tomorrow we leave, heading east to Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania
                                             Of course there will be stops along the way