Driving from Gorge de Verdon to the Pyrenees

We had a long drive from the Gorge de Verdon to the Pyrenees - most of the way from one side of southern France to the other.  We actually broke it up and stayed one night in Carcassonne, a well-preserved fortified medieval town.

But first - one last photo of the Gorge de Verdon, seen from a road far up the canyon wall. Actually, I must confess, I risked my life for this one.  I had to climb over the wall on the side of the road and stand on a somewhat slippery downward slope at the top of a very tall cliff to get this one.  The darn trees were in the way otherwise.  Had to wait for the clouds to open up and let some sunlight down onto the cliff faces and the river.  Lake Saint Croix is hidden by the ridge on the right.  We kayaked from the lake up to that big sand bank in the river.

We arrived into Carcassonne in the late afternoon.  We were staying at the Best Western, which is much nicer than it sounds.  It's right in the center of the medieval city, in a historic building with a beautiful courtyard garden.  The weird thing is, you can't drive there at all - so you end up giving your bags to a stranger, while you park your car in a far lot and walk back, hoping your bags will arrive at your room eventually.  They said a half hour, but it was more like two hours before we got them, during which Jennifer started to wonder if she needed to buy a new wardrobe and get new contacts.  Carcassonne is bursting at the seams with tourists during the day, which is why it's nice to stay inside the town overnight.  After dinner, we wandered around the quiet, deserted streets.

On our way into the Pyrenees, we passed field after field of sunflowers, or tournesol in French.  I assume the word evolved from the phrase "turn toward the sun", as the flowers do.

We were on our way to the Cirque de Gavarnie, a huge valley with an amazing waterfall that is certainly the most famous hike in the French Pyrenees, if not in all the Pyrenees.  To get there, we had to drive through one of the most incredible mountain passes used by the Tour de France.  The "Col du Tourmalet" is at the top of very long and steep winding road, and there were bikers, alone and in small groups, all along the road, pushing up the mountain for hours.  

This is the view of the pass from a little ways up a hiking trail that leaves from there.  It looks like we're standing on the edge of a volcano.  The whole time we were there, I kept thinking I'd better hurry up and get the shot before these clouds move in and cover the mountain.  A half hour later, it still looked like this.  For scale, notice the two people standing to the side looking down. 

I was mesmerized.  These clouds rush up against this windy barrier and curl up and back on themselves, never breaking through.  Here's another view zoomed back a bit.  We were thinking this was really unusual until we got to our hotel in Gavarnie a few hours later.  When we told the woman at the desk about passing through Col du Tourmalet, the first thing she said was "Were the clouds all on one side and not the other?"  She said it's often like this. There's a speck that's a person in the lower left of this photo as well.

We passed this lovely mountain stream running alongside the mountain road crawling up to the town we'd stay in for the next few nights.

A second photo of the same stream.  I added this photo in long after this was first posted, so most people missed it.  Oh well!

We'd arrived in Gavarnie, and it was as impressive as we could have hoped.  The view from our hotel window as the sun sank into the west and the clouds moved in.

The next day, we'd do La Breche de Roland hike, and the Cirque de Gavarnie hike the day after that. 
This is the third in a series on our southern France summer vacation.  The first was about the Martel hike in the Gorge de Verdon.  The second was about kayaking in the Gorge de Verdon, and hiking the Styx trail there.