Our family took a trip to the Frankfurt temple last week. We had a wonderful time. It was so nice to go to the temple again, and it was interesting to experience it in German for the first time. We also had the pleasure of staying in a small German spa village which was super nice and relaxing. It was gorgeous there and we had a great time exploring the parks and learning about giant natural humidifiers... Here are some highlights from our trip...

Eric and I took turns going in for a temple session. I went on Thursday evening with a friend of mine who attended my Temple preparation class. Eric went to a session on Friday morning. While we were taking turns, the kids had a good time enjoying the temple grounds.

We stayed in a little town called Bad Nauheim, Germany just about 10 minutes away from where the Temple is located. It was a quiet, relaxing, green country town, and you could walk the whole town by foot. The place was beautiful - like one giant park - full of green trees, streams, natural springs, and lots of cool play areas for the kids. We thouroughly enjoyed walking down cool shaded paths, watching the fish and ducks in the streams, and enjoying the nice weather there. It was really nice to be out of the big city for a change.

One cool thing we discovered while exploring were these giant structures called graduation towers. Picture a football field, cut in half lengthwise, and then errected into a long tower consisting of tightly stacked sticks, and held up by a row of huge diagonal posts. From the top of the tower, mineral water trickles down through the sticks and creates a cool mist that comes away from the wall. People go there to breath the healthy, natural, moist air. I had never heard of anything like it, but there were several of these in this little town. And they really were cool.

Just near one of the graduation towers, the kids had a blast playing at a natural water park. It consisted of a couple of wading pools, connected with fun, metal water features, a stone trickle wall, and a giant sand pit with water pumps all around. The kids stayed here for hours.

What strikes me about parks like this (like many parks in this part of the world) is how natural they are. There are no plastic slides or plastic play structures (or anything plastic, really). There are no brightly colored squirty features or cartoon themed character statues. There are no motion sensored sprinklers spraying up from a rubberized ground covering. It's just stone, wood, water, sand, and rocks, with some old fashioned water pumps, and some rudimentary metal features that require all physical effort in order to work... And the kids absolutely love it. They could have stayed there all day long exploring, 'gold digging', rock collecting, mud making, climbing, and splashing. It was awesome.

The drive home took about 8 hours, but it was well worth the trip. We opted to rent a van instead of taking the train this trip, so we got to enjoy a bit of different scenery. I snapped a few photos as we were driving down the Autobahn, but the pictures don't do it justice. We realized that road trips are quite beautiful in these parts, and we hope to take many more.

One interesting fact about the German highway system - unless a speed limit sign is posted, there is no speed limit. People can drive as fast as they can, and believe me - they do!! Eric drove around 150kmh most of the way, and we were definitely going much slower than most drivers on the road. He got up to 165kmh at one point, and felt that was the fastest he could responsibly drive, and we were still getting passed - cars zooming by us at incredible speeds. It wasn't until we got home and did the math that we realized we were driving over 100mph!! Crazy!