Finally left the Krug parking lot, about a week and a half longer than we expected, but we don’t have a schedule, so no problem! We stayed longer at Krug to get our snow chains and rear bike rack.
We spent 2 days before we discovered how to install the snow chains. At one point we were sure the chains didn’t fit our tires. We had used a couple of ratchet straps to pull all the slack out of the chain and there was still a gap of a few inches between the ends of the chain. Krug checked with the chain manufacturer and yep, they are the right chains, so try one more time. Martin, Krugs’ “Man of Service” taught us several new words in German (none of which we can repeat here) while wrestling with the snow chains, but finally got one set installed. The service guys installed one more, just to make sure the miracle could be repeated, and then we installed the last two sets of chains ourselves. Took Rosie for a victory lap around the Krug parking lot, very bumpy driving a large truck with snow chains on asphalt, also not great for the asphalt, but Krug cheered us on!
We stayed another day to get the new rear carrier bike rack installed. When we saw it, it was nice and new, but still had a motorcyle rack on it! Yep, we got a new rack (the previous one was a bit wonky, even wonkier after I backed into a tree) that was nice and square, but the bicycle mounts won’t be available until we come back in April (to get our alternator fixed).
Nice, uneventful drive out of Austria and into Solvenia. We picked up a toll device for Solvenia (device #2) just after crossing the border into the country.
We spent the night, in Slovenia, in a parking lot at the Mondo Hotel & Casino. Nice quiet parking lot, with lots of room for Rosie, although it wasn’t exactly flat and level. Nothing rolled off the dining table during dinner, so all good!
Next day we drove into Croatia. Our route passes through a narrow stretch of Croatia before we hit the Bosnia Herzegovina border. We tried to find a place to buy a Croatian toll device, but couldn’t find a place that sells them, so we had to use the ticket machines to get the toll tickets. These machines are made for cars and trucks. Rosie is higher than both. I had to open the door and climb down to reach the ticket and to pay the fees. Definitely need to find a toll device if we spend any time in Croatia!
A couple of kilometres before the border we hit a solid line-up of trucks. We pull into line with the trucks and wonder how long this will take. We aren’t a commercial vehicle, so we don’t have to pass through truck customs, however, the road is narrow with only 1 lane in each direction. Lots of cars are zipping down the lane of oncoming traffic and squeezing over next to the trucks whenever they encounter an oncoming vehicle. Rosie is too big for this, so we wait. And wait. And wait. After about 1-1/2 hours we get close enough that we can see the border crossing in the distance. When we get a little closer we see a slightly wider area ahead, so we pull out of the truck line-up and scoot (as much as Rosie can scoot) down the oncoming lane. We make it before we encounter any oncoming traffic and then pull ahead into the bus lane (figured it was wider than the car lane). B. gets out and gets our passports stamped. It appears that we are at the EU exit control, not the Bosnian customs entrance, that is farther down the road.
We finally get our passports stamped at the Bosnian entry point. Nobody asked anything about dogs, so we kept quiet and meandered on into Bosnia.
Drive thru Gradiska, Bosnia was okay. Roads thru the town were a bit narrow and payment was very rutted by heavy trucks/buses. Made it to highway, were we picked up a toll ticket (again, hard to reach). When we left highway, B got out to pay (debit card). We don’t have any local currency, so we looked for ATM machines or banks, but didn’t see anything recognizable as either of them.
We carried on towards Kozara National Park via Banja Luka and Kozarac. Our new Garmin navigation device would not allow us to select direct route from Gradiska via R477, so we took the longer route specified by Garmin. We thought there might be height or weight restrictions that stopped us from taking the shorter route.
Unfortunately the longer route, and border crossing delays, means that it is starting to get dark. The final 12km from the town of Kozarac to the Kozara National Park is a narrow 2-way road that wound it’s way up the mountain. Several switch-backs and lots of sharp bends. Rosie’s high beam headlights are on, but European rules require that they are pointed downwards, so they don’t light up a lot ahead of us as we wind around tight curves in the road. I turned on our off-road overhead lights and wow, they really lit up the road! The installers of the lights were definitely on the ball as these really bright lights are tied into the truck’s hi/lo beam switch, so if you turn off the trucks hi beams the overhead lights turn off as well. Great idea so that we don’t blind oncoming vehicles. We only encountered one oncoming vehicle and neither of us had to make an unplanned rapid descent off the side of the mountain! The guard rails are few and far between on this road, and the ones that are evident would be hard-pressed to stop a car from plunging over the edge. Rosie wouldn’t even notice if she ran into one.
We finally arrived at central monument area at the top of the mountain and found a great (and flat) parking spot near the info centre.
It was dark and hard to see when we drove in, but we have ended up in a very nice area. Lots of trees around the parking area and lots of songbirds.
Spent morning doing some catch up admin stuff and relaxing. After lunch went for a trail walk. Found the “Adventure Area” which looked like a lot of fun: platforms in trees connected by a wide variety of wires, ropes and things to walk on suspended above the ground. Wasn’t open so we didn’t have the opportunity to fall down and break something.
The forest here doesn’t look any different from those in Canada, so definitely doesn’t feel like we are in a totally different part of the world!
We followed a sign to the “Beech Tree”. We think we saw it. It was a largish tree with no leaves (it’s March), but not really sign-worthy.
The main monument in the park is a Yugoslavia era structure dedicated to fallen soldiers who defended against Nazis during WWII. Huge, brutalist architecture structure (see photo at the top of this post).
Back to Rosie for some serious “where do we go from here” planning. We couldn’t find any events that we would be interested in – unless we wanted to go to some holistic know-yourself type events, or scientific seminars, or business trade shows.
We discovered that we had parked Rosie in the main parking lot for the park & monument, so we moved Rosie into a small round parking lot right outside the front entrance of a closed hotel. Our own private parking lot!
On our trail walks there were many interpretive signs showing local flora and fauna, which we couldn’t read. There were also several signs showing acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour, including this sign which we took to mean “don’t carve into the trees”).
After another trail walk we stopped at the Plova ski bar for a local beer (very inexpensive, they took euros – cash only – 7 marks or about 3.5 Euro for two beers). Owner (manager?) told us that there has been very little snow for past two years. The hill was only open for 4 days this year. It is a very small ski hill, more like a sledding hill, with three Poma lifts.
A lot of cars in parking lot when we got back, glad we moved Rosie. Saw 3 Jeep Wranglers, modded for off-road trails, first time we have seen real Jeeps in Europe.