Oh, What a day!

Today began as a normal Sunday for us:  sleep in, nice breakfast, quiet times and then family worship.  Afterwards, I decided to "claim" one of my birthday presents -- a trip to Biogradska National Forest.  When we started out after lunch, I realized that it was too far to get there and make it back to church . . . .  so plan II emerged.  Chris wanted to see where two rivers merged together and check out the fishing there.  We finally find the turn off and drive down into the canyon, park the van and the adventure begins.As we were hiking along the river, we came to this bridge -- a very nice stone bridge -- cool -- it is out in the middle of no where, but very well done.  
The view from  the river was so beautiful!  So unexepcted -- why such a beauitful bridge?
Here, you see Chris checking to see how many fish he can count!


Then, we see a sign -- written in stone and learned that King Danilo built the bridge for his mother -- talk about a Mother's Day Gift! The bridge was build in 1853.

We saw some people down below and we started talking to them.

Christian on the King Danilo's Bridge

Chris and Jill on the bridge -- the people we were talking too offered to take the picture.

The next think you know, we are on the way to their "selo" (farm house or dacha).  You can see it in  on the side of the hill.  
One of the guys took my camera and took pictures of us -- I really wanted too, but did not want to make them feel awkard and was so thankful that he did take some photos of us sitting in the shade next to this old farm house.  Grandpa offered us rakija -- sort of moonshine, but we declined and drank grape juice.  After a few shots of the rakija, Grandpa started telling stories.  

We were offered the place of honor in the shade!  The women were all dressed in black in honor of a  sister that had  died recently.  

Christian is not too happy and ready to go.  

Here we are on our walk back to the car -- WOW, what an incredible day.  The most interesting part about the day was that the people we met, live in our part of town -- how cool is that, we hike all the way out to an old bridge and meet our neighbors!