Great pics, carolly. I'd LOVE to go walking there. BTW, do the lakes look extremely blue seen from above? All the Alpine lakes have this weird blue color. It's because the water comes from the glaciers and is highly oxegenated. '2 marmots shrieking loudly ' - Do you know that I didn't know that word existed in English. In Italian they're called 'marmotte', and they're all over the mountains round here, but I didn't know what they were called in English. Ha! My birthday was GREAT! When I pitched camp, I was surrounded by THREE thunderstorms, all at a fair distance luckily, but I got quite a bit of rain anyway. Not that it bothers me. No one from scotland has ever cared about rain. It's NORMAL for us. LOL. But yesh, I has a great few days walking. mac PS Lestat shudder - I read it - twice, in fact. Couldn't get into it at all.