Last night, I got into Zadar, Croatia. It’s pretty quiet here…the tourism season is wrapping as it’s getting to cold. As I type this, I’m sitting out on a pier, and it’s 70deg…miserable…

I took a very long, but great route getting here.
First I passed through Plitvice Lakes National Park


Next, I rode over Mali Alan pass. Earlier, in the morning, it was raining a tiny bit, so I was happy to see that it stopped by the time I started up the pass. I’d just have to deal with a little fog at the top. The road surface wasn’t too bad…some occasional loose gravel and ruts, but nothing serious, and there hadn’t been enough rain to make it muddy.

           
As soon as I reached the top, the fog got really thick.

Coming down the south side was a little more nerve wracking. Less than fifty feet of visibility and hairpins with no warnings or guardrails made for some very slow riding.

           
Looking over ledges revealed whiteness…I don’t know if the ground was 10 feet down or 1000, but it looked infinite.


This was on the way down, and I thought it made for a cool picture, so here you go…

And finally, the Adriatic

           

After getting down from the pass, I was about 30km from my destination, but decided to backtrack to get some riding in along the coast…wise choice. The view was amazing, the road surface was surprisingly good, and the riding was excellent. I rode from Senj to Zadar…any motorcyclists out there that want a nice route, keep this one in mind
           

           

So, now I’m in Zadar…it’s a nice little city with some Roman ruins to see in the old town…very interesting.

       

Kinda interesting…looks like the walls of this (built in the 9th century) had foundations made of old columns

Old town is on a peninsula, built right up to the edge of the water.
        
Which makes for happy dogs…

Right on the water were two cool features. The first was the sea organs, which are large tubes underneath marble steps leading to the waterfront. As waves pass over the tubes underneath these steps, they emit different sounds.
Wordpress will charge me extra to upload the audio file I have of the sea organs, and I don’t love you enough to fork over the money, so if you want an example of what it sounds likes, search “sea organ” on youtube.

And the second shows up after sunset…the Greeting to the Sun. This large disk has LEDs of various colors that light up in crazy patterns, and all the while, you can hear the sea organs in the background…just add mushrooms and you’ve got yourself a party!