Hiking Austria in Fall: Autumn Foliage and Must-See Trails

Hi, I'm Chad from Miami, Florida, but I'm currently living in Bregenz, Austria on the shores of Lake Constance with beautiful views of the Austrian Alps. Subscribe to my channel and let's explore Austria together. Hey what's up guys, welcome back to my channel. In today's video we are in Schönenbach, that means beautiful river in English. It's a hiking trail here that's really popular in this region for hikers and mountain bikers. It took us about an hour drive to get here from Bregenz through some beautiful scenery and it's fall here in Austria so the leaves are changing over. It looks really nice and today we're gonna take you on this hike. I'm not sure how long it is. I'm gonna track it with my smart watch and let you know and just gonna show you guys all the beautiful scenery there is here and the river that flows through this place. On the way into the hiking trail there's this really nice little church you pass by, little chapel here in the mountains and right behind it back there is a really good restaurant. They serve Kaiserspreis, well they serve a bunch of stuff but we only order ever Kaiserspreis from there and if you don't know what that is, it's dumplings with a mixture of cheeses and fried onions on top. It's so delicious. We thought the restaurant was closed today, we looked it up online and it said they weren't open so we packed a picnic. So we're unfortunately not going to be having any Kaiserspreis today but we made some good sandwiches. We're gonna find a nice scenic spot and have lunch later. Before we start on the trail we're gonna make a quick pit stop here, fill up our water bottles with some ice cold fresh mountain spring water. This water is delicious. This is the trail start, there's a couple of like vacation homes in here. I think you could even stay at the restaurant, it's a hotel also you can spend the night. We want to do that so we could do some stargazing, it's definitely some really dark skies in here that'll be good for stargazing. This is one of my favorite views on the hike, the mountain right here in the front it's so pointy and then you have some huge mountains off in the distance in the background there. We've got two happy little dogs with us on our hike today. The little white one is a Chihuahua, his name is Houdini. And then our other dog Kansas, the little brown one, she's an old girl, 13 years old but she still goes out on hikes with us. Right now we're at another little fresh spring water place so we're gonna let them drink some water and cool down a little bit. Here you can see how the water comes straight out of the mountain. The trail splits here to the right is a really long trail, we've never gone that way. I'm not even sure if it circles back but we're going to the left and it'll circle back to where we begin. Check out this little house down here in the valley, let me know in the comments if you guys could live here. Alright now here's the river that flows through this valley, that's why it's called Schönenbach. It's really beautiful, it's pretty low right now but after winter and the snow is melting the water is a lot higher, you can see where the water usually flows. So we've been here shortly after winter when the snow is still melting off the mountains and this is all full of water. Right now it's the beginning of fall and the water is really low. We just met a couple, they came up to us and asked if we saw a little white poodle. They lost their dog about two hours ago in here so I flew my drone all over the place looking for it for them. Unfortunately I couldn't find it but we're gonna keep our eye out on the rest of the hike, hopefully he shows up and we can return their dog to them. We're headed into an area of the hike now that's a little wooded and I'm starting to see some of my first fall colors. Right ahead of us is some trees starting to turn colors. It's really pretty, it's going to be really nice in another couple weeks. We're a little too early for the leaves to be changing. The weather was so beautiful when we started our hike and now the skies are totally gray. I don't think it's gonna rain, it just totally got cloudy in here. Hopefully it passes over soon and we get back to some nice sunny weather. Alright we just sat down, we found our spot to have our little picnic. We're three and a half kilometers into our hike and this is the view that we got while we're sitting here having our lunch. At home I made a ham and garlic bacon sandwich right here and now we're gonna sit here enjoy our lunch and then keep hiking. We just finished up lunch, continuing our hike. This side of the trail has some really beautiful views. I wish the weather was better. I don't know what happened but it's still pretty warm out for this time of year so we're just gonna keep on going. So far we are 3.6 kilometers into our hike. We needed an hour and 37 minutes but we're going slow and I flew my drone for a long time trying to help those people find their dog. Check this out guys, there's a flower here in the mountains. They're protected, you're not allowed to pick them. They're called a silver thistle. They're really pretty and they're only found up here in the mountains and it's illegal to pluck them. This is a pretty cool area on the hike. You can get right up close to this cliff right here. I feel really small standing next to this. All right, we just crossed five kilometers and this is where the trail splits. You could keep going straight to get to the next town over, Beitao I think it is, but we're gonna turn left here to complete the loop and now we're gonna be walking through the fields a little bit. This part of the trail is really beautiful and it looks like the sun's trying to come back out. We're crossing over a creek now. It's a good little spot to let the dogs get some water. Kansas usually likes to lay in the water. Oh yeah, there she goes. There she goes. That's cold water, Kansas. You're so cute. Why are you so cute? I just saw a cave on the side of the mountain right there. It looks like a perfect circle and we saw a sign when we came in that there's bats in the area. I bet you it's full of bats in there. All right, I got Kansas with me now because we're about to cross back over the river and the little bridge is made out of like a grate and it hurts her little feet to walk on so she's gonna get chauffeured across. Right, Cassie? Yeah, we can show you guys the river one more time. I actually won a drone contest making a video right here at this spot for DJI. I flew my drone from here and the theme of the contest was what I see versus what my drone sees and I filmed my drone taking off and then I showed like the river and the mountains in the background and I actually won a prize. I got like a free log book, a hat, a t-shirt, like some other merch. It was pretty cool. I would recreate the shot for you guys right now but I killed my drone battery trying to help those people find their dog. This part of the trail is also really nice. It follows along this little creek here. It opens up down further. I'm gonna see if Kansas wants to go swimming. So far she's been trying to pull me in every little hole she can find. Okay, Kansas? Going in? Come on, come on. The water is absolutely crystal clear. We're almost back at our car. I just checked on my watch. The hike was eight kilometers. It was a really beautiful trail. We've done this one a bunch of times. We always come back. The people found their little dog that was lost so that's good news. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. If you like my videos and want to see more of my adventures here in Austria, subscribe to my channel. Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!