Up,Over, and Down the Mountain

After we visited Cumalikizik, we took a drive back to Uludag, fully our favorite, cool, place to visit in our immediate vicinity.  We got some better views of the ski village, ski lifts and runs, had a picnic, then took a different route home.  A journey of adventure, in search of a waterfall shown on the map.  We found a beautiful drive home, but not the waterfall.  We figured it was not running because there was no snow melt right now.  Summer is not a rainy season here, so no help there either.  Guess we will have to wait until spring to find the waterfall.  Following are some photos of the Uladag Ski Resort and scenes on our way home.

View down to a soccer field in a village on the way up.

We were stopped by these shepherds and their flock which were grazing the "long paddock", or the roadside.

 Views of the ski village.  We must have counted at least 20 or more ski lifts of some form throughout the village.  We are looking forward to seeing it with snow and alive with the energy of skiers.  There are quite a few ski areas throughout Turkey, but apparently this is the premier one.

One of the 3 Mosques in the park.

On our journey of adventure we found tons of blackberry vines along the twisty road.  We might just have to return this weekend and fill a bucket.  Blackberry cobbler sure sounds good.  And some for the freezer, of course.

  The back side of Uludag and a village on the other side of the mountain.  This road was very narrow, often only enough room for one car, and will definitely not be passable in the winter months.

The Nilufer River flowing down the mountain.  We saw major construction of a hydroelectric dam/plant on the river.  It is quite wide and while it looked like it had "beaches", it was actually steep cliffs.  The vegetation right down to the river is dense.  We intend to retrace that drive and find some way down to the river itself.