A UNESCO World Heritage spot, the park is almost 300,000 sq. km. of impressive lakes, waterfalls, fauna and caves. Over a million visitors come each year to marvel at the beauty that surrounds them in this area and we were very excited to be among them. We just didn't want to be there with all one million of them at once. So we planned ahead. We arrived to walk the upper portion of the park at about 2:30 pm, after all of the tour buses had left for home. We took the park bus to the very top and worked our way down over the next couple of hours. We meandered and reveled in the fact that there was almost no one there.
We stayed in the park until dinner time, when we headed across the street to a famous local restaurant for some fantastic food. So fantastic that we would actually have dinner there again the next night. At that point, we were exhausted from our "hike" so we headed back to our B and B (a local couple's home) and hit the sack pretty early. We wanted to be at the park at opening the next morning so that we were well on our touring path by the time the tourist buses showed up at 10. I had read that, especially in summer, the paths could get treacherous with the number of people elbowing past each other. The lakes were gorgeous and looked inviting but none of us wanted to end up in one of them.
I give you, the upper lakes of Plitvice...
The wooden walkways that led us around the park and through the woods.
It was a warm day so we stopped often to drink from the crystal clear waters.
Water was flowing all around us - even under our feet.
There were bees and dragonflies everywhere!
And the ducks were in heaven fishing in the clear lakes.

But mostly it was just gorgeous lakes fed by stunning waterfalls (and these are the smaller ones).
Finally, we made it to the boat that would take us back to the entrance.
And Stinkerbell crashed as soon as we landed back on shore. No worries, she perked up after a good nights sleep and was back at it the next morning.
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