Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia is an all too popular spot for beautiful blue green lakes and numerous waterfalls.  Summers visits must be brutal with the huge crowds.  There is not a lot of room for tourists to spread out since 90% of the park is viewed on boardwalks the size of a normal sidewalk.

This view is from the the top of the national park looking down at one of the sixteen lakes joined by scenic waterfalls winding through a limestone canyon.  Unfortunately, this nice walk down requires a climb out.

 

 

There is much walking to explore this series of limestone lakes as well as large elevation changes.   As with our own National Parks, the best time to visit is very early or late in the day or maybe during a rain storm to avoid the crowds.  Even then you may encounter bottle necks and human traffic jams.  Here is the data from my iPhone on one particular day visiting Plitvice.  It  shows I walked 10 1/2 miles and climbed the equivalent of 66 floors.  My dogs are tired….

 

 

While there are many fish seen swimming about, they are carp, nothing one would want to eat unless you ordered it in a restaurant experimenting with the local cuisine as I did.  Appropriately, in Romania it is called CRAP and found on many menu’s and grocery stores.

 

It is astounding how very many carp are swimming in the Plitvice Lakes.  They do not seem to grow larger than twelve inches.  None approached the two or three feet length they can grow to in the United States.

 

 

 

 

The two biggest problems capturing good photographs in Plitvice National Park is  first the crowds and second the boardwalks which shake the tripod as people approach and walk by.    Of course the endless selfies abound as well.

 

 

 

 

It is understandable after viewing photographs of Plitvice Lakes that some would conclude the photos are simply too saturated with color and those greens and blues cannot be natural.  All I can say is, each of the lakes seem to have their own unique color and they were the most unusual vibrant blues and greens I’ve ever seen for lakes.  There is a reason this is a National Park in Croatia and attracting over 1,000,000 people during a season.