In 2017, my wife and I went on a road trip from Zagreb to Split throughout the Croatian interior arriving at the coast where we island hopped for a week. Along the way during this 3 day road trip, we stopped at the famous Plitvice Lakes National Park and Krka National Park - both some of the most insane beauty we've ever seen.
In Plitvice, we spent close to 5 hours hiking in the park and still didn't see all of it. There were lakes everywhere, waterfalls, beautifully forested areas and minimal human foot print (there were wooden decks built everywhere).
We did the whole park and I realized that I didn't get to see one of the most famous views. So we hiked back an hour to get to the summit of one of the waterfalls. This view was great but I still felt like I needed to be hire and I had my drone with me.
Even though there were "No Drone" signs literally everywhere, I decided to find a discreet spot in the woods and I found a trail that went away from the park, so I walked quite a bit passing signs that I didn't even pay attention to: I was on a mission.
I found a clearing in the trees and launched my drone. This was the first trip I had taken it on so I wasn't super confident. I decided I would go straight up through the canopy, get a landscape view and fly straight back down. I did so and it was one of the best views I had seen on our Croatian trip. So worth the effort since we were nearing the end of the day - we had to get back on the road to continue driving to Zadar on the coast.
After the drone shot and on the way back, I realized what those signs were that I walked by. They all said "Danger, land mines." and had signs of explosives. Plitvice was an army base during the war in the 90s. To this day I can't believe I didn't pay attention to those signs and I think about the "what ifs" but there isn't a point to day dreaming.
What I saw was beautiful and I can't wait to go back to Croatia to explore more.
I originally posted this on Den about 5 minutes ago.
https://den.social/l/Views/ubfOxeMNtK/plitvice-lakes-national-park-croatia/
And here's the full length video of our adventure:
