Help narrow down home bases

I would stay in St Goar, take the train to Bingen, then cruise back to St Goar. There are a lot of nice places to stay in St Goar. Actually, I did exactly that in 2017.

Hint: the Rhein flows downhill from Bingen/Rüdesheim to St Goar/Bacharach. Cruise down river, with the current; the trip from St Goar to Bacharach, against the current, is excruciatingly slow.

Although I like Mittenwald, I think it is a little far from Linderhof and the Füssen castles. I would not try to see Linderhof, Hohenschwangau, and Neuschwanstein in the same day. The palace at Linderhof is small and doesn't take a lot of time (although you might have to wait a while for your tour), but the grounds are extensive, and there is the Grotto, which is worth seeing. In 2007, I spent about 6 hours at Linderhof, including lunch.

I think I'd stay in Oberammergau and visit Linderhof one day and the Füssen castles another day. If you are using public transportation, there are buses from Oberammergau to both Linderhof and Füssen.

Rhine base:

Bacharach is frequently passed on not because it's an ideal travel base for visiting other places on the Rhine or for cruises, but because 1) it has the nicest old-world buildings in the immediate area, and 2) Rick Steves recommends it so strongly (in other words, people take his word for it) and it's most likely that most forum readers have stayed there and only there.

With "time constraints" and "Frankfurt" do you mean getting to FRA airport quickly some morning?

I would stick with DIRECT trains to the airport for this situation - meaning the RE or Regional Express trains, with these times from Bacharach on Friday this week as an example...

5:37
6:29
6:56
7:23
9:36

(Direct trains help prevent missed connections if your first train is late.)

These same RE trains also stop in Boppard (20 minutes earlier) and in Oberwesel (5 minutes earlier) and Bingen Hbf, Bingen's main station (9 minutes later.)

But they do not stop in St. Goar, with just one exception - the 6:56 RE train from Bacharach (which leaves St. Goar 11 minutes earlier.) Elsewhere within this time frame, you must always change trains if boarding in St. Goar. As much as I do like St. Goar as a base town otherwise, making connections before a flight is not something I'd choose.

One good reason you might want to stay in Boppard is the free rail /bus transport guest card which all Boppard guests receive. Visiting most other nearby towns by train is entirely free of charge. I also like Boppard's variety of hotels and restaurants, its chairlift ride, its developed waterfront area (Bingen has a nice one too) as well as it's proximity to Rheinfels Castle in St. Goar and Marksburg Castle in Braubach. Rooms with a river view are possible in Boppard, Bingen and St. Goar (not so in Bacharach, which is set back too far from the river.)

• Rust (for EP) vs. Freiburg vs. Staufen vs. other?

Probably other. If Rick still suggests those last two as good Black Forest bases, along with Baden-Baden... the same ones he listed in my 1998 GAS book... then he maybe needs to get there a little more often and turn up some new suggestions. I like Freiburg, but neither Freiburg nor Staufen, further south, is near the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse (I think that's a drive you previously mentioned reading about in Rick Steves) or near the attractions in the Central Black Forest (like the Black Forest Open-air Museum.)

Definitely consider Gengenbach and perhaps some other towns in the Kinzig Valley.

I just had a look at this page penned by Rick on the Black Forest. Maybe he has in fact been to the Kinzig Valley...

"One of my latest discoveries is the quaint town of Wolfach, right between Baden-Baden and Freiburg."

Map of Kinzig Valley towns

Well, Wolfach has been there... a very long time. Perhaps he only just recently passed through the Kinzig Valley for the first time.

So does his new book suggest staying in Wolfach or Gutach or Haslach or Alpirsbach or Schiltach, or mention these last three? I would gleefully bed down in any one of these places! The Open-air Museum is in Gutach, along with the summer bobsled. Alpirsbach is home to a brewery with a tour. Schiltach is stunningly beautiful. Haslach is great too, very charming, with a few sights as well. And all of these are easily reached from Gengenbach or vice versa, and are within striking distance of other nice towns higher in the mountains.

Schiltach, Haslach, Dornstetten, Gengenbach and Sasbachwalden are all on the well-known Half-Timbered-House route on account of their especially fine buildings. Map and routes here. Don't know if Rick managed to get this route into his book or not, but these places are definitely there, and you could easily drive to them from a base town in this area.

Maybe Rick has mentioned Gengenbach at some point, but I do not remember it. It's exceedingly charming. Stephen has done a nice trip report that includes details on his stay in Gengenbach. I suggest you send him a request for the link. BTW, Gengenbach is within a reasonable driving distance of Europapark.