Public: Norway

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July 28, Norway

We got out of London early this morning and flew to Oslo, landing in Gardermoen. I didn't realize the airport is so far north of Oslo. No matter, we got our rental and headed the E6 on our way to the west coast. The weather is definately cooperating. We stopped for a nice swim north of Tretten at a commercial campsite. While there, I picked up some brochures on white water rafting. Given the beautiful weather, that was an easy call. We drove up to the Sjoa river and booked for the next day. We then made camp on the river at the recommendation of the rafting man. A very nice spot, and free. That was welcome as we had just begun to suffer a little sticker shock in Norway when we picked up some snacks at the gas station. We had a group of german neighbours at camp that night. They were doing a regular summer kayak week in Norway, which is an obvious idea for another future vacation. They seemed to like the east side of Norway for kayaking, certainly the Sjoa is good stuff.

July 29, Norway

We awoke to another beautiful day in the interior of Norway. We had some yummy norwegian fruit smoothy on muslix, it was pretty good. It took a while for things to get organized for the rafting, there were maybe 20 people. It was a great trip, some class 3 stuff. To bad we didn't buy the pictures, there were some good ones. There is some class 4-5 stuff on this river, but conditions weren't right for it and I'm not sure we were up to it either. After the rafting we showered and started moving west along highway 15. We stopped in Lom to check out the stave church, very neat. To bad someone was getting married or something... we couldn't get in.

Just before we turned off the 15 toward Geiranger we stopped for some supper near a glacier and hiked up a waterfall. It was a pretty nice spot and some people were camped there. There wasn't much room though and the tourist center in Lom had mentioned there were some good spots. Good thing we decided to move on. We quickly came upon a UNESCO world heritage site, Dalsnibba . A very scary gravel switchback road took us righ to the top. The weather this night was perfect, clear skies an sun til past 11:00 at night, really I don't think it got dark and the kids were reading in the tents until probably 1:00 or so. The view was incredible and we had it to ourselves, at least for the night.

July 30, Norway

We are lazy. By the time we got up and packed up our stuff, the tour buses were already rolling up to Dalsnibba. But we still had a nice breakfast overlooking Geiranger. After breakfast, we caught quite a bit of luck on the road. Traffic was thin allowing us to to 50-60 k down to Geiranger, that is a pretty fun speed on those switchbacks. Also, we drove right up to the ferry and got the last spot on the boat because some guy's truck didn't fit, haha. The ferry through this Fjord is a great tour. They have lots of good stories about the ridiculous farms that had been established and abandoned high up on the ledges. Later, Aksel explained to me that a portion of this Fjord is geologically unstable; a slide is expected with a tidal wave that could cause devastation as far as Alesund.

After landing in Hellesylt, we made our way to Nordfjordheim for Lunch and then to Aksel and Hanna's place. It was a small town, we just pulled up, took a turn and lucked upon their mailbox.

July 31, Norway

August 1, Norway

August 2, Norway

August 3, Norway

August 4, Norway

August 5, Norway

h1 left]August 6, Norway

h1 left]August 7, Norway

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