Norway - It's way more than you can possibly imagine.

June 24, we've spent a few days with Helene's parents on their farm which is about 3 hours north of Stockholm by car. Someone from Helene's mother's family has lived in this house since the 1600's. Talk about a connection with the past. Siv and Kent are great hosts. We love them dearly. One day they took us out to a wonderful buffet at a resort overlooking a wide river with a sandy beach. Another day, Siv and Kent prepared a traditional mid-summers eve dinner for us and then took us to a local village for a traditional mid-summers celebration. Chad, Pat, and I said goodbye to Helene and her family around 4:00 Pm and began our drive towards Norway. We have no idea of how far we will get this evening. Once again, it doesn't get dark. Fatigue is the only reason to stop.

I'm going to jump ahead for a minute. Norway is so much more than you can imagine, I'm not going to attempt to describe in detail what we saw each day. That's because every bend in the highway revealed something new and spectacular. Just when we'd think the natural beauty couldn't get any more beautiful, we'd be surprised again. So, I will just describe the main highlight of each day. On our journey we drove 1600 miles in 7 days. Food in Norway is as expensive as people have told us. To keep within our budget, we stocked up on sandwich makings. While we drove, the person in the back seat of our tiny Kia was the designated sandwich maker. This allowed us to cover great distances without having to stop to spend time and money at a restaurant.




Back now to driving into the mountains of Sweden on our way to Norway.
I've never seen so much timber in my life. Miles and miles for as far as we could see there were snow covered mountains, trees, and lakes.







Around 10:30 PM we decided that we should make camp. We pulled into a camground at the edge of a river. The sky was overcast. We set up our 3 person tent and prepared to go to bed. I stepped out of the tent and found that the cloud cover had disappeared and everything, including me, was bathed in the most golden and soft light. I called Chad to come out, and then Pat came out.
Other people in the campground emerged from their campers to look at the light. Down on the river a marsh owl flew out of the marshes and swooped along the banks of the river. We took pictures like crazy. A guy from Belgium said that he had been there for 2 days and hadn't seen the sun. Off in the distance, maye 10 miles, a mountain that had been non-descript, bathed in shadows, began to catch the rays of the sun and glow against a grey background.




June 25, up at 7 AM, nothing is open, no coffee, start driving.Down the road we see a fox
crossing the highway. I stop the car. He walks towards us and stops across the road from the car, gives us a look and then goes down the embankment. Soon we are above the treeline.












We pass several herds of reindeer and catch a closeup of this one by him self.








Ruros, a copper mountain town that is a world heritage site, gives us a break for a couple of hours to walk the streets and have our coffee and roll. Next stop is Trondheim. Great cathedral there but ait's closed for a wedding. The town doesn't appeal to us. We head south now towards Alesund. We stop to camp about an hour north of the town. It rains during the twilight of the artic night, but our tent keeps us warm and dry.






June 26, break camp and head towards the Atlantic Highway. We'd been undecided about our route, but at the campground we'd seen a poster of the highway and decided that was the way to get to Alesund. If you have the choice this section of about 10 miles of highway and bridges is worth your time to travel.










Alesund came next. It's a cute little town.









We had great fish n' chips for dinner, climbed the hill overlooking this lovely town, then headed
off for the fjords. Our goal was to get near to Geringer. This is the fjord where you see all of the photographs of cruise ships floating beneath the towering walls of the fjord. We were a little concerned about which road to take to get there. The guy at the campground last night had suggested a route where the road was so narrow, and the cliffs so steep that the police wouldn't drive there. A lady we met at a tourist shop on the Atlantic highway told us we need not worry and that we should take the world famous breathtaking Trollstigen (Trolls Highway).













When the pass was in sight, we couldn't believe that a road really went up the face of what appeared to be a near verticle cliff. Waterfalls poured out of hidden valleys and thundered down to the river by our right side. We spent an hour here just taking pictures, driving aways, getting out taking more pictures. This is the most powerful place that I have ever been to.








At the top of the pass we looked back down at the road we had come up. Towards the direction we were heading their were snowfields, and a road that had only been cleared of snow a few weeks ago.







We found a campground about an hour's drive from Geringer. To our surprise we could rent a small cabin for only a little more than a tent site, 30 dollars US. The cabin had no running water. But it was cute with four comfortable bunk beds and a table, and it had heat.







June 27, we went to the grocery store just before the ferry crossing to the road to Geringer. Loaded with our food supplies, we chose to have a brunch on the sand on the edge of the fjord about a mile from where we got the ferry. We didn't get out of this town until around noon.







Geringer proved to be just as impressive as it's pictures, but there was nothing to keep us there besides the tourist shops that feed off the thousands who disembark here from the cruise ships. Off on a ferry for about an hour to an old viking port and then through a remote seldom seen by tourists valley to a famous old hotel, the Hotel Union. It has been completely restored. Kings and queens have stayed here as well as many famous people. It sits on the shores of a lake and a very big waterfall is just across the valley. More driving and great scenary. Around 10 PM we stop at a great camsite ran by a cheerful farmer. He has four cabins. Not large but just done with beautiful wood inside and a TV to boot. The bathrooms and showers are immaculate. Reading in the guestbook in our cabin, everyone comments on the bathrooms.



June 28 fjords, fjords, fjords, and ferries, ferries, ferries. Each ferrry boat ride costs about 15 dollars US. The drive isn't boring though. We love every minute of this journey. We'll be in Bergen by late afternoon. What will it be like? We'll be there for 2 nights. It'll be nice to stay in one place for a couple of nights, to park the car and not drive for 2 days.







Our lodging isjust several blocks from the heart of Bergen. The place is marketed as a youth hostel, but in fact is more like a boutique hotel. We have two rooms, one for Chad, one for Pat and I. The rooms are just 75 dollars a night each and have TV's bathrooms, and mini-kitchens.

June 29, Bergen,we love this town. It is the coolest most alive town any of us have ever been to. Everything is in walking distance. We have been looking at handcrafted wool sweaters but the prices are too high for us. Norway is very expensive. A six pack of beer cost me 15 dollars. However, we happen across a thrift store that looks more like a department store than a 2nd hand shop. In it we find great looking norwegian wool sweaters for around 10 dollars a piece.

Today is our 37th wedding anniversary. We chose to celebrate at a restaurant that features Norwegian foods of the 1600's and 1700's. The service was excellent and the food wonderful, but the bill was quite high, the most we've ever spent on a dinner, and we didn't have drinks. The tab came to 240 US dollars. But we're not complaining. The meal and service was worth every penny.








After dinner we strolled along the Bergen waterfront. It was 10 PM. The sun was bright, and everyone in town was out enjoying the great weather.






June 30, we couldn't drag ourselves away from Bergen. We needed more time to soak up the energy of this great place. We'd thought we'd be in Oslo late this evening. We didn't make it.

The road to Oslo still had more magnificent beauty to reveal to us, and we just had to stop and take in each new sight. Along the way we passed through the world's longest automobile tunnel. 15 miles long. Can you believe that? We found one of those cheap, but cute, cabins to stay in around 10 PM. That seems to be the time that we stop driving every night.

July 1, the beauty continues right up to about 10 miles out of Oslo. Then the countryside just becomes plain beautiful rather than oooh beautiful. Oslo has some nice buildings but the traffic is awful. We were in and out of the town in 2 hours. Now headed for Stockholm we did take one last small detour to the town of Fredrickstad. It's a well preserved 17th century village. What really impressed me there was that we came across a bicycle shop that specialized in fixing up old bicycles. Most shops tell people to junk there older bikes and get new ones. This shop even had retired Norwegian postal service bikes for sale. They were around 40 US dollars apiece. Being a bike lover, I went into the store to congratulate the bike mechanic on the work he did.
Then we headed home.