We left to come up here (I am writing this part-way through our visit) Wednesday afternoon after Kimber got off work. It was about a 1 1/2 hour drive, and the scenery was nice. The road we took is one that is closed often during the winter.
The cabin sits halfway up a hill looking down onto a lake. There is a ski lift going up the hill behind it, but the lift cannot be seen from the cabin. The actual square footage isn't very large, but it sleeps about 12 people comfortably, so our 3 people crew has plenty of room. There are 3 actual bedrooms, a loft, and a sleeping cubby in the living room. As with most cabins and huts in Norway, almost everything you need is here, minus food and linens. We will also be required to clean it prior to departure.
We started our visit with a cookout Wednesday night, then I tried a little fishing in the lake. The fish weren't biting, and I think the reason is that it is just too hot right now. Whereas we would not consider 80 "hot" at home, it is quite warm for Norway.
The heat didn't help much with our hike on Thursday either, but we did fine. We hiked Kjerag, which is probably the second most popular hike in our region. The hike takes you from a parking lot over three pretty good hills and to a place where there is a wonderful overlook of the Lysefjord. The spot is a popular location for BASE jumpers (those people that jump off of cliffs, buildings, antennae, etc. and parachute down). We saw several people going up for this.
It is also a popular location because at the culmination of the hike there is a boulder that is stuck in a crag between two cliffs and nothing under the boulder for 1000 meters (where the fjord is at the bottom.) Many people hop out onto the boulder and have their picture taken while they are standing on it. Kimber was brave enough to do this. I tend to have vertigo when close to the edge of long drops, so I didn't try it. Kimber assured me that the boulder isn't going anywhere, to which I responded "The boulder going somewhere isn't a problem. Me going somewhere is."
Sidney did her own version of the boulder, as you can see here. This rock was jammed in a crevice over a hole about 10 feet deep. Not quite the same as Kimber's, but not bad for a 3 1/2 year old. She did part of the hike herself on the way up, but not the steep rocky portions. We didn't have any falls this time, but the climbs were challenging and there were many places where you must depend on chains to go up or down.
There were also a few snow fields along the way. Sidney looked forward to the snow on the way up, but once she felt how slippery it was and how cold it was (especially with the weather being that warm in comparison), she decided the snow wasn't all that great. In this picture you can see under Kimber and Sidney that the snow is melting away pretty quickly, though the path to the top is across several of these fields.
This is out of order, but the drive up to the place the hike started was also quite nice. The road is along the mountains, and we saw our share of sheep and other such things along the way. It also looks pretty barren from the top, as seen in this picture. One thing we wondered about is how well the guardrail would work laying on the ground like that.
The drive back down was also pretty spectacular. We decided to drive down from the parking area to Lysebotn, the little town that sits at the very end of the fjord. The reason we wanted to go down was not necessarily to see the town, but we wanted to drive the road down the mountain. It is 7.5 kilometers (about 5 miles) down from the parking area to the town with an elevation change of over 2000 feet, and the road has a total of 27 switchbacks over that distance. It is quite a drive.
It was even more spectacular because we made the drive at the height of a thunderstorm. We had started to hear the thunder while finishing our hike, and had to think about whether it was really thunder, since it was the first time we had heard thunder here since our arrival in April. It steadily got closer, and we were pretty happy to be done with the hike before the rain came. Those steep descents would have been pretty tough on slick rocks.
The nice thing about the rain is that it creates some pretty cool waterfalls very quickly. This waterfall was not there when we passed this spot on the way up. It rained until just about the time we arrived back at the cabin, and by then it had cooled things off nicely.
We took it easy on Friday, visiting Sinnes and a few other little areas locally. We went to the Mountain Museum, which is not bad. The highlight of the visit there is a film displayed on a three screen, 180 degree panorama. The footage is shot from helicopters and other vehicles, and almost gives the sense of flying over the mountains and valleys. For those that have been to Disney World, it is like the Soarin' ride, except without the moving seats and smells pumped in.
The museum also features several old buildings that have been moved to the site and have either been restored or at least made to look like they did in the original location. The oldest is from about 1700, but as you can tell by the carvings in the wall of this summer farm house, many were used in the 1800's as well. Yes, the dates are from the 1800's and 1900's, and grafitti has been practiced as an art in Norway since at least then. Considering the amount of grafitti we see in Stavanger, I actually think it may have been a Viking invention and it is now perfected with the youth in Stavanger. Oh, one other thing we learned at the museum is that the ants here do bite. We were all wearing sandals and were walking on a path between the old buildings that the ants also favored. They apparently didn't like us walking there so much. Most of the rest of the walk was peppered with Sidney saying "Shoo, ants!"
After a lunch back at the cabin, we headed south to Tonstad. Along the way we stopped at this stone bridge that is over a large gorge, and at the site of an Iron Age burial ground. The burial ground was used from the 400's to about 800 A.D.
We did a little walking and driving in Tonstad, and found some local oxen. The calves were pretty cute, but you could tell they didn't like the warm weather. It also just so happened we found our first ripe blueberries of the season. We ate as many as we could find ripe, which was about a handful each. We plan on doing much more blueberry picking as the season develops.
We headed back to our cabin, via a couple of playgrounds along the way. Sidney has been a pretty good sport about all the hiking and deserved a little "4 year old" time. Once we did get back, I fired up the barbecue for dinner just in time for another thunderstorm. Being the die-hard barbeque-er (I have been known to grill during a snowstorm), I did not give up, and we had a nice little dinner of grilled sausages and other fixings. Sidney also took advantage of the rain and got a little wet. Hopefully her shoes will dry by tomorrow, as we would like to do another short hike.
You will all just have to keep reading to hear about the rest of our weekend!
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