Karina and Mormor. It does seem unusual that we were in warm coats in the middle of summer, but when it was rainy, it did get pretty chilly.
Many of our walks were along lit cross country ski trails. Skiing (particularly cross country) is huge in Norway - we saw several people training with roller skis (basically roller blades with roughly three foot skis) and poles while there was no snow. Built along many of the trails are little ski shelters like this one for people to take a rest, get out of the wind, build a campfire, etc.
We bribed the kids with various snacks and treats for most of the walks and hikes we did while in Norway. This day, the treat of choice was marshmallows. These pictures of Lydia with her marshmallow are probably equal parts disgusting and hilarious as she shoved the whole thing in her mouth and then had a hard time chewing.
One of the things I noted was how green Norway was. Here's Derek exploring by himself on a trail behind Mimi and Mormor's house.
And Tanja and me.
The sun never setting was pretty strange to me. I had been to lower Alaska before in the summer, but where we were, the night would go to basically a twilight look. In Norway, the sun just never set for most of the time we were there. Literally, for the nearly three weeks while we were at Mimi and Mormor's house, the sun only officially "set" for a grand total of 23 minutes, all on the last night we were there. Here's a picture of the view across the fjord from Mimi and Mormor's porch taken at about 9:30 at night. Mimi and Mormor were laughing at me, but this was the first day that I was able to see the mountains in the distance because of clouds and fog.
It was a continual challenge to find four-leaf-clovers. Tanja was the big winner.
Another walk through the woods.
This time we made a small fire and tried to roast the marshmallows. Karina thought they were OK. Lydia was very upset that toasted marshmallows were gooey on the inside and didn't like them at all.
Derek was absolutely furious that his last marshmallow remnants fell into the fire and it was time to leave the fire. He screamed as loud as he could, stamped his feet, waved his fists, and went for a full blown tantrum. It probably didn't help that we were laughing uncontrollably at his antics.
We took a hike to a large reservoir called Heggmovatnet that served as the town's drinking water supply and serves about 40,000 people.
The deep still water made for a perfect mirror effect reflecting the surrounding mountains.
The water was only perfectly still for so long before the kids started to throw rocks in it. We tried to teach them how to skip rocks, but it's a difficult skill to master. They had enough fun just going for the splash.
Mormor is waving at the top of the dam and reflected in the water below.
We visited Saltstraumen, home of the world's strongest maelstrom (whirlpool) at the tide change. I admit I was at least partially expecting something more along the lines of something seen in Pirates of the Caribbean rather than what we saw, but it was still impressive (see around 1:54 of this You Tube clip on the maelstrom).
This little shed/bunker was dug into the hill along the path to get to the water - it looked kind of like it could have come from Lord of the Rings and housed a Hobbit. Instead, our kids had fun ducking in and seeing inside (where it was basically empty as I recall).
Here are pictures of the actual maelstrom - see how the water is swirling as the tide changes and all the water is pushed through the narrow channel? We had to be careful with the kids, because like I told them, if they fell in, we wouldn't be able to get them until the undertow swept them out too far to save.
These next few pictures are from Fauske, a charming town along the water that we visited and walked around one day.
Snoopy was very energetic (for him) during most of the trip. He loved having a big new yard to explore full of new sniffs and unconstrained by fences. I think he particularly liked sniffing around anywhere the sheep had wandered as well as the compost pile where Mimi and Mormor threw out much of their food waste. The cooler temperatures helped too.
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