Norway - Part 3: Keiservarden

One of our favorite activities in Norway was hiking up Keiservarden, Bodø's most popular hike.  It is named for a German emperor ('keiser' means emperor in Norwegian).  In 2016, six sherpas from Nepal were brought in to build stone steps up the mountain.  The sherpas apparently were very experienced building natural stone stairs up steep Himalayan mountains, and brought their expertise to Norway and used local stone for the approximately 500 steps.  The path to the top (366 meters above sea level) is a mix of walking on the stone face of the mountain and sherpa stairs.

The next pictures were taken on the way up the mountain.

My brother Thomas was also visiting my parents in Hopen while we were there.  He was there for about half of our stay.  My mom and Thomas:

Karina and Thomas walked up the mountain much faster than the rest of us who were going at Derek and Lydia's pace.  They made it up super fast and waited quite a while for the slow pokes.  On the other hikes we went on, Karina was usually way ahead of us with Thomas as well.  She is a great hiker.

When we got to the top of Keiservarden, we saw a paraglider getting ready to launch himself off the cliff.  He actually flew around awhile and then rode the updrafts to land on the top again rather than going down to the bottom of the mountain.  He repeated the flight several more times without going to the bottom, along with several other paragliders that were in the air around the mountain.  The guy was getting awfully close to rock cliffs while paragliding - it looked very dangerous to me, but Nate thought it looked like fun (though he admitted it was probably too dangerous to do if you were a beginner). 

Here are our attempts at family pictures.  The fourth one is my favorite and will probably end up on our wall.  It also displays the scenery the best.  The second one has Nate tickling Derek so he would look up and smile, which resulted in Derek squirming in the third one.  Always hard to get everyone looking good at the same instant.

Here are my two favorite pictures of my parents with the kids.  

We picnicked on the top and enjoyed the view.

Derek was determined to take a selfie with Nate's help and did a great job:

On the way down, we also enjoyed some beautiful views:

Derek did a fantastic job on the hike. He walked nearly the entire trip up and all of the trip down.  Pretty good for a 2 year old!  He is also obsessed with rocks and loves digging in them or throwing them:

Back at Mimi and Mormor's house, Karina and Lydia decorated a patio table with lots of wild flowers from the yard and garden:

Nate and I went on a walk in the woods and took a picture of Mimi and Mormor's white house and red barn, with the mountains in the background.  It is a very idyllic setting.