Third Week: Overlanding Norway
Exploring Stavanger, Norway
The sun wakes me up, but needing to pee makes me get out of bed. Hank joins me. I decide to take advantage of the mild-warmth and have a micro-dip to shower. Water is colder here than the other day. We have our yogurts… well, mine turns out to be some odd variation of rice pudding with a separate raspberry jam you dump in it. Delicious but too sweet. Just in case you wanted to know what our mornings are looking like these days ha.
We pack up and head into Stavanger before the rain comes. We have a big day planned for our first official year of being married. Nothing keeps the spark alive like visiting not one, but two museums! A sentence I never thought I’d say.
We walk around Old Stavanger first to see the 100+ wooden houses that are still preserved and lived in from the cities canning days. Cute cobble streets and beautiful gardens top off its charm. Being able to grow roses must be a mandatory Norwegian citizenship requirement, maybe we won't be moving here after all…
First, we hit up the canning museum, which is oddly joined with the typography museum. It didn’t make sense at first, but after an hour of reading the exhibits, it kind of did. The canning part was interesting though and made us hungry. We wandered towards the downtown centre which was a little livelier (dead fish will do that too you). We decided to celebrate our anniversary with the only thing we ever think about, food. We had a delicious lunch by the water. Steamed mussels with incredibly fresh, melt in your mouth bread. I ordered the ling fish which was one of the prettiest dishes I’ve ever eaten and equally tasty. Jonny ordered the fish cakes which resembled Japanese style soufflé pancakes – also tasty.
The street murals here are incredible - they had a Nuart Festival in 2018 apparently, where a bunch of walls got turned into a street art tour. We didn't see them all, but they are very colourful and a fun way to explore the city on foot. I used this map, and found it very helpful.
Next up was the Petroleum Museum to learn about the Norwegian oil industry and its boom, innovations, and learnings. I will say, both museums were incredibly well done. Visually appealing, educational, and interactive. Trying to can rubber sardines was challenging, but my personal favourite was pressing a button on a water tank only to have the compression chamber release which then sounded like a bomb went off in the entire museum. I nearly had a heart attack, and likely gave several bystanders one as well. We even escaped down a chute from the oil rig replica. A ton of money has gone into these places and once you get entry to one, you either get 50% off the others or they're free for the next 24hrs – in case you’re ever in town.
On our way to the city this morning we found a small pullout by the river and decided to try our luck camping there for the night. We were in luck, and its right by an old rail trail, so we took the dogs for a long stroll, hung by the water, read, napped, and just enjoyed a charcuterie board for dinner. Lunch was filling and bathroom privacy is to a minimum here. I don’t really feel like celebrating our one year of marriage by pooping in the van with our toilet seat on legs... It’s already been a very un-romantic day, no need to add to it.
The Wettest Day in Norway (so far!)
We started the day off dry, but it did not end that way.
It all started when we stopped to get a coffee and a pastry. And, I'm just going to say it. Norway is a beautiful place, but they make awful pastries. We should stop pretending we're still in France... Jonny, I’m looking at you. Even the cappuccinos are inconsistent and so far, only 25% have been good. However, it keeps our bellies temporarily happy (or at least our minds, thinking we had a treat when it was in fact, not great) for the 40-minute drive to the waterfall, Mänafossen.
It’s a 302FT tall cascade that can only be viewed by another 302 FT ascent to the platform. It’s been raining this whole time, and we wait out the heaviest of it in the van getting ourselves both physically and mentally prepared. After seeing the cars, the people and how short the trip would be, we decide to leave the dogs in the dry van, and sacrificed ourselves. This was the best call we’d make today.
The hike was not only steep, but slippery and with chains. The worst part though was the unpredictable people. Some going fast, way to slow or in tow with crying children who clearly wanted no part of having left the house- much like how Jonny feels everytime he steps into the outdoors, or as he confesses to me on the way down.
The waterfall was pretty, and the trail continued to a 30-bed cabin at the top which showed a lake, river and endless fields to wander in.
Back at the van we dried ourselves out and drove to the 4x4 camp spot Jonny had found. In the 40-minutes’ drive to our destination we experienced sheep roadblocks and some quaint, green-roofed cabins.
We pull up at the lake camp spot, find the perfect parking layout and hunker in the van to pass the time. As soon as we get comfy, the rain stops. Perfect, we think - let’s all go for a wander around the lake shore, stay dry and track as little sand as possible into the van when we get back. It was the perfect plan.
Until it wasn’t.
We let Quinn off as we wandered around the shore so he could at least get some exercise in today. We were walking away from the only open access point, so he'd have to run by us to escape, and he was content staying in front. We’d just turned around to head back to the van and were about to leash him up, but Quinn had other plans.
The next thing I know he is now bolting to the van, and beyond. By the time I realize the seriousness of the situation he has a solid 600M lead on us and is heading for the road- a busy two-lane that people are ripping on. No amount of shouting would make stop him. He was smelling sheep and apparently wasn’t about to comprise on lamb chops for dinner.
By the time Jonny and I got to either side of a lookout, he was gone. The pouring rain had also returned. Hank was whining, and Quinn was nowhere to be seen, despite his bright white, sleep-like coat in the surround lush green hills.
For the next two hours we ran around the valley. My shoes were drenched. I re-sprained my already busted ankle another five times. At one point, I gave Hank to Jonny (who went and got the van) while I sprinted a couple kilometers up the road. Motorists thought I was the craziest / stupidest human they’d ever seen. Picking a down pour, on a narrow road with no room on the side to run in while wearing mostly black. I’d like to thank Lululemon for my royal blue tights, which is likely the only reason I'm alive today.
Eventually Jonny gave me a walkie-talkie so I could watchie-stalkie our whitey-flighty dog.
I came across several groups of sheep who seemed unphased by me which immediately meant I was on the wrong path. As the minutes kept rolling by, my worrying turned to a gut-wrenching sadness. I googled open vets in the area and scanned the ditches for a white body. Eventually Jonny radioed saying he saw him on the same side of the valley that he’d taken off on us.
I drove down while Jonny ran over to him. He was walking slowly, drenched and had some blood on him. He had one deep gash on his left leg and one smaller one above his eye. We took him to the water, cleaned him up. Then we turned to the medical attention issues. Quinn was visibly not with it. He seemed in a trance. He wouldn't eat, even though he'd had no breakfast and undoubtedly just ran 15KM - I'd likely done around six myself.
Once he was bandaged up, we got ourselves dry too.
By the time we warmed up, we had mountains of soaked clothes, towels and shoes, and sand was everywhere. We made soup in the van, and once again, didn't bother cracking our anniversary bubbly – it wasn’t really a time to be celebrating.
Navigating into Lysebotn
At 6:55 AM sharp, Quinn leapt off the bed full of life and starting husky-talking to us about how if he’d had 15 more minutes we could have a months supply of free lamb. He screeched and howled, begging and pleading. Eventually after a further 15 minutes of this, we started our day. There was no way he'd settle down, nor could we sleep. We drove to the town of Sinnes, where we had an hour to wait until the grocery store opened. Lovely. We walked around, cleaned out the van, tried to deal with the wet clothes but no sun equals no drying.
With little supplies in Lysebotn, we filled up our tanks and the fridge.
I will say, the bread selection in Norway’s grocery stores, even for a small town, is overwhelming. But it could just be me over exaggerating. At one point I thought a package of sugar cookies were English muffins. I apparently needed a coffee, thanks Quinn. I did manage to find wraps though, so our hiking lunches were saved, as well as these odd-looking balls which turned out to be potato dumplings (Komle).
The nature preserve before Lysebotn on FV500 is stunning! The road climbs up 920M, twisting by lakes, rivers and waterfalls. There are rolling hills, mountains and alpine-like vegetation just outside the window and as far as the eye can see. Naturally, I need photos, so I jump out, insist that Jonny circles back, while I creepily crouch in some blueberry bushes, snacking while simultaneously snapping photos.
By the time we made it to the top of Lysebotn, we naturally follow the rest of car-sheep into the parking lot to check out the view and so-called ‘mountain hut’.
This is when I learned two new things about Norway:
1) Huts are more like luxury houses here, and I would happily live in this “hut” for life
2) Car park attendants are very excited to see Canadians
We go inside to admire the building and sit with a tea, sandwich, and apple cake. We’ve paid 300NK to park so we may as well enjoy it, and add more to our tab.
Much to the demise of our parking attendant, we leave and head down the 27-hair pin turns to get to the bumping town. It is completely empty, apart from a familiar face at the pier. We say hello to our long-lost friend, Dylan, and meet his girlfriend, Vee. We then wander over to the only campground in town, pay for two nights and
decide that we should probably make the most of this weather window and do the infamous Kjerag hike.
We make wraps as rewards and make the parking attendant very happy of our return to do the hike. The minute we get dressed; it starts to rain. Lightly at first as we navigate ourselves and the dogs up a sheer rock slab, complete with chains and 200 of our closest friends. The rain then picks up, so does the wind. Sheep present themselves as dog rewards on the trail, and eventually after the third up and down, the wind gets gale-force while the rains comes down sideways.
Hank continues to ignore the elements as he both dunks in every puddle (there are roughly 500) and simultaneously whines, likely because he’s cold. It’s when I am angling my body in a slight curve to make myself as aero dynamic as possible that I start to question my decision on doing this hike. However, we’re just over halfway so it would all be wasted if we turn back now. Jonny puts on my extra long-sleeve sweatshirt to warm up, as his rain jacket has lovingly turned itself into a non-rain jacket; we collectively carry on.
By the time we make it to the infamous Kjerag, I've never been so disappointed in my life. It looks small and very unimpressive and it’s not even on a cliffs edge! Instagram has betrayed me, and immediately the infamous drinking game comes to my mind, why now, I don’t know – but it’s a good one.
"Never have I ever dragged my entire family on a hike in miserable conditions to see a rock wedged between two other rocks!” I’ll have to drink every time now for the rest of my life.
I nearly turned around right then and there, being too stubborn to take the Instagram photo out of principal of its deception. But as we walked the remaining 100M, it revealed itself.
Okay, it was impressive.
These two rock walls were in fact staggering granite cliffs with a sheer 1000M drop down to the fjord. Mind you, it was such heavy fog that I could only make out the death-defying drop once I’d already made the leap of faith onto the wedged rocks surface. One that made me want to both puke and praise it at the same time for how sneaky it was. It’s so impressive that I manage to coax Jonny to the edge, if even just for a few seconds, to see it. We promptly left five minutes later.
We ate our wrap-rewards on the hike back, while adding a little jog to our hike to help us warm up. We take Dylan's recommended short cut back to the road to avoid the busiest section of the slippery rock hills. I don’t think Jonny's back could handle another Octopus manoeuvre like he’d done on the last one to avoid falling.
This short cut turned out to be worse, I think.
Shorter, maybe.
More dangerous, muddy and steep, absolutely.
There were no people though, but only after I yelled to inform the ‘avid hikers’ behind us who had started following us, rather than looking at the big sign stating they were leaving the trail. I like to think I did her brand-new white sneakers a favour.
Upon our return, we confused our overeager parking attendant once again by entering the parking lot from the roadside and not the trail. He must think Canadians are stupid after today’s interactions with us.
Entirely soaked, we add our clothes to the growing pile of wet items, make dinner and call it a night.
Soaked in Lysebotn
It's a great day to do nothing.
We all sleep in and move as little as possible because of the rain. Our clothes have very little dryness to them already, no need to add more to the pile. The diesel heater in the van has already proved its worth by taking care of our soaked shoes, towels and my lovely white duvet cover, which has many paw prints, some dried blood and now what looks like a piss spot and stinks of wet sheep urine. Thanks, Quinn.
We shower today and meet up with our friends at Olav’s Pub. Lysebotn is quite small, so choice for pubs is narrowed down to either our campground or the other. It was so nice to catch up with Dylan and ask our 101 questions about Base jumping.
Side note: this is why Dylan is here, there is a base jumping boogie happening, so at any given time (weather dependent) you can see base jumpers coming into land at the campground. A very surreal sight to watch.
The rain holds off in the late afternoon, so I run down to catch the sunset at the end of the fjord, and we lay our entire wet-lives out to dry on the fence hoping it will dry.
Second Day with No Driving – Who Are We?
Another slow start to the day, but the waiting period is over. It's time to make this epic box of pancake mix I bought in Germany. It's been eating away at my soul since the moment we bought it, and we have enough apples to spare to make my fluffy Dutch Apple pancake dreams come true.
Twenty minutes later, we're eating what can only be described as flour sawdust in a circular cardboard shape. They are so dense; you could use them to patch your drywall. No amount of the braised honey/balsamic apples could have saved them. Well - now we know.
By the early afternoon, we got geared up and took the long walk to the most epic frisbee golf course I’ve ever seen. This lush green field was sandwiched between towering rock faces and had the craziest distance requirements I've ever seen. One hole wanted you to throw it 340M to the other hole. Are you joking me. That’s 3x the distance of the height of the waterfall we climbed last week. Not to mention, I'm lucky to even get mine 35 FT in the right direction- this course is next level.
Hank trying to show us his sudden interest in frisbees, while Quinn trying to hunt sheep also didn’t help our game. We did two holes, realized this is too ‘expert level’ for us, and went for a lovely walk instead. This place is just so stunning, it’s hard not to wander aimlessly.
The Day we Hiked the Road for No Reason
Another slow start to the day as we prepare ourselves for a few hours hike out of Lysebotn Valley, and up onto the north ridge. MapOut (my favourite hiking app) tells me there is a hiking route up this side to various lakes, and it seems like a great choice given the suns out. We almost didn’t recognize it, it’s been so long.
By noon we start our journey passing a church that also has an automatic lawn mower. Does anyone cut their lawn here? The answer is no.
However, picking up rose pedals that fall under the bushes - that’s only a job a human can do. I saw it with my own eyeballs in town this morning. That poor, poor soul – he was there for hours. Should I tell him they’ve invented this thing called a ‘leaf blower’ or if that has too much velocity, a ‘hair dryer’?
As it turns out, this hiking route is just your basic, winding path that’s not only perfectly paved, but it’s also wider than most roads we've driven on so far. Classic. I was waiting for Jonny to tell me his famous line, “I hate hiking up things you can drive,” but it never came. He must have been heat stroked from all this sudden vitamin D we’re getting.
For a road though, it was pretty. Tons of waterfalls, the next one more swimmable than the last. One even had a natural rockslide - and I want this on record - this is now the fourth time I could have used a floaty in Norway alone. If Jonny gets that fishing rod he keeps grumbling about, I want a floaty. End of story.
Eventually all this road walking led us to a tunnel of which my birth year was displayed above it. A special year, some would say.
The further we climbed, the more blueberries and raspberries I found. I don't think there’s been a hike, walk or gentle stroll that I’ve not hand-picked my own snack along the way. I just want to pick and taste a cloudberry now - we're coming Lofoten, soonish…
We make it to a lake-lunch spot just in time for Jonny to crash on a rock, dramatically dying from hunger. Have I told you recently how much he dislikes hiking?
After lunch, I continue blueberry picking while he cat-naps in the sun. The dogs dunk in the water (Hippo-Hank), and one helps me consume the blueberries from the bush (Quinn).
We hike a little further, hoping the road would end or a gate would appear to validate our efforts could only be achieved on foot, but it never did. The only realization I got was that the rocks in Norway can keep plants alive better than I can.
On our long walk down, we stopped briefly for a waterfall cool down before ripping our hiking shoes off at the van. It was an 18KM, 735M gain kind of day. I’d say this earns us an ice cream. They’re advertised at not one, but all three stores in town, with multiple stands and posters. It was bound to break our willpower eventually. However, after some showers, dinner and drying time, we could only source them from the same pub we've been supporting since we arrived. In which case, it’d be rude not to get a beer too. Our friends joined us, and eventually that led to two, then three as we joined them at the Bat Cave to watch a base-jumping compilation movie marathon from the past week. It was fun to see, and I can certainly see the appeal. We said good night / goodbye so we could wake up early for our ferry.
Norway, You Never Ceases to Amaze Me
Super excited to take our ferry ride up the fjord today, we got up early to pack, top up the water tank and high tail it out of there.
The excitement levels drastically dwindled when all the hype of the sights we were going to see has now been drastically limited due to dense fog. Instead of seeing 1000M up the cliffs, we can barely see 200M.
The compliments from the ferry attendant saying "This is the coolest thing we've had on here (the boat)" didn’t go unnoticed though and made Wylie's day.
We made three stops on our journey; one so some people could hike the 4,444 steps hike beside something of importance, the second at a small dock that literally had nothing else around it except a decaying boat - is the next season of Alone being filmed here?
And finally, our stop - Oanes.
Luckily, the last 30-minutes saw some clouds lift and we could see just how beautiful this sailing could have been (damnit!). It’s this luck of ours that keeps me from playing the lottery – just saying.
We do a quick walk and bridge drive before heading to Jorpeland to see if the van seals Jonny has shipped have arrived from France. Nope – shocker. Instead, we stock up on groceries as we're running low on all the essentials. This was the most expensive yet, at $1,200 NK (a cool $170 CAD) we barely have anything to show for it. We may have to survive on this caviar in a tube Jonny bought if we want to stay here. I did manage to see a giant crate of prawns though. This piqued my interest, and I kindly asked the gentleman if they were cooked or raw. They looked cooked, but he said raw, so I went for it.
An hour later, after a brief contemplation of a fishing rod purchase, they can officially be confirmed as cooked, twice now. Regardless, they were delicious, and not really worth the effort for the size. The smoked mackerel in a tin for only a couple bucks, however, 10/10 would buy again!
We found a nice, windy, spot in a nature preserve just on the other side of the same fjord we'd spent the last week. Funnily enough, we’re roughly 20KM from where we hiked yesterday. This tells me we could have likely driven ourselves here instead of ferried... ah, Norway, you got us again!
I wasn’t even mad though; this place is like a vast tundra of uniquely beautiful landscapes all morphed into one. It has to be to survive the wicked winds of Norway.
The towering rocky hills against a deep blue lake, only made turquoise near the shore where the granite sloped into it, is a sight to be seen. The land was mostly plateaus of granite with alpine-like greenery, again the only thing brave enough to stand the gale-force elements. The most unique thing of all, however, was the obscure round and jagged boulders scattered throughout the landscape. They almost appeared to have been placed with intention. It was picturesque and jarring at the same time - only the pointed ones evoked the startling feeling. Lakes were also everywhere, and the sun was just screaming "floaty’ territory but, nope. We’re still floaty-poor.
