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Amazing Fjords-Highest Mountains |
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We left our Fjellstova cabin at 8:30 a.m. and it was so foggy again that we couldn’t see the top of the mountains. At 11 a.m. we caught the ferry at Linge to head south to Tyinholmen to look for Opdahls. |
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Email: Sue@PrintsPublishing.com HomePage: www.PrintsPublishing.com |
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It wasn’t a long ferry ride, but it’s fun to get out of the car so we can see where we’re going. |
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There was fog at the Geiringer Fjord, too, and yet we came to see and experience the height and depth and width of the famous fjord from top to bottom. |
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Hairpin curves alongside the mountain walls gave us continuing views of the fjord. |
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This is what’s on the other side of the road. |
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As we’re descending, we get different perspectives and it all was pretty awesome. |
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This fjord is unusually deep which is why huge cruise ships can come in and also enjoy the scenery. |
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This home with the sod roof looks like it’s growing right out of the hillside. |
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And now we’re on the other side — the end — of the fjord. Driving was the only way to get here. |
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We could see the little town that supplies both residents and tourists, but we were going someplace else. |
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All of a sudden we were above the treeline and the road was very narrow, considering it’s 2-way traffic. |
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It was amazing to have walked in the green valley yesterday and be riding in the white snow today. |
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Actually, pictures don’t do justice to the outstanding scenery. |
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But I can tell you it was a harrowing experience to meet fast moving campers and cars on this very narrow road through the mountains. |
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Allan’s five-speed stick shift got a continual workout and so did my camera. |
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It was about 12:30 — just past noon — when we happened upon a large ski resort/chalet/hotel in the mountains, seemingly waiting for us. Grotli had a German menu and apparently German settlement nearby. The sky was now blue and it was a gorgeous day. |
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We each inhaled a large bowl of delicious sausage soup and then kept driving. |
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It looked like a painting. In some ways, it is. |
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In the City of Lom at 2 p.m., we looked up the famous stave church built in 1130 as a Catholic church. |
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It was full of staves, thick columns of vertical planks, set upright rather than horizontally as in log homes. |
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And then we got on the road again. |
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I noticed that buildings in this area were no longer painted red. Everything was now brown. |
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Since we were below the tree line again, we began to see farms again and tractor eggs. |
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Speaking of tractors … And check the width of that winding road. |
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And then we were high in the mountains again, still on the same road. We found it all amazing. |
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About 3 o’clock we turned off the main road for a shortcut to the City of Ardal and it got a little scary because we didn’t see another car or road sign for a long time. |
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Allan said these long sticks are planted along the edge of roads so snowplows know where to go when it’s all snowed over. We were here in the middle of summertime. |
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Eventually it started to look civilized again, more or less. |
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After some miles we ran up against a crossbar and sat there speechless for a minute. Finally, a guy knocked on my window, scared us out of our wits, and said we had to pay a toll in order to pass. We paid the toll. |
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Some civilized people raise sheep but there are no fences anywhere and so I thought of Little Bo Peep. |
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We found a spot to pull over so Allan could actually measure the road width. It was 9.5 feet. This is the only spot we ever had a “shoulder.” They don’t do shoulders in Norway, nor wide roads. |
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It seems there’s a city at the end of every fjord. |
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And it seems they all beg for a snapshot. |
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And then we found Lake Tyin! |
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This was Opdahl country. |
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It’s where people build cabins in the mountains. |
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Lake Tyin was very big to go around and it was raining. |
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The blacktop road turned into a gravel road, the first gravel road we had driven on. |
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More sod on cabin roofs, this one directly on Lake Tyin. |
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More sheep. More rain. |
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And then it looked like pictures we’ve seen of Tyinholmen. |
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It was Tyinholmen. |
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We found Marie Skogstad at the front desk. Her first husband was Ole Opdahl! |
