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kareinaThis year's Norway vacation started on Saturday--we got on the road shortly around 08:20 in the morning, but we had been up since 04:00 doing last minute packing and organizing and stuff. Therefor, while our goal was to head all the way to Lofoten, but we decided that it would be smarter to just go to the campground at Narvik instead, since it was only a 8 hour drive, and neither of us had been to Narvik before.
While I am not keen on cities, I think Narvik is in a beautiful location. The campground is just outside of town, so we didn't even have to enter the city upon arrival. The view from the campground is lovely (I really should get photos off of the phone, but no time/energy for that today), and after we set up the tent we made time for a short walk. Before we even got out of the campground I noticed a couple of huge boulders, so had to go look. They turned out to be a lovely garnet-bearing schist, with quite a few garnets in the 0.5 to 2 mm range, which made me realize that I really ought to be carrying my phone so that I could take photos, so I hurried back to the tent, and noticed a smaller boulder closer to the tent which had garnets in the 5 to 7 mm range. Needless to say, photos were taken and I looked forward to finding an outcrop of rocks that were actually in place, so that I could find out if they were local rock, or if they had been dropped here by some glacier and came from a long way away. We didn't go that far, but I am pleased to report that the outcrops we did find were, in fact, garnet bearing schists, and I even brought home a small sample (which is unusual for me--I normally only bring home rock samples if they are in my field area and I want to do analyses on them--who can afford to ship rocks when they move?).
After our walk and my yoga we went to sleep so that we could get up at a reasonable hour to continue our journey. Six hours and 15 minutes after leaving Narvik we arrived at the Viking Museum, where they have a replica of the largest Viking Long house ever excavated. I recommend this park--they have done a lovely job with it. We got to be part of the crew rowing the Viking ship (replica of the Gotstad ship) for a pretty 30 min spin around the lake. We took turns playing with throwing axes and shooting long bows at a target. We only watched the smith making something for a brief time, since we have a good smith at home who also uses period techniques. For the first time in my life I actually used an audio guide. Why? Because instead of using their headsets I was able to plug their controller into my bluetooth thingy and listen to the sound in my hearing aids.
They have the main tourist building set up for them--one room with a bunch of different videos running on loop tape--you point your control stick at the button next to the video and you get sound for that one in your ears. Tired of listening? Go point your controller at another button. They also have a big screen movie that plays into the headsets when you synch your controller with the button at the door to the theater, and then there is a room full of display cases to show off many of the small artifacts they found during the excavation, each with a button to get sound. Honestly, I would have rather read text about the artifacts and instead of the videos explaining the history of the park and what is known about the people who lived in the longhouse, because it is *much* faster for me to read a paragraph than to listen to someone speaking the exact same words, but the technology amused me (and they had a variety of languages available).
After leaving the museum we headed on to a campground, initially chosen because it happens to be the nearest to the museum. However, having stayed there I strongly recommend Unstad Campground. They are actually set up as a surfing campground, and I suspect that is the biggest reason for the difference between them and the campground in Narvik we had stayed at the previous night. What were the differences? Both are located in very beautiful settings with stunning views, but the one in Narvik obviously gets way more people passing through. The person on duty there was behind the desk when we arrived, checked us in quickly and efficiently, made pleasant small talk, but it was clearly a business transaction for her. When we arrived in Unstad and got out of the car we were met by a man leaving the main building who welcomed us warmly, chatted a bit in a very friendly manner, and suggested that we set up our tent first, anywhere we liked, and then go inside to pay, since he needed to go talk to the girls who were taking off their wet suits just then.
So we did, and when we went inside we were greeted by a very friendly, motherly lady who treated us like guests in her home and old friends she simply hadn't met yet, rather than as customers (even though she did take cash for our camping there). Both of the hosts were much fun to visit with, and the setting was lovely. The guy encouraged us to take surfing lessons in the morning, or to climb the ridge above the campground. She told us about a beautiful walk along the coast towards the next village, and said that they often go out to the lighthouse 45 minutes walk away just to relax and enjoy the view. She said that since the German group had ordered the sauna heated for 21:00 we might want to go relax in it when they were done, and when I wondered aloud if I should do yoga first, and then sauna, or sauna first and then yoga, she suggested I do hot yoga in the sauna. (They also have an outdoor hottub which would have been great, but it takes three hours to fill and heat and we didn't get there till 19:00, so it wasn't worth ordering this time).
After their suggestions we decided to do the walk to the lighthouse that night, and go up the ridge in the morning. The first part of the trail is actually a road--during the war they started putting one in, but the war ended before they got it done, so the middle bit is just a walking trail, with minor improvements. We walked out till we came to a lovely small ridge which gave the first view of the lighthouse on the next ridge, and decided that it would be a good place to stop and do yoga. However, soon after I started stretching we noticed that the clouds out to sea were thickening and getting lower, and we could no longer see the lighthouse.
Since the last portion of the trail we had come over was rather narrow and required a fair bit of scrambling over rocks we decided that rather than finishing yoga just then it would be smarter to turn back, before the fog closed in and made it hard to see the path. We have no idea if the fog ever did get to that part of the trail, but if it did it did so after we got back to the easy part of the track. Since I didn't get to do my yoga out on the ridge overlooking the ocean I opted instead to follow her other suggestion, and instead did my yoga in a hot sauna, enjoying the view through the window of one of the ridges overlooking the campground. While I am too tired to deal with photos tonight, I can point you to this one, which I uploaded to FB while in camp, using their free wireless (the only time all trip we had internet).
In the morning it was raining, the clouds were sitting on the mountain tops, so we decided not to climb the ridge after all. While I wouldn't have minded hiking in the rain, we didn't see a point if there would have been no visibility when we got there. So instead we drove two hours further out on the highway, to the end of the road in the village of Å (how is that for a nice, long town name?), where we did take a walk in the rain, and enjoyed it immensely.
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lord_kjar was itching to get home, so we started the long drive--leaving Å at about 14:30. We did a few stops, including one very important one. While at the Viking museum the day before we picked up some cheese from their gift shop, and it tasted so good we had to go back and buy a couple of other packages of it. If anyone else wants to try, it comes from Aalan Gård (a gård is a farm), and it looks like they do mail order, which is good since what we brought back with us won't last all that long. The cheese we got is called Aalander.
Had it not been raining we might have opted to came one more night in the mounatins and do a hike that evening or in the morning, but given the rain, and the list of things we want to accomplish before Medltidsdagar next week, we drove straight through (not counting short stops for fuel, cheese, toilet, and yoga) and arrived home at 03:05. I managed to nap for a couple of hours, but he was awake the whole time. I am not surprised that today has been a bit of a lazy day, with only a few errands and putting away some of what we had taken with us accomplished.
Tomorrow morning I have a dental appointment (booked today during those errands) after which we will head down to Piteå to work on projects withlord_kjar's family. That leaves five days to work at stuff at home for the event.
It was only a short trip, yet still I fell in love over and over--nearly every new valley had a peak that was so beautiful I wanted to move there and admire it forever. So many mountains, so little time available to devote myself to appreciating them!
While I am not keen on cities, I think Narvik is in a beautiful location. The campground is just outside of town, so we didn't even have to enter the city upon arrival. The view from the campground is lovely (I really should get photos off of the phone, but no time/energy for that today), and after we set up the tent we made time for a short walk. Before we even got out of the campground I noticed a couple of huge boulders, so had to go look. They turned out to be a lovely garnet-bearing schist, with quite a few garnets in the 0.5 to 2 mm range, which made me realize that I really ought to be carrying my phone so that I could take photos, so I hurried back to the tent, and noticed a smaller boulder closer to the tent which had garnets in the 5 to 7 mm range. Needless to say, photos were taken and I looked forward to finding an outcrop of rocks that were actually in place, so that I could find out if they were local rock, or if they had been dropped here by some glacier and came from a long way away. We didn't go that far, but I am pleased to report that the outcrops we did find were, in fact, garnet bearing schists, and I even brought home a small sample (which is unusual for me--I normally only bring home rock samples if they are in my field area and I want to do analyses on them--who can afford to ship rocks when they move?).
After our walk and my yoga we went to sleep so that we could get up at a reasonable hour to continue our journey. Six hours and 15 minutes after leaving Narvik we arrived at the Viking Museum, where they have a replica of the largest Viking Long house ever excavated. I recommend this park--they have done a lovely job with it. We got to be part of the crew rowing the Viking ship (replica of the Gotstad ship) for a pretty 30 min spin around the lake. We took turns playing with throwing axes and shooting long bows at a target. We only watched the smith making something for a brief time, since we have a good smith at home who also uses period techniques. For the first time in my life I actually used an audio guide. Why? Because instead of using their headsets I was able to plug their controller into my bluetooth thingy and listen to the sound in my hearing aids.
They have the main tourist building set up for them--one room with a bunch of different videos running on loop tape--you point your control stick at the button next to the video and you get sound for that one in your ears. Tired of listening? Go point your controller at another button. They also have a big screen movie that plays into the headsets when you synch your controller with the button at the door to the theater, and then there is a room full of display cases to show off many of the small artifacts they found during the excavation, each with a button to get sound. Honestly, I would have rather read text about the artifacts and instead of the videos explaining the history of the park and what is known about the people who lived in the longhouse, because it is *much* faster for me to read a paragraph than to listen to someone speaking the exact same words, but the technology amused me (and they had a variety of languages available).
After leaving the museum we headed on to a campground, initially chosen because it happens to be the nearest to the museum. However, having stayed there I strongly recommend Unstad Campground. They are actually set up as a surfing campground, and I suspect that is the biggest reason for the difference between them and the campground in Narvik we had stayed at the previous night. What were the differences? Both are located in very beautiful settings with stunning views, but the one in Narvik obviously gets way more people passing through. The person on duty there was behind the desk when we arrived, checked us in quickly and efficiently, made pleasant small talk, but it was clearly a business transaction for her. When we arrived in Unstad and got out of the car we were met by a man leaving the main building who welcomed us warmly, chatted a bit in a very friendly manner, and suggested that we set up our tent first, anywhere we liked, and then go inside to pay, since he needed to go talk to the girls who were taking off their wet suits just then.
So we did, and when we went inside we were greeted by a very friendly, motherly lady who treated us like guests in her home and old friends she simply hadn't met yet, rather than as customers (even though she did take cash for our camping there). Both of the hosts were much fun to visit with, and the setting was lovely. The guy encouraged us to take surfing lessons in the morning, or to climb the ridge above the campground. She told us about a beautiful walk along the coast towards the next village, and said that they often go out to the lighthouse 45 minutes walk away just to relax and enjoy the view. She said that since the German group had ordered the sauna heated for 21:00 we might want to go relax in it when they were done, and when I wondered aloud if I should do yoga first, and then sauna, or sauna first and then yoga, she suggested I do hot yoga in the sauna. (They also have an outdoor hottub which would have been great, but it takes three hours to fill and heat and we didn't get there till 19:00, so it wasn't worth ordering this time).
After their suggestions we decided to do the walk to the lighthouse that night, and go up the ridge in the morning. The first part of the trail is actually a road--during the war they started putting one in, but the war ended before they got it done, so the middle bit is just a walking trail, with minor improvements. We walked out till we came to a lovely small ridge which gave the first view of the lighthouse on the next ridge, and decided that it would be a good place to stop and do yoga. However, soon after I started stretching we noticed that the clouds out to sea were thickening and getting lower, and we could no longer see the lighthouse.
Since the last portion of the trail we had come over was rather narrow and required a fair bit of scrambling over rocks we decided that rather than finishing yoga just then it would be smarter to turn back, before the fog closed in and made it hard to see the path. We have no idea if the fog ever did get to that part of the trail, but if it did it did so after we got back to the easy part of the track. Since I didn't get to do my yoga out on the ridge overlooking the ocean I opted instead to follow her other suggestion, and instead did my yoga in a hot sauna, enjoying the view through the window of one of the ridges overlooking the campground. While I am too tired to deal with photos tonight, I can point you to this one, which I uploaded to FB while in camp, using their free wireless (the only time all trip we had internet).
In the morning it was raining, the clouds were sitting on the mountain tops, so we decided not to climb the ridge after all. While I wouldn't have minded hiking in the rain, we didn't see a point if there would have been no visibility when we got there. So instead we drove two hours further out on the highway, to the end of the road in the village of Å (how is that for a nice, long town name?), where we did take a walk in the rain, and enjoyed it immensely.
By then
lord_kjar was itching to get home, so we started the long drive--leaving Å at about 14:30. We did a few stops, including one very important one. While at the Viking museum the day before we picked up some cheese from their gift shop, and it tasted so good we had to go back and buy a couple of other packages of it. If anyone else wants to try, it comes from Aalan Gård (a gård is a farm), and it looks like they do mail order, which is good since what we brought back with us won't last all that long. The cheese we got is called Aalander.Had it not been raining we might have opted to came one more night in the mounatins and do a hike that evening or in the morning, but given the rain, and the list of things we want to accomplish before Medltidsdagar next week, we drove straight through (not counting short stops for fuel, cheese, toilet, and yoga) and arrived home at 03:05. I managed to nap for a couple of hours, but he was awake the whole time. I am not surprised that today has been a bit of a lazy day, with only a few errands and putting away some of what we had taken with us accomplished.
Tomorrow morning I have a dental appointment (booked today during those errands) after which we will head down to Piteå to work on projects with
lord_kjar's family. That leaves five days to work at stuff at home for the event.It was only a short trip, yet still I fell in love over and over--nearly every new valley had a peak that was so beautiful I wanted to move there and admire it forever. So many mountains, so little time available to devote myself to appreciating them!
