There's nothing like a good waterfall to motivate a person to get out and be at one with nature. I had found a hike that sounded like it might have a couple of good ones ... but what we actually found just blew us totally away.
We quickly got an initial idea of how good the scenery might be.
The road looked good enough ... as long as no one was coming the other way.
With the exception of a few rock overhangs over the road, what was there to worry about?
And not 3 minutes up the road we ran into the second waterfall.
I decided that waterfalls might be better appreciated in short videos, but you can just stick with the pics if you'd prefer.
Anyway, I'm going to quit commenting on each one and just say that the drive up the canyon took us 2 1/2 hours due to stopping to take pics. The drive back down was 1/2 hour.
Not a waterfall, but this rock (and several others like it) just look like they ended up down in the river and somebody came along and just turned it up on it's side.
Now, to fully appreciate this pic you have to understand that Tina ate goat for the very first time the night before. When we were driving up here and saw the goats I had to take a pic. And then the lady herding them popped around a tree and I mentioned what Tina had eaten the previous night and she just chuckled and asked which restaurant it was. Sure enough ... Tina ate one of these pour guys brother or sister the night before. :(
Meanwhile the road was starting to make Tina a bit nervous. Why else do they make retractable side mirrors except for tunnels like this. :)
It got even more ominous once you got inside it.
Then the road turned to dirt which made Tina all the happier still. :)
And then we reached the point where cars weren't allowed anymore. So after a short video, we set off walking.
Only Tina wasn't too overly excited about hiking up a 10 degree incline. :)
So we went for a little ways, but not overly far. The main reason Tina didn't want to walk too far was because I told her when we first started driving up the valley that there was a train that went up the same valley but driving was going to be a much better way to explore it. So the whole way up she was whining ... I mean commenting ... about how nice a train ride would be.
On the ride back down just outside of the "main" town of Flam we ran into this church which we found out later was the "Flam Church" built in the early 1800's. I just liked the scene of the church and it's sheep. :)
And just prior to doing the train trip which was a foregone conclusion ever since I first mentioned it to Tina, I got the obligatory picture of Norway flowers.
And then it was off on the train we were.
The weather had finally caught up with us in the afternoon and most of the train ride was in a light drizzle. Given our choice, that was the time of day for it to happen.
Passing the train going down while we're going up.
Looking down on the road where we had to stop driving. It's doesn't look tremendously steep ... but it was from the ground.
The train makes one stop on the way up at a platform looking up to a waterfall.
Frankly, Tina and I weren't overly impressed with the waterfall given what we'd seen before.
But then after we got back on the train we saw a pic of what this same waterfall looks like in late June/early July when the runoff is in full force.
We can only imagine what the other waterfalls we saw would look like in early summer.
The railway ends up 880 meters above where it started at a city named Myrdal. You can transfer over to a railway there that runs all the way from Bergen to Oslo. Tina wasn't too sure about getting off and looking around. Maybe memories of Kristiansund.
This was looking down at part of the town of Myrdal.
By zooming in on the right hand building with the bike on the side of it we determined how the tourists of Norway cheat the system. Ends up you can take the train up to Myrdal, rent a bike at that shop, and ride it all the way back down to Flam. On the riding and hiking we had done we were so impressed with the bike riders who must have totally worn themselves out climbing all that way up.
...
CHEATERS!!!
Anyway, it was a gorgeous day and gave us some fantastic sights. Apologies again for so many pics, but I really tried to limit them down.
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