The walk we were heading to was to a dam bridging the Alta Canyon, but the road to the overlook for the bridge is blocked off 7 km short. Everything we read about it said it was a beautiful walk so it sounded like a good way to spend the afternoon.
On the way up to it there's a mining spot for slate about half way up the road. Even with great water falls and scenery, mining is still an ugly business. I was tempted to pick up a bunch of spare slate pieces to use around the house, but figured the shipping weight might cost me a minor fortune.
But continuing on the road, we finally made it to the road block that marked the spot where we had a 7 km walk to go. Tina's really good at leading us to dead ends on this trip. :)
It was definitely obvious we were up in the Arctic Circle ... plants and tree's struggle much more to gain any height up here ... but it was still a beautiful landscape.
For whatever reason, Tina fell in love with mushrooms on this trip. Tina want's a blog pic, Tina gets a blog pic.
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| Don't Ask ... Because I'm Still Looking This Up :) |
Some of the most beautiful scenery on the walk was the autumn colors of the Arctic fall. Pictures can never do it justice, but I had to try anyway.
But Tina and I were really trying to find the northern Norway wildlife. And on this trip, we finally came across our share of Norwegian Reindeer, including a rather unique albino one.
But what we saw more than the reindeer themselves, was this:
Yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen, that would be reindeer poop!!! And we saw lots and lots and lots of it.
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OK ... so I understand that most blog posters might just post a pic of reindeer poop and leave it at that. Just sort of end the posting and leave people wondering why the heck somebody posted a pic of reindeer poop ... much less why they even took a picture of it to start with. But I'm not that sort of blog poster. I try to give an explanation ... a meaning if you will ... to every picture that I ever post. And reindeer poop indeed has a meaning here.
It ends up that according to Norwegian legend, the real reason that Rudolph the Reindeer wasn't so popular with his other reindeer friends was that his poop smelled rather funny. And the reason it smelled funny to all of the other reindeer was that Rudolph was in fact a cannibal who enjoyed eating reindeer sausage for breakfast ... and would in fact enjoy an occasional reindeer steak in the evening. So obviously that set all of Rudolph friends aghast thinking that he was eating one of their own.
Now furthermore, after Rudolph ate one of his fellow reindeer's he felt really really bad about doing it. So he would drink heavily to try to forget what he had just done. Sure enough, a heavily drinking cannibalistic reindeer ends up with a glowing nose. So along comes Santa ... loves the glowing nose ... convinces Rudolph to stop eating his fellow reindeer ... and I guess history was made.
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Don't ask me. It's the crazy Norwegians who came up with it and I'm just serving as a messenger.
Goodnight from the land of Rudolphs stinky poop!
:)
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