A Norwegian Roadtrip - Day 5 - The Vacation Day From H&^%

OK.  So it was going to be a challenging day anyway.  Google showed it as 13.5 hours of driving ... which maybe could be 12 hours if everything went right.  Seeing as how we would be driving through some of the most beautiful Fjord country of Norway, that had to make up for part of it ...

...

... right?

We were down at breakfast at 6:30 for another fabulous spread and then back up to the room to finish packing and get out of town.  Check out of the hotel and we're on the road at 7:30 AM.  Should put us in our next destination maybe by 8 PM for a nice dinner maybe.

And then ... at 7:40 AM ... the day came to a crashing end ... and I do mean crashing.  Just when I was thinking I was getting more than used to driving in Norway ... which does drive on the right side of the road (sorry Brits) ... I lost a moments of concentration coming into a round-about ... checked to my right ... but missed a nice Norwegian lady driving a VW coming in from a side street on the left ... and decided to introduce my Mercedes left front wheel with her right front fender.

...

The VW won!  Wellllllll ... kind of.  Even at 15 mph, my front left wheel was rendered useless, while her car was drivable ... but a bit dinged up for sure.  Not a good way to start the day at all.

Long story short, tons of calls to Hertz service, my insurance company, on and on and on ... we finally got things kind of settled up.  A police car came by within 15 minutes after the accident ... asked if anybody was hurt ... and when he found out we were OK, he just left.  The police only get involved if there's a dispute or if somebodies hurt.  Other than that, the citizens of Norway fill out there own paperwork and things proceed on.  Totally foreign concept to those of us from America.

Amazingly (because I thought it would be totally worse) by 10:30 AM we had a tow truck drag our wounded car to a car shop, give us a lift to the local Hertz office, gotten a replacement car, and gotten back to our wounded car to retrieve our luggage.  Talk to me in another couple of months as to whether our insurance, the nice Norwegians ladies insurance, and Hertz insurance can work things out without costing me a minor fortune, but as of 10:30 AM we were back on the road trying to carry on our vacation.  It definitely put a gloom on the day ... particularly knowing that we weren't going to get to our next destination until late late at night ... but at least we were on our way.  It only made it marginally worse that it start raining at about 1 PM and didn't stop until about 9 PM.

So the day from h%&^ drive looked like this.

 And if you've lost track of how big of a country Norway is, here's a reminder.

It really was beautiful country to drive through (even in the rain and fog) but we were in such a hurry just to keep going that the only time we took pics was on a ferry ride about midway through the journey.

So that's all the pics you get for the day.  I hope you enjoy the rainy pics as much as we enjoyed the rainy day.  :)

Anyway, we finally got to the hotel in Alta at 11:45 PM, having stopped at a convenience store for "dinner" and munching on Pringles and Reindeer Jerkey as we drove down the road.  As of this writing I already know the results of the next day ... which I promise you is much MUCH better than this day was.  Every vacation deserves one day from h^&%, so at least we got this one behind us.

But the day/night did end up on a high note.  Reading my email at half after midnight, I had a question from my good friend Karen (our company accountant) wondering if Tina had paid a tax bill we owed next week.  Tina had indeed ... at least ending the day on a good point.  Not very often that an accountant brings the day to a good end.  :)  (FYI - Karen's a really REALLY nice and good friend ... she just works in a bad profession!)  :)

Until tomorrow ...

A Norwegian Roadtrip - Day 4 - Trying to Hike to a Glacier

About 20 miles north of Mo i Rana is a park called Saltfjellet-Svartisen National Park.  (Don't ask me, because I simply no idea why the Norwegians insist on making names and words with all these silly consonants in them.  They probably think we're vowel crazy I suppose. :) )  Svartisen is the name of a couple of glaciers located in the park meaning black ice because of how old and dark the ice is in the glacier.  Tina and I decided (well ... Tina went along with it anyway) that we were going to hike to the foot of one of the glaciers which is about 7 km one way.  So far so good.

On the way to the park we stopped a couple of times to enjoy some of the scenery. 

 

And then we got to the park itself, only to find out that you can't drive into the park because its outside of tourist season.  Ends up tourist season is only mid-June to end of August.  This was later confirmed in town when we found out that the only places you could convert US$ to Norwegian Crowns was at a bank or at the tourist info center ... but only during the tourist season.  After that, you're on your own.

So a chained off road never slowed us down.  It just added 3 km more walking in each direction.

Tina's Always Game for More Walking

So we're walking down the road towards the real park and took these pics.

Tina Loved This Mushroom

Part of the Glacier We're Heading Towards

 And then, after 3 km, we reached the main park.

Sign With About a 10 to 1 count of Consonants to Vowels

 

The Lake at the Base of the Glacier

According to the signs, what looks like falls at the far end of the lake are still part of the glacier.  So we were closer than we thought.  Might as well set off and get to the far side of the lake.

Wellllll ... until we got about 100 yards up the real trail and came across this.

A Bit of a Muddy Trail

Now, I personally had no problem tromping through that crap ... and Tina wasn't exactly whining ... because she would be really mad if I put on a public blog that she was whining.  But the fact that it took her 20 minutes to move over the next 10 feet told me that she probably wasn't too terribly excited to continue on.

So it was back off that trail, trying to find another trail perhaps a bit farther up.

A Brave Trail Guide

But that trail didn't work any better so we decided to head even farther up and blaze our own trail across the unfrozen tundra.

The Unfrozen Norwegian Tundra

Once again, I had fun trudging across it, but Tina wasn't going for it.  Plus having soaked both of our feet by then, we decided that going to a glacier when it's not tourist season probably wasn't going to work for us.

But at least we got a good joint picture out of it.

Regardless, we still had a great time and enjoyed the beautiful scenery ... and took an alternate route back that showed us a bit more.

Loved the Reflections of These Rocks Off the Water

 So the next day was scheduled as the longest drive of the vacation.  A mere 13 hours to get up to the very northern parts of Norway.  Until then ... 

Ha en god natt!

 

A Norwegian Roadtrip - Day 3 - The Trip Up to Mo i Rana

Getting on the road early on Sunday morning (well, 7:30 in the AM is early when you're on vacation) we headed up to Mo i Rana which calls itself the entry point to the Arctic Circle.  At this point we're thinking the Arctic Circle is pretty calm during September and much preferred over the equator type heat of Florida.  For those of you following along on the maps, here you go.

One of the main reasons Tina and I wanted to do the road trip portion of  Norway was to see the countryside that you never see from flying over someplace.  We were not disappointed at all.  We could have easily turned a 6 1/2 hour drive into 10 hours if we wanted to, but we satisfied ourselves with seeing a ton of beautiful scenery and stopping a half dozen times to take pics.  Too often you get so busy taking pics that you forget to enjoy the moment.  Anyway, fortunately, due to Tina's lead foot, we still made it 6 1/2 hours.  :)  (She's sleeping right now so she can't hit me for writing that.)

So, here's some of the pics we did stop and take along the way.

And then finally we arrived at the town of Mo i Rana.

Being Sunday, there was absolutely NOTHING open other than a few restaurants.  So we enjoyed a few lazy hours strolling around town and staying out of trouble.  (We're not very good at that.  Need more practice I guess!)

Empty Sunday Streets

And finally we enjoyed a great evening meal at the hotel which has an amazing chef.  Tina had reindeer for the first time and we both tried some Norwegian flavors we'd never experienced before.  Tina said the reindeer tastes like steak ... or chicken ... or maybe southern possum.  She's not sure which.  :) 

Since she gets tired of me always posting pics of her when she's not dressed up, she made one of the locals take a pic of her when she was.  :)

Until next time, Takk for å lese oppdateringene.