So it's been a long time since I have posted anything here. I am still doing the blog ... but honestly there has not been a lot of "blog-worthy" excitement out here of late. Just the regular Thanksgiving and Christmas parties and a lot of rain :).
Things should be getting a bit more interesting after the new year. The snow should be getting good up on Hood so we will be able to do some snow shoeing. I am planning on climbing Mt. St. Helens in March (while it is snow covered) ... and hope to do some snow-cave camping at some point. Maybe make a trip down to see Crater Lake while it is covered in snow.
Merry Christmas! Keep posted for more updates over the next few months...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Congrats to my sister
My sister got engaged to her boyfriend of 2+ years, Craig, sometime this weekend. No word on a date or location yet.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The Engagements Keep Coming ...
Tom Stroka has gotten engaged to Maureen. Congrats Tom!! They still have not picked a date. So far this summer ...
Katie McFadden - June 28th
Jeff Philips - July 5th
Matt Owens - July 26th
Jason Lahr (my cousin) - August 9th
Rohini Singhal - July?? August?? sometime this summer
Chris Pusinelli - TBD - April '09 ????
Tom Stroka - TBD
Erin Steiner - TBD
It's looking like Janel is going to be spending a lot of time in Chicago this coming summer. I guess that means I will be able to get into trouble hiking.
Waiting on at least one more announcement soon ... :)
Katie McFadden - June 28th
Jeff Philips - July 5th
Matt Owens - July 26th
Jason Lahr (my cousin) - August 9th
Rohini Singhal - July?? August?? sometime this summer
Chris Pusinelli - TBD - April '09 ????
Tom Stroka - TBD
Erin Steiner - TBD
It's looking like Janel is going to be spending a lot of time in Chicago this coming summer. I guess that means I will be able to get into trouble hiking.
Waiting on at least one more announcement soon ... :)
Friday, October 5, 2007
NCNP Photos
OK ... looks like my webserver troubles are all cleared up. I am in the process of uploading my backpacking photos. All the "select" photos are now up . All the photos are getting uploaded now and can be see [url=http://www2.iansteiner.com/gallery2/v/2007/ncnp_beaver_loop/ new-false]here. I have mixed in my photos with Allen's.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Northern Cascades National Park - Beaver Loop Backpacking
I took my annual "big" backpacking trip a few weeks back. Todd, Allen, Steve, and I went to Northern Cascade National Park and did the Beaver Loop trail in four days. We did the majority of our hiking on the first three days - covering 43 miles.
All in all the trip was decent. It definitely did not have the most breathtaking scenery for much of the trip. We spent a lot of the time in the woods, and the weather was only so-so. We got a good amount of rain while we were hiking, and some while we were sleeping. Luckily the weather cooperated when we hit Whatcom Pass, which had some great views, and when we were chilling in camp.
We drove up most of the way on Wednesday afternoon, taking off form work at about 3:30. After getting our permits on Thursday morning and parking my car at the trail head, we headed down about 1 mile to the Ross Lake "Resort" where we picked up a water taxi and headed up Ross Lake to Little Beaver. The weather was terrible. We the proceeded to hike another 12 miles to the Stillwell camp. The views were honestly pretty boring. There were some large Cedar trees and lots of wet underbrush -- but nothing all that exciting. Here is a photo of us on the shore of the Little Beaver river:
Luckily the rain let up when we got to camp, allowing us to easily get all setup. Stillwell is a good campground near the banks of the Little Beaver river. I would give it a 7. The views were not spectacular, but it was peaceful. We did not see anyone the entire day (after being dropped off) ... which was pretty cool.
We ended up having a campfire at night -- something that I rarely do while backpacking. This turned into our thing, and we ended up doing it every night. Thanks goes to Allen for being the fire master :). Stillwell camp also randomly had a lawn chair. It was quite nice :P.
On day 2 we took a 13 mile day trip up Little Beaver river to Whatcom pass. This was probably one of the highlights of the trip. The weather was good enough -- a bit cloudy but with patches of blue sky. It decided to rain on the way home a bit -- but big deal :).
Here is a photo as we climbed towards the pass:
Here is a photo (with some blue sky!) of Allen and Steve on top of Whatcom Pass with Challenger Glacier in the background:
Here is a photo looking down the Little Beaver River Valley that we had hiked all the way up through:
On day 3 we packed up camp and headed back towards Ross Lake with our destination at 39 mile camp (about 11.5 miles from Stillwell). About 4 miles in, Steve sprained his ankle. Doh. So, we got to our planned camp at about 2:30 (after making really good time), and decided to push an additional 5.5 miles out to Big Beaver camp on the Ross Lake. It is a lot easier to walk on a sprained ankle on the first day before it has a whole night to swell up. This turned out to be a great decision. 39 mile camp was not bad -- but it was not great either. The Big Beaver camp, on the other hand, was amazing.
Most of the hiking on day 3 was pretty uneventful. There were a few marshes and such -- but really nothing to write home about. Here is a photo of Ross Lake from our campsite at Big Beaver.
On day 4 Steve went and talked to some of the other campers at Big Beaver and bummed a boat ride off of them back to Ross Lake resort, decreasing our hike out (on his bad ankle) by 6 miles :).
Here is a photo of Todd and Allen standing on the boat dock at Big Beaver looking over Ross Lake.
Here is a photo from our boat ride back:
I am having some trouble uploading to my website right now ... so uploading my photos is going to be a bit delayed.
All in all the trip was decent. It definitely did not have the most breathtaking scenery for much of the trip. We spent a lot of the time in the woods, and the weather was only so-so. We got a good amount of rain while we were hiking, and some while we were sleeping. Luckily the weather cooperated when we hit Whatcom Pass, which had some great views, and when we were chilling in camp.
We drove up most of the way on Wednesday afternoon, taking off form work at about 3:30. After getting our permits on Thursday morning and parking my car at the trail head, we headed down about 1 mile to the Ross Lake "Resort" where we picked up a water taxi and headed up Ross Lake to Little Beaver. The weather was terrible. We the proceeded to hike another 12 miles to the Stillwell camp. The views were honestly pretty boring. There were some large Cedar trees and lots of wet underbrush -- but nothing all that exciting. Here is a photo of us on the shore of the Little Beaver river:
Luckily the rain let up when we got to camp, allowing us to easily get all setup. Stillwell is a good campground near the banks of the Little Beaver river. I would give it a 7. The views were not spectacular, but it was peaceful. We did not see anyone the entire day (after being dropped off) ... which was pretty cool.
We ended up having a campfire at night -- something that I rarely do while backpacking. This turned into our thing, and we ended up doing it every night. Thanks goes to Allen for being the fire master :). Stillwell camp also randomly had a lawn chair. It was quite nice :P.
On day 2 we took a 13 mile day trip up Little Beaver river to Whatcom pass. This was probably one of the highlights of the trip. The weather was good enough -- a bit cloudy but with patches of blue sky. It decided to rain on the way home a bit -- but big deal :).
Here is a photo as we climbed towards the pass:
Here is a photo (with some blue sky!) of Allen and Steve on top of Whatcom Pass with Challenger Glacier in the background:
Here is a photo looking down the Little Beaver River Valley that we had hiked all the way up through:
On day 3 we packed up camp and headed back towards Ross Lake with our destination at 39 mile camp (about 11.5 miles from Stillwell). About 4 miles in, Steve sprained his ankle. Doh. So, we got to our planned camp at about 2:30 (after making really good time), and decided to push an additional 5.5 miles out to Big Beaver camp on the Ross Lake. It is a lot easier to walk on a sprained ankle on the first day before it has a whole night to swell up. This turned out to be a great decision. 39 mile camp was not bad -- but it was not great either. The Big Beaver camp, on the other hand, was amazing.
Most of the hiking on day 3 was pretty uneventful. There were a few marshes and such -- but really nothing to write home about. Here is a photo of Ross Lake from our campsite at Big Beaver.
On day 4 Steve went and talked to some of the other campers at Big Beaver and bummed a boat ride off of them back to Ross Lake resort, decreasing our hike out (on his bad ankle) by 6 miles :).
Here is a photo of Todd and Allen standing on the boat dock at Big Beaver looking over Ross Lake.
Here is a photo from our boat ride back:
I am having some trouble uploading to my website right now ... so uploading my photos is going to be a bit delayed.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Ian's Parents Visit
My parents came for a visit a couple weeks back. I just got the photos downloaded from my dad, so I will make the post now.
We drove up to Mt Hood on Saturday and took it easy. My parents rented a really nice place on the Salmon River in Welches.
Sunday we went on a couple of hikes on the East side of Mt Hood. Janel and I had not done any hiking over there yet as it is a bit too far for a day trip. First we did a short 2.5 mile hike to the top of Lookout Mountain. This was a relatively easy hike with a great view from the top. It had a nice view of Mt. Hood, and you could also see Jefferson, Adams, and Rainier.
Here is picture of Janel with my parents.
Here is a picture of Janel and I. We decided to pose a bit more than usual :).
After this hike we drove a few miles up 35 to hike Tamanawas Falls. The hike, as described in the Sullivan Book, was not possible because the old bridge was out. So, we had to drive down a few miles to the Polallie Trailhead. This added maybe a mile to the hike. The hike started out along a ridge above 35 which was okay, but after a mile or so hit a river and headed towards Hood and away from the road. This part of the trail was very peaceful.
After hiking in for maybe 1.5 miles, we hit the falls. Tamanawas Falls was great -- much wider than a lot of the falls in the Gorge and still quite tall. You can also hike all the way up and behind them which is always fun :). Here is picture of the falls from the front.
After the hike we came home and took it easy. That night we went out to dinner at Timberline Lodge.
The next day my Dad and I went on a hike to Devil's Peak Lookout. There are two ways to this lookout -- one that is a relatively easy 2.5 mile hike and another that is 8.2 miles with 3200 feet of elevation gain. The problem with the shorter hike is that it is at the end of a nasty 10 mile forest road. We decided to try the easy hike since and drive the evil road in my parent's rental SUV. This turned out to be a great decision -- I would not have wanted to subject my car to the road. This also shows why you don't want to buy used rental cars :).
The hike had some good views of the West side of Mt Hood, and the lookout building (shown below) was a strange place. There were a couple of beds inside and a whole bunch of random crap :).
Janel and I really enjoyed having my parents out for a visit and the house up near the Salmon River was great. You can see all the photos here. You can see some select photos here.
We drove up to Mt Hood on Saturday and took it easy. My parents rented a really nice place on the Salmon River in Welches.
Sunday we went on a couple of hikes on the East side of Mt Hood. Janel and I had not done any hiking over there yet as it is a bit too far for a day trip. First we did a short 2.5 mile hike to the top of Lookout Mountain. This was a relatively easy hike with a great view from the top. It had a nice view of Mt. Hood, and you could also see Jefferson, Adams, and Rainier.
Here is picture of Janel with my parents.
Here is a picture of Janel and I. We decided to pose a bit more than usual :).
After this hike we drove a few miles up 35 to hike Tamanawas Falls. The hike, as described in the Sullivan Book, was not possible because the old bridge was out. So, we had to drive down a few miles to the Polallie Trailhead. This added maybe a mile to the hike. The hike started out along a ridge above 35 which was okay, but after a mile or so hit a river and headed towards Hood and away from the road. This part of the trail was very peaceful.
After hiking in for maybe 1.5 miles, we hit the falls. Tamanawas Falls was great -- much wider than a lot of the falls in the Gorge and still quite tall. You can also hike all the way up and behind them which is always fun :). Here is picture of the falls from the front.
After the hike we came home and took it easy. That night we went out to dinner at Timberline Lodge.
The next day my Dad and I went on a hike to Devil's Peak Lookout. There are two ways to this lookout -- one that is a relatively easy 2.5 mile hike and another that is 8.2 miles with 3200 feet of elevation gain. The problem with the shorter hike is that it is at the end of a nasty 10 mile forest road. We decided to try the easy hike since and drive the evil road in my parent's rental SUV. This turned out to be a great decision -- I would not have wanted to subject my car to the road. This also shows why you don't want to buy used rental cars :).
The hike had some good views of the West side of Mt Hood, and the lookout building (shown below) was a strange place. There were a couple of beds inside and a whole bunch of random crap :).
Janel and I really enjoyed having my parents out for a visit and the house up near the Salmon River was great. You can see all the photos here. You can see some select photos here.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Nutrition
I found some cool software online for tracking your diet. It i called cron-o-meter. You basically type in what you eat and it gives you how well you are doing across the board (vitamins, minerals, carbs, fats, etc). The webpage makes it sound like it is for people that are dieting (which I clearly am not) ... but there is nothing in the software that is really "diet"-focussed.
I am going to try using it for a feel weeks to get my diet in better order. Give it a shot. You can download it and read more about it here.
Update: Ever think about starting to buy organic foods? Janel and I already spend a large percentage of our weekly grocery bill on fresh produce, so I am not sure if I am going to dive into organc foods yet ... but my Mom sent me this webpage that ranks produce based on how much pesticide is used (as well as how people normally wash the food). So, if you are thinking of switching to some organics -- this shows where you might want to start. Peaches, apples, and bell peppers are the worst ...
Update2: Sain mentioned selecting seafood based on it's sustainability. You can read about what you should eat depending on where you live here.
I am going to try using it for a feel weeks to get my diet in better order. Give it a shot. You can download it and read more about it here.
Update: Ever think about starting to buy organic foods? Janel and I already spend a large percentage of our weekly grocery bill on fresh produce, so I am not sure if I am going to dive into organc foods yet ... but my Mom sent me this webpage that ranks produce based on how much pesticide is used (as well as how people normally wash the food). So, if you are thinking of switching to some organics -- this shows where you might want to start. Peaches, apples, and bell peppers are the worst ...
Update2: Sain mentioned selecting seafood based on it's sustainability. You can read about what you should eat depending on where you live here.
Monday, August 27, 2007
South Sister Summit
This past weekend Janel and I climbed South Sister with Allen, Steve, and Chrissy. South Sister is the largest of the "Three Sisters" at ~10,300 feet and is the third tallest mountain in Oregon (behind Hood and Jefferson). It is a 4800 foot ascent (think 3+ sears towers) to the top of the dormant volcano in ~5 miles. It was a quite steep hike -- particularly at the end. In the middle there is ~1.5 miles or so of flat trail ... so the majority of the climb is packed into a pretty short distance.
We drove down to Bend, OR on Friday afternoon and crashed at the Entrada Hotel on the outskirts of town. We got to bed early and woke up @ 5AM and drove ~30 minutes to the trail head. We hit the trail at ~6am (just before sunrise).
After climbing up about 1200 feet in the trees, we got above the tree line into a Moraine (lots of coarse sand caused by glaciers). Here is a picture of the nearby Broken Top mountain with the sun rising next to it.
The trail climbs at the start for ~1.5 miles, then is flat for a good while. It then starts to climb (not too steep) and the views continue to get better as you climb. Eventually you get to a point where the rocks turn form grey to a volcanic red. This is a great viewpoint. If you are looking for a nice hike -- I would highly recommend hiking to this point. It is a bit easier than climbing to the top and still has some great views to the South.
We finally hit the summit @ ~10:00. We ended up spending >2.5 hours on top just wandering and laying around ... taking in the views. The summit is actually a caldera that is filled in with a glacier. You arrive at the southern side of the rim. If you ever do this hike ... don't wimp out. Make the easy walk around to the true summit on the North-East side of the rim. The view North is one of the best I have ever seen ... and it is not hard at all to get to it.
Here is a picture of Janel, Steve, and I sitting ~5 feet north of the summit looking at Middle and North Sister.
Here is another picture with Middle and North Sister, with Mt. Hood just behind North Sister and Mt. Adam just to the left (kinda hard to see) of North Sister. You could also just make out Rainier. It was really cool to be able to see this string of dormant volcanos all lined up in a row along the fault line.
Here is a picture of Janel and I with the glacier inside the caldera behind us. The true summit is just above and to the right of Janel.
Here is a picture of the 5 of us (also looking into the caldera):
Remember that picture of Broken Top at sunrise? Here is a picture of that same mountain from the summit. A lot smaller eh? :)
After finishing hanging out at the top (and Steve finally discovering his camera that he "lost" in his pocket), we headed down the mountain. We took a good amount of time getting down, and finally got back to the car at about 4 (3.5 hours later). It is definitely possible to make the trip down faster than that if you are sure footed and not afraid to fall a few times :).
We all had a great time. The weather was perfect and the views were great. This was Janel's second major hike (the first being one that we took in Norway) and she is turning into quite the hiker :). I was very proud of her for giving this a shot.
You can see all the photos here. You can see a selection of the best photos (by Allen and I) here. You can see some stitched photos (taken by Allen) [url=http://www2.iansteiner.com/gallery2/v/2007/south_sister/stitched/
new=false]here[/url].
Note: as of now I am still uploading the photos ... so they may not be quite ready when you look for them :).
We drove down to Bend, OR on Friday afternoon and crashed at the Entrada Hotel on the outskirts of town. We got to bed early and woke up @ 5AM and drove ~30 minutes to the trail head. We hit the trail at ~6am (just before sunrise).
After climbing up about 1200 feet in the trees, we got above the tree line into a Moraine (lots of coarse sand caused by glaciers). Here is a picture of the nearby Broken Top mountain with the sun rising next to it.
The trail climbs at the start for ~1.5 miles, then is flat for a good while. It then starts to climb (not too steep) and the views continue to get better as you climb. Eventually you get to a point where the rocks turn form grey to a volcanic red. This is a great viewpoint. If you are looking for a nice hike -- I would highly recommend hiking to this point. It is a bit easier than climbing to the top and still has some great views to the South.
We finally hit the summit @ ~10:00. We ended up spending >2.5 hours on top just wandering and laying around ... taking in the views. The summit is actually a caldera that is filled in with a glacier. You arrive at the southern side of the rim. If you ever do this hike ... don't wimp out. Make the easy walk around to the true summit on the North-East side of the rim. The view North is one of the best I have ever seen ... and it is not hard at all to get to it.
Here is a picture of Janel, Steve, and I sitting ~5 feet north of the summit looking at Middle and North Sister.
Here is another picture with Middle and North Sister, with Mt. Hood just behind North Sister and Mt. Adam just to the left (kinda hard to see) of North Sister. You could also just make out Rainier. It was really cool to be able to see this string of dormant volcanos all lined up in a row along the fault line.
Here is a picture of Janel and I with the glacier inside the caldera behind us. The true summit is just above and to the right of Janel.
Here is a picture of the 5 of us (also looking into the caldera):
Remember that picture of Broken Top at sunrise? Here is a picture of that same mountain from the summit. A lot smaller eh? :)
After finishing hanging out at the top (and Steve finally discovering his camera that he "lost" in his pocket), we headed down the mountain. We took a good amount of time getting down, and finally got back to the car at about 4 (3.5 hours later). It is definitely possible to make the trip down faster than that if you are sure footed and not afraid to fall a few times :).
We all had a great time. The weather was perfect and the views were great. This was Janel's second major hike (the first being one that we took in Norway) and she is turning into quite the hiker :). I was very proud of her for giving this a shot.
You can see all the photos here. You can see a selection of the best photos (by Allen and I) here. You can see some stitched photos (taken by Allen) [url=http://www2.iansteiner.com/gallery2/v/2007/south_sister/stitched/
new=false]here[/url].
Note: as of now I am still uploading the photos ... so they may not be quite ready when you look for them :).
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Renewable Power
So today I signed up to use wind power for my electricity. I am paying an extra $7 / month for 400KW Hours (the majority of our power bill). I encourage you all to take a look at your power company's webpage to see if you can do something similar to support clean renewable energy. Out here in Portland PGE has two options -- one where 100% of your power is from a variety of renewable energy sources and costs like $0.008 per KWh (a couple bucks per month). They have a second option where you can buy units ($3.50 / 200KWh unit) of Oregon Wind Power to help support the development of local renewable power sources. This is a relatively cheap thing you can do to help move our country towards clean renewable energy :).
You can read about the PGE plans here.
I took a quick look around the Com-Ed website (in Chicago) and was unable to find anything like this out there :(. Please post a comment if you find something similar in your neck of the woods :).
You can read about the PGE plans here.
I took a quick look around the Com-Ed website (in Chicago) and was unable to find anything like this out there :(. Please post a comment if you find something similar in your neck of the woods :).
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Wedding Photos
Janel and I got the digital proofs of all our wedding photos. So, if you wanted to buy a picture but did not want to pay the exorbitant prices that photographers charge, now is the time. You can see all the photos here.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Megan and Trevor Wedding
This past weekend Janel and I were back in Chicago for Megan and Trevor's wedding. We had a great time seeing our two good friends tie the knot.
This was my first time in a wedding party -- and our first wedding since getting married. It was a pretty cool wedding because we really had been good friends with both the groom and the bride for about 8 years rather than being friends with one and then later meeting the other.
You can see some select photos from the wedding here. Or you can see all the photos here.
Here is a picture of Janel and I at the wedding:
Here is a picture of me with the bride:
This was my first time in a wedding party -- and our first wedding since getting married. It was a pretty cool wedding because we really had been good friends with both the groom and the bride for about 8 years rather than being friends with one and then later meeting the other.
You can see some select photos from the wedding here. Or you can see all the photos here.
Here is a picture of Janel and I at the wedding:
Here is a picture of me with the bride:
Monday, August 6, 2007
Nesmith Point
I climbed Nesmith Point in the gorge with Allen and his friend from grad school Caitlin (sp?). It was a good training hike for our upcoming summit attempt (of either Adams or South Sister). It is a 9.6 mile hike with ~3800 feet of elevation change.
There are a few decent views of Adams across the Colombia River as you get towards the top, but thats about it. It was a good hike -- but don't expect great views for the price you pay for the elevation change :).
Here is a picture from the point itself:
There are a few decent views of Adams across the Colombia River as you get towards the top, but thats about it. It was a good hike -- but don't expect great views for the price you pay for the elevation change :).
Here is a picture from the point itself:
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Crater Lake
Last weekend we took a camping trip down to Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. Kevin drove down from Seattle, and Amy joined us along with some of her friends from school. We left bright and early on Saturday morning, and only had about half of the day on Saturday and half the day on Sunday to enjoy ourselves down there ... but we made the most of the beautiful weather.
You can see all of the photos here or some select photos from the trip here.
After driving the 4 or 5 hours down there, we started off by driving around the lake. We tried to get tickets for the boat tour, but they were all sold out for the day (except for some tickets on the trip that leaves you at Wizard Island which we were not interested in).
Here is a photo from the drive around the lake that shows Wizard Island - a cinder cone that is in the lake.
Here is a photo of the four of us.
After driving around the lake, we left the park and did a nice hike out to the Umpqua Hot Springs - some popular hot springs north of the park. When we arrived at the trail head, we discovered that the bridge across the river to the trail was out. So, our 1.2 mile quick hike quickly turned into a 4+ mile hike. This turned out to be a blessing, as nobody was at the hot springs when we got there. Kevin and I got in and enjoyed the water that is supposed to be 108 degrees, but Janel and Amy were not feeling it and did not join us.
After finishing up the hike, we headed back to camp to cook some brats over the fire and drink some beers. We got really lucky and got a site right on Diamond Lake. This campround had so-so reviews in one of my books -- but turned out to be quite nice. It is a very large campground, but there was plenty of space between the different sites and the people there seemed to be largely older folks. There was some noise because there seemed to be some gigantic Square Dance thing going on down the lake ... but no biggy :). Here is a photo from sunset on the lake.
Sunday we took the trail down to Crater Lake and then took the two hour boat tour around the lake. This was a bit pricey ... but was definitely worth it. Below is a picture of "Old Man of the Lake" next to Wizard Island. This is a log that has been bobbing vertically and moves all over the lake. The cool thing about it is that it has been around for over 100 years floating in the lake. They are not sure exactly what keeps it vertical, nor why it does not become waterlogged and sink.
Also on the tour we saw a baby bald eagle up in it's nest. The picture below shows the zoomed in picture of the eagle, and the one below it shows the location of the nest (as well as how amazingly blue the water is there).
We had a good time visiting Crater Lake ... but I probably won't be undertaking all that driving on a summer weekend again anytime soon. I hope to visit the lake again sometime this winter though. The lake gets over 480 inches (40 feet) of snow a year ... so it is not clear all that often down there. Since our winter weekends are a bit less packed ... I will probably wait until a weekend when the weather looks favorable, drive down, and camp in the snow. You are welcome to join me if you like :).
You can see all of the photos here or some select photos from the trip here.
After driving the 4 or 5 hours down there, we started off by driving around the lake. We tried to get tickets for the boat tour, but they were all sold out for the day (except for some tickets on the trip that leaves you at Wizard Island which we were not interested in).
Here is a photo from the drive around the lake that shows Wizard Island - a cinder cone that is in the lake.
Here is a photo of the four of us.
After driving around the lake, we left the park and did a nice hike out to the Umpqua Hot Springs - some popular hot springs north of the park. When we arrived at the trail head, we discovered that the bridge across the river to the trail was out. So, our 1.2 mile quick hike quickly turned into a 4+ mile hike. This turned out to be a blessing, as nobody was at the hot springs when we got there. Kevin and I got in and enjoyed the water that is supposed to be 108 degrees, but Janel and Amy were not feeling it and did not join us.
After finishing up the hike, we headed back to camp to cook some brats over the fire and drink some beers. We got really lucky and got a site right on Diamond Lake. This campround had so-so reviews in one of my books -- but turned out to be quite nice. It is a very large campground, but there was plenty of space between the different sites and the people there seemed to be largely older folks. There was some noise because there seemed to be some gigantic Square Dance thing going on down the lake ... but no biggy :). Here is a photo from sunset on the lake.
Sunday we took the trail down to Crater Lake and then took the two hour boat tour around the lake. This was a bit pricey ... but was definitely worth it. Below is a picture of "Old Man of the Lake" next to Wizard Island. This is a log that has been bobbing vertically and moves all over the lake. The cool thing about it is that it has been around for over 100 years floating in the lake. They are not sure exactly what keeps it vertical, nor why it does not become waterlogged and sink.
Also on the tour we saw a baby bald eagle up in it's nest. The picture below shows the zoomed in picture of the eagle, and the one below it shows the location of the nest (as well as how amazingly blue the water is there).
We had a good time visiting Crater Lake ... but I probably won't be undertaking all that driving on a summer weekend again anytime soon. I hope to visit the lake again sometime this winter though. The lake gets over 480 inches (40 feet) of snow a year ... so it is not clear all that often down there. Since our winter weekends are a bit less packed ... I will probably wait until a weekend when the weather looks favorable, drive down, and camp in the snow. You are welcome to join me if you like :).
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Vacation to Norway
Janel and I just got back from our vacation to Norway. We had a great time visiting the fjords and mountains of the only Scandanavian country to not be a part of the EU. First things first. As expected, I took a ton of photos. I imagine that you probably do not want to look through all 400 photos that I have :). So ... you have a couple of options. If you just want to look at a few photos ... read on and scroll down and you will be able to see 15 photos that cover a lot of the trip. You next option is to go here where you can see 52 photos that I picked out. Of particular interest are a few "stitched" panoramics at the end of this album. Finally, you can see all the photos that we took organized by location by going here.
OK ... now that the photo information is out of the way ... lets get to the actual trip. Overall Norway was a lot of fun. I definitely enjoyed this trip more than our visit to France last year, and probably a bit more than our visit to Ireland a few years back. The cities in Norway were not all that exciting ... but we did not really go to Norway to see the cities ... so no big deal.
Anyway ... we arrived on Sunday in Oslo and spent the day trying to stay awake :P. We managed to make it to about 5:00 before we could not take it anymore and had to go to bed. Right away we discovered how annoying it is to sleep in Norway in the summer. The sun is as bright as the middle of day time until probably midnight -- and our first hotel room had crappy window shades -- so we had a tough time sleeping ... even with the jetlag.
Monday morning we got up and walked to the rental Avis car rental place downtown and picked up our stick-shift car. I decided to learn to drive stick for this trip rather than pay the extra $500 a week for an automatic. We hopped in the car and drove up north to the Elveseter Hotel near Lom in Jotenheim National Park. We were originally planning on swinging by Lillehammer on the way, but decided to keep it simple and just drive the 5 or 6 hours straight to the hotel. The drive was nice ... we took a few good pictures ... see one below with some sheep and mountains in the background.
Tuesday we got up and found some good nearby hikes in the Spiterstulen area. This was a cool hanging valley up in the mountains. This was a nice area with a cool little hotel situated at the end of a crappy little dirt mountain road. We did two nice hikes and saw our first glacier of the trip. There were some okay photos, but nothing I will put up here because the weather was a bit cloudy.
After the hike we did a drive through a mountain pass called Sognefjellet. Here we saw a lot of summer cross country skiers and some other nice views. See all the photos here, and one select photo below.
Wednesday we did a great hike -- one of the best hikes I have ever been on -- called the "Besseggen". This is the most popular hike in Norway, with ~30,000 people doing it over the 3 months that the trail is passable. This trail was a favorite of Henrik Ibsen and is described in his play Peer Gynt. You start out by taking a ferry about half way down a long skinny river, and then proceed to climb up a ridge along side that river and make your way back to the car. As you climb up, many of the snow-capped peaks in Jotenheim become visible to the West, and there are great reflections in the green mountain lakes (they are green from the glacial silt). You can see all the photos from the hike here, and here are a couple photos from about 1/3rd of the way through the hike.
While heading up the trail, we came to some patches of snow here and there, but not too much. Below is a picture of an ice lake that we walked next too that I thought was rather nice.
After this point, the hike started to get a bit scary (since I am afraid of heights). There are some pretty serious drop offs on one side for most of the hikes, but then you have to scramble up a ridge for a while with some pretty serious drop offs on either side. In order to climb up the ridge, you have to get pretty close to the edge at certain points (since you are really climbing up the rocks at this point rather than "hiking").
Here is a photo from about half way up. Here you can see the ice lake from the previous picture as well as the larger lake below that we road the ferry down. This is pretty cool, as the right lake is ~1200 feet higher up than the left lake, and also does not have the green color.
This was a great hike. It ended up taking us 6 hours.
The next day we drove to Alesund and stopped by the Gierangerfjord along the way. This is probably the most famous of the fjords in Norway. Sadly, the sky was a bit cloudy, so the pictures did not turn out all that great -- but it was definitely cool. We took a boat tour down through the entire fjord, which seems to have never-ending waterfalls cascading into the water on either side.
Friday we spent the day wandering around Alesund and the surrounding area. Alesund was a decent little city -- but not all that exciting. We tried to make a trip out to a nearby island out in the ocean that at this time of the year is home to ~500,000 birds including 200,000 puffins ... but sadly the trip was cancelled because the ocean was too wild and we would have all gotten sea sick. Here are a couple of photos form Alesund.
Saturday we had a long drive down to Balestrand in the Sognefjord area. Along the way we drove through the west side of the Jostedalsbreen National Park (see photos here), and stopped at the Briksdalsbreen glacier, one of the more accessible glaciers in the country. Here is a picture of part of the glacier:
Here is a picture along the road to the glacier:
We finally arrived in Balestrand on the North side of the gigantic Sognefjord. This was a quiet little town that we really enjoyed. We stayed at a small hotel run by a family whose mother was from Norway and father was from the US. They now spend the summers in Norway running the hotel and the winters in the US. You can see all our photos from Balestrand here.
Sunday we took some hikes in the mountains above Balestrand. We climbed up above the tree line about 2200 feet above the fjord, and then headed back down and continued along the hike. Here is a photo from along the way.
Monday was a dreary day and we went on a day long boat tour of the Sognefjord. I won't share any photos here since they did not turn out all that great with the clouds. I will take this chance to get on my soap box. While on the tour, we were passing down the narrowest fjord in the world, but rather than look at the great natural beauty many of the people on our tour decided it would be better to spend their time feeding the seagulls. Now I hate it when people feed wild animals, and I hate it even more when I have to worry about tons of these nasty birds pooping on me while I am trying to enjoy myself. You don't go to Norway to play with stupid seagulls. I will also point out that they were from a country that is surrounded by water and I am sure that have plenty of access to seagulls from home.
Tuesday we drove (and took multiple ferries) from Balestrand to Geilo (about half-way back to Oslo). This day was pretty uneventful, although we did drive through the longest road tunnel in the world -- the 15 mile long Lerdalstunnelen. Below is a picture that Janel took while we were driving of one of the lit-up sections of the tunnel which were added to help provide a break for drivers.
We were planning on doing some hiking in Geilo, which is apparently up in some nice mountains between Bergen and Oslo. The weather was absolutely terrible though, so we ended up relaxing in our hotel room.
Wednesday we completed the drive to Oslo, visited the Edward Munch museum in Oslo, and returned the car. Along the way back to Oslo our GPS decided to take us down a short-cut through some "Unnammed Roads". I am pretty convinced that it would have ben faster if we could have actually made it. After driving maybe 10 or 15 miles down these crappy backroads, we ran into some troubles. There had been a lot of rains and parts of the road were started to get washed out and we had to turn around before we got into trouble. Moral of the story -- don't always listen to the GPS :) ... especially when it tells you to take Unnammed Roads. Also along this drive we saw some pretty serious flooding. Below is a picture of a river passing under a bridge and causing some serious rapids.
After getting back to Oslo and dropping off our bags, we swung by the Edward Munch museum and saw "Scream" among many other of Munch's works.
Wednesday we spent the day in Oslo. In the morning we visited a bunch of little museums. We saw old Viking ships and got to walk around the Fram, a ship which was used in arctic and antarctic exploration. That afternoon we visited some city parks and a sculpture garden.
Friday we headed on home :).
Some interesting observations and learnings about Norway. Just about everyone there speaks English -- so it is a great place to go if you don't want to deal with foreign languages. Norway is not part of the EU. They spent years fighting for their freedom from Sweden, and finally got it about 100 years ago. They are also a very rich country, having found a large amount of oil in the 70s. Therefore, they decided to stay independent when the EU was formed. If you have been to Europe before, you probably noticed how they have wireless credit-card machines that they bring to your table at restaurants. Nothing special here in Norway -- but I did learn that these machines are actually cell phones and that is how they work. It is interesting that the US does not use these machines. I was afraid that I would be stuck eating a lot of nasty fish like herring ... but I did not eat any. The food was generally quite good, and we had a decent balance of fish and non-fish. Finally, they also have what I call "ready-set-go" lights like Israel but unlike other countries in Europe that I have visited. When you come to a stop-light (which is rare with all the round abouts), when they transition from red to green, they go through an intermediate state where both the red and yellow lights are on at the same time. This is like the "ready-set" stage where you shift into first and get an immediate start. This would be kinda cool in the US ... but probably not as big a deal since very few people here drive stick.
OK ... now that the photo information is out of the way ... lets get to the actual trip. Overall Norway was a lot of fun. I definitely enjoyed this trip more than our visit to France last year, and probably a bit more than our visit to Ireland a few years back. The cities in Norway were not all that exciting ... but we did not really go to Norway to see the cities ... so no big deal.
Anyway ... we arrived on Sunday in Oslo and spent the day trying to stay awake :P. We managed to make it to about 5:00 before we could not take it anymore and had to go to bed. Right away we discovered how annoying it is to sleep in Norway in the summer. The sun is as bright as the middle of day time until probably midnight -- and our first hotel room had crappy window shades -- so we had a tough time sleeping ... even with the jetlag.
Monday morning we got up and walked to the rental Avis car rental place downtown and picked up our stick-shift car. I decided to learn to drive stick for this trip rather than pay the extra $500 a week for an automatic. We hopped in the car and drove up north to the Elveseter Hotel near Lom in Jotenheim National Park. We were originally planning on swinging by Lillehammer on the way, but decided to keep it simple and just drive the 5 or 6 hours straight to the hotel. The drive was nice ... we took a few good pictures ... see one below with some sheep and mountains in the background.
Tuesday we got up and found some good nearby hikes in the Spiterstulen area. This was a cool hanging valley up in the mountains. This was a nice area with a cool little hotel situated at the end of a crappy little dirt mountain road. We did two nice hikes and saw our first glacier of the trip. There were some okay photos, but nothing I will put up here because the weather was a bit cloudy.
After the hike we did a drive through a mountain pass called Sognefjellet. Here we saw a lot of summer cross country skiers and some other nice views. See all the photos here, and one select photo below.
Wednesday we did a great hike -- one of the best hikes I have ever been on -- called the "Besseggen". This is the most popular hike in Norway, with ~30,000 people doing it over the 3 months that the trail is passable. This trail was a favorite of Henrik Ibsen and is described in his play Peer Gynt. You start out by taking a ferry about half way down a long skinny river, and then proceed to climb up a ridge along side that river and make your way back to the car. As you climb up, many of the snow-capped peaks in Jotenheim become visible to the West, and there are great reflections in the green mountain lakes (they are green from the glacial silt). You can see all the photos from the hike here, and here are a couple photos from about 1/3rd of the way through the hike.
While heading up the trail, we came to some patches of snow here and there, but not too much. Below is a picture of an ice lake that we walked next too that I thought was rather nice.
After this point, the hike started to get a bit scary (since I am afraid of heights). There are some pretty serious drop offs on one side for most of the hikes, but then you have to scramble up a ridge for a while with some pretty serious drop offs on either side. In order to climb up the ridge, you have to get pretty close to the edge at certain points (since you are really climbing up the rocks at this point rather than "hiking").
Here is a photo from about half way up. Here you can see the ice lake from the previous picture as well as the larger lake below that we road the ferry down. This is pretty cool, as the right lake is ~1200 feet higher up than the left lake, and also does not have the green color.
This was a great hike. It ended up taking us 6 hours.
The next day we drove to Alesund and stopped by the Gierangerfjord along the way. This is probably the most famous of the fjords in Norway. Sadly, the sky was a bit cloudy, so the pictures did not turn out all that great -- but it was definitely cool. We took a boat tour down through the entire fjord, which seems to have never-ending waterfalls cascading into the water on either side.
Friday we spent the day wandering around Alesund and the surrounding area. Alesund was a decent little city -- but not all that exciting. We tried to make a trip out to a nearby island out in the ocean that at this time of the year is home to ~500,000 birds including 200,000 puffins ... but sadly the trip was cancelled because the ocean was too wild and we would have all gotten sea sick. Here are a couple of photos form Alesund.
Saturday we had a long drive down to Balestrand in the Sognefjord area. Along the way we drove through the west side of the Jostedalsbreen National Park (see photos here), and stopped at the Briksdalsbreen glacier, one of the more accessible glaciers in the country. Here is a picture of part of the glacier:
Here is a picture along the road to the glacier:
We finally arrived in Balestrand on the North side of the gigantic Sognefjord. This was a quiet little town that we really enjoyed. We stayed at a small hotel run by a family whose mother was from Norway and father was from the US. They now spend the summers in Norway running the hotel and the winters in the US. You can see all our photos from Balestrand here.
Sunday we took some hikes in the mountains above Balestrand. We climbed up above the tree line about 2200 feet above the fjord, and then headed back down and continued along the hike. Here is a photo from along the way.
Monday was a dreary day and we went on a day long boat tour of the Sognefjord. I won't share any photos here since they did not turn out all that great with the clouds. I will take this chance to get on my soap box. While on the tour, we were passing down the narrowest fjord in the world, but rather than look at the great natural beauty many of the people on our tour decided it would be better to spend their time feeding the seagulls. Now I hate it when people feed wild animals, and I hate it even more when I have to worry about tons of these nasty birds pooping on me while I am trying to enjoy myself. You don't go to Norway to play with stupid seagulls. I will also point out that they were from a country that is surrounded by water and I am sure that have plenty of access to seagulls from home.
Tuesday we drove (and took multiple ferries) from Balestrand to Geilo (about half-way back to Oslo). This day was pretty uneventful, although we did drive through the longest road tunnel in the world -- the 15 mile long Lerdalstunnelen. Below is a picture that Janel took while we were driving of one of the lit-up sections of the tunnel which were added to help provide a break for drivers.
We were planning on doing some hiking in Geilo, which is apparently up in some nice mountains between Bergen and Oslo. The weather was absolutely terrible though, so we ended up relaxing in our hotel room.
Wednesday we completed the drive to Oslo, visited the Edward Munch museum in Oslo, and returned the car. Along the way back to Oslo our GPS decided to take us down a short-cut through some "Unnammed Roads". I am pretty convinced that it would have ben faster if we could have actually made it. After driving maybe 10 or 15 miles down these crappy backroads, we ran into some troubles. There had been a lot of rains and parts of the road were started to get washed out and we had to turn around before we got into trouble. Moral of the story -- don't always listen to the GPS :) ... especially when it tells you to take Unnammed Roads. Also along this drive we saw some pretty serious flooding. Below is a picture of a river passing under a bridge and causing some serious rapids.
After getting back to Oslo and dropping off our bags, we swung by the Edward Munch museum and saw "Scream" among many other of Munch's works.
Wednesday we spent the day in Oslo. In the morning we visited a bunch of little museums. We saw old Viking ships and got to walk around the Fram, a ship which was used in arctic and antarctic exploration. That afternoon we visited some city parks and a sculpture garden.
Friday we headed on home :).
Some interesting observations and learnings about Norway. Just about everyone there speaks English -- so it is a great place to go if you don't want to deal with foreign languages. Norway is not part of the EU. They spent years fighting for their freedom from Sweden, and finally got it about 100 years ago. They are also a very rich country, having found a large amount of oil in the 70s. Therefore, they decided to stay independent when the EU was formed. If you have been to Europe before, you probably noticed how they have wireless credit-card machines that they bring to your table at restaurants. Nothing special here in Norway -- but I did learn that these machines are actually cell phones and that is how they work. It is interesting that the US does not use these machines. I was afraid that I would be stuck eating a lot of nasty fish like herring ... but I did not eat any. The food was generally quite good, and we had a decent balance of fish and non-fish. Finally, they also have what I call "ready-set-go" lights like Israel but unlike other countries in Europe that I have visited. When you come to a stop-light (which is rare with all the round abouts), when they transition from red to green, they go through an intermediate state where both the red and yellow lights are on at the same time. This is like the "ready-set" stage where you shift into first and get an immediate start. This would be kinda cool in the US ... but probably not as big a deal since very few people here drive stick.
Vacation to Norway
Janel and I just got back from our vacation to Norway. We had a great time visiting the fjords and mountains of the only Scandanavian country to not be a part of the EU. First things first. As expected, I took a ton of photos. I imagine that you probably do not want to look through all 400 photos that I have :). So ... you have a couple of options. If you just want to look at a few photos ... read on and scroll down and you will be able to see 15 photos that cover a lot of the trip. You next option is to go here where you can see 52 photos that I picked out. Of particular interest are a few "stitched" panoramics at the end of this album. Finally, you can see all the photos that we took organized by location by going here.
OK ... now that the photo information is out of the way ... lets get to the actual trip. Overall Norway was a lot of fun. I definitely enjoyed this trip more than our visit to France last year, and probably a bit more than our visit to Ireland a few years back. The cities in Norway were not all that exciting ... but we did not really go to Norway to see the cities ... so no big deal.
Anyway ... we arrived on Sunday in Oslo and spent the day trying to stay awake :P. We managed to make it to about 5:00 before we could not take it anymore and had to go to bed. Right away we discovered how annoying it is to sleep in Norway in the summer. The sun is as bright as the middle of day time until probably midnight -- and our first hotel room had crappy window shades -- so we had a tough time sleeping ... even with the jetlag.
Monday morning we got up and walked to the rental Avis car rental place downtown and picked up our stick-shift car. I decided to learn to drive stick for this trip rather than pay the extra $500 a week for an automatic. We hopped in the car and drove up north to the Elveseter Hotel near Lom in Jotenheim National Park. We were originally planning on swinging by Lillehammer on the way, but decided to keep it simple and just drive the 5 or 6 hours straight to the hotel. The drive was nice ... we took a few good pictures ... see one below with some sheep and mountains in the background.
Tuesday we got up and found some good nearby hikes in the Spiterstulen area. This was a cool hanging valley up in the mountains. This was a nice area with a cool little hotel situated at the end of a crappy little dirt mountain road. We did two nice hikes and saw our first glacier of the trip. There were some okay photos, but nothing I will put up here because the weather was a bit cloudy.
After the hike we did a drive through a mountain pass called Sognefjellet. Here we saw a lot of summer cross country skiers and some other nice views. See all the photos here, and one select photo below.
Wednesday we did a great hike -- one of the best hikes I have ever been on -- called the "Besseggen". This is the most popular hike in Norway, with ~30,000 people doing it over the 3 months that the trail is passable. This trail was a favorite of Henrik Ibsen and is described in his play Peer Gynt. You start out by taking a ferry about half way down a long skinny river, and then proceed to climb up a ridge along side that river and make your way back to the car. As you climb up, many of the snow-capped peaks in Jotenheim become visible to the West, and there are great reflections in the green mountain lakes (they are green from the glacial silt). You can see all the photos from the hike here, and here are a couple photos from about 1/3rd of the way through the hike.
While heading up the trail, we came to some patches of snow here and there, but not too much. Below is a picture of an ice lake that we walked next too that I thought was rather nice.
After this point, the hike started to get a bit scary (since I am afraid of heights). There are some pretty serious drop offs on one side for most of the hikes, but then you have to scramble up a ridge for a while with some pretty serious drop offs on either side. In order to climb up the ridge, you have to get pretty close to the edge at certain points (since you are really climbing up the rocks at this point rather than "hiking").
Here is a photo from about half way up. Here you can see the ice lake from the previous picture as well as the larger lake below that we road the ferry down. This is pretty cool, as the right lake is ~1200 feet higher up than the left lake, and also does not have the green color.
This was a great hike. It ended up taking us 6 hours.
The next day we drove to Alesund and stopped by the Gierangerfjord along the way. This is probably the most famous of the fjords in Norway. Sadly, the sky was a bit cloudy, so the pictures did not turn out all that great -- but it was definitely cool. We took a boat tour down through the entire fjord, which seems to have never-ending waterfalls cascading into the water on either side.
Friday we spent the day wandering around Alesund and the surrounding area. Alesund was a decent little city -- but not all that exciting. We tried to make a trip out to a nearby island out in the ocean that at this time of the year is home to ~500,000 birds including 200,000 puffins ... but sadly the trip was cancelled because the ocean was too wild and we would have all gotten sea sick. Here are a couple of photos form Alesund.
Saturday we had a long drive down to Balestrand in the Sognefjord area. Along the way we drove through the west side of the Jostedalsbreen National Park (see photos here), and stopped at the Briksdalsbreen glacier, one of the more accessible glaciers in the country. Here is a picture of part of the glacier:
Here is a picture along the road to the glacier:
We finally arrived in Balestrand on the North side of the gigantic Sognefjord. This was a quiet little town that we really enjoyed. We stayed at a small hotel run by a family whose mother was from Norway and father was from the US. They now spend the summers in Norway running the hotel and the winters in the US. You can see all our photos from Balestrand here.
Sunday we took some hikes in the mountains above Balestrand. We climbed up above the tree line about 2200 feet above the fjord, and then headed back down and continued along the hike. Here is a photo from along the way.
Monday was a dreary day and we went on a day long boat tour of the Sognefjord. I won't share any photos here since they did not turn out all that great with the clouds. I will take this chance to get on my soap box. While on the tour, we were passing down the narrowest fjord in the world, but rather than look at the great natural beauty many of the people on our tour decided it would be better to spend their time feeding the seagulls. Now I hate it when people feed wild animals, and I hate it even more when I have to worry about tons of these nasty birds pooping on me while I am trying to enjoy myself. You don't go to Norway to play with stupid seagulls. I will also point out that they were from a country that is surrounded by water and I am sure that have plenty of access to seagulls from home.
Tuesday we drove (and took multiple ferries) from Balestrand to Geilo (about half-way back to Oslo). This day was pretty uneventful, although we did drive through the longest road tunnel in the world -- the 15 mile long Lerdalstunnelen. Below is a picture that Janel took while we were driving of one of the lit-up sections of the tunnel which were added to help provide a break for drivers.
We were planning on doing some hiking in Geilo, which is apparently up in some nice mountains between Bergen and Oslo. The weather was absolutely terrible though, so we ended up relaxing in our hotel room.
Wednesday we completed the drive to Oslo, visited the Edward Munch museum in Oslo, and returned the car. Along the way back to Oslo our GPS decided to take us down a short-cut through some "Unnammed Roads". I am pretty convinced that it would have ben faster if we could have actually made it. After driving maybe 10 or 15 miles down these crappy backroads, we ran into some troubles. There had been a lot of rains and parts of the road were started to get washed out and we had to turn around before we got into trouble. Moral of the story -- don't always listen to the GPS :) ... especially when it tells you to take Unnammed Roads. Also along this drive we saw some pretty serious flooding. Below is a picture of a river passing under a bridge and causing some serious rapids.
After getting back to Oslo and dropping off our bags, we swung by the Edward Munch museum and saw "Scream" among many other of Munch's works.
Wednesday we spent the day in Oslo. In the morning we visited a bunch of little museums. We saw old Viking ships and got to walk around the Fram, a ship which was used in arctic and antarctic exploration. That afternoon we visited some city parks and a sculpture garden.
Friday we headed on home :).
Some interesting observations and learnings about Norway. Just about everyone there speaks English -- so it is a great place to go if you don't want to deal with foreign languages. Norway is not part of the EU. They spent years fighting for their freedom from Sweden, and finally got it about 100 years ago. They are also a very rich country, having found a large amount of oil in the 70s. Therefore, they decided to stay independent when the EU was formed. If you have been to Europe before, you probably noticed how they have wireless credit-card machines that they bring to your table at restaurants. Nothing special here in Norway -- but I did learn that these machines are actually cell phones and that is how they work. It is interesting that the US does not use these machines. I was afraid that I would be stuck eating a lot of nasty fish like herring ... but I did not eat any. The food was generally quite good, and we had a decent balance of fish and non-fish. Finally, they also have what I call "ready-set-go" lights like Israel but unlike other countries in Europe that I have visited. When you come to a stop-light (which is rare with all the round abouts), when they transition from red to green, they go through an intermediate state where both the red and yellow lights are on at the same time. This is like the "ready-set" stage where you shift into first and get an immediate start. This would be kinda cool in the US ... but probably not as big a deal since very few people here drive stick.
OK ... now that the photo information is out of the way ... lets get to the actual trip. Overall Norway was a lot of fun. I definitely enjoyed this trip more than our visit to France last year, and probably a bit more than our visit to Ireland a few years back. The cities in Norway were not all that exciting ... but we did not really go to Norway to see the cities ... so no big deal.
Anyway ... we arrived on Sunday in Oslo and spent the day trying to stay awake :P. We managed to make it to about 5:00 before we could not take it anymore and had to go to bed. Right away we discovered how annoying it is to sleep in Norway in the summer. The sun is as bright as the middle of day time until probably midnight -- and our first hotel room had crappy window shades -- so we had a tough time sleeping ... even with the jetlag.
Monday morning we got up and walked to the rental Avis car rental place downtown and picked up our stick-shift car. I decided to learn to drive stick for this trip rather than pay the extra $500 a week for an automatic. We hopped in the car and drove up north to the Elveseter Hotel near Lom in Jotenheim National Park. We were originally planning on swinging by Lillehammer on the way, but decided to keep it simple and just drive the 5 or 6 hours straight to the hotel. The drive was nice ... we took a few good pictures ... see one below with some sheep and mountains in the background.
Tuesday we got up and found some good nearby hikes in the Spiterstulen area. This was a cool hanging valley up in the mountains. This was a nice area with a cool little hotel situated at the end of a crappy little dirt mountain road. We did two nice hikes and saw our first glacier of the trip. There were some okay photos, but nothing I will put up here because the weather was a bit cloudy.
After the hike we did a drive through a mountain pass called Sognefjellet. Here we saw a lot of summer cross country skiers and some other nice views. See all the photos here, and one select photo below.
Wednesday we did a great hike -- one of the best hikes I have ever been on -- called the "Besseggen". This is the most popular hike in Norway, with ~30,000 people doing it over the 3 months that the trail is passable. This trail was a favorite of Henrik Ibsen and is described in his play Peer Gynt. You start out by taking a ferry about half way down a long skinny river, and then proceed to climb up a ridge along side that river and make your way back to the car. As you climb up, many of the snow-capped peaks in Jotenheim become visible to the West, and there are great reflections in the green mountain lakes (they are green from the glacial silt). You can see all the photos from the hike here, and here are a couple photos from about 1/3rd of the way through the hike.
While heading up the trail, we came to some patches of snow here and there, but not too much. Below is a picture of an ice lake that we walked next too that I thought was rather nice.
After this point, the hike started to get a bit scary (since I am afraid of heights). There are some pretty serious drop offs on one side for most of the hikes, but then you have to scramble up a ridge for a while with some pretty serious drop offs on either side. In order to climb up the ridge, you have to get pretty close to the edge at certain points (since you are really climbing up the rocks at this point rather than "hiking").
Here is a photo from about half way up. Here you can see the ice lake from the previous picture as well as the larger lake below that we road the ferry down. This is pretty cool, as the right lake is ~1200 feet higher up than the left lake, and also does not have the green color.
This was a great hike. It ended up taking us 6 hours.
The next day we drove to Alesund and stopped by the Gierangerfjord along the way. This is probably the most famous of the fjords in Norway. Sadly, the sky was a bit cloudy, so the pictures did not turn out all that great -- but it was definitely cool. We took a boat tour down through the entire fjord, which seems to have never-ending waterfalls cascading into the water on either side.
Friday we spent the day wandering around Alesund and the surrounding area. Alesund was a decent little city -- but not all that exciting. We tried to make a trip out to a nearby island out in the ocean that at this time of the year is home to ~500,000 birds including 200,000 puffins ... but sadly the trip was cancelled because the ocean was too wild and we would have all gotten sea sick. Here are a couple of photos form Alesund.
Saturday we had a long drive down to Balestrand in the Sognefjord area. Along the way we drove through the west side of the Jostedalsbreen National Park (see photos here), and stopped at the Briksdalsbreen glacier, one of the more accessible glaciers in the country. Here is a picture of part of the glacier:
Here is a picture along the road to the glacier:
We finally arrived in Balestrand on the North side of the gigantic Sognefjord. This was a quiet little town that we really enjoyed. We stayed at a small hotel run by a family whose mother was from Norway and father was from the US. They now spend the summers in Norway running the hotel and the winters in the US. You can see all our photos from Balestrand here.
Sunday we took some hikes in the mountains above Balestrand. We climbed up above the tree line about 2200 feet above the fjord, and then headed back down and continued along the hike. Here is a photo from along the way.
Monday was a dreary day and we went on a day long boat tour of the Sognefjord. I won't share any photos here since they did not turn out all that great with the clouds. I will take this chance to get on my soap box. While on the tour, we were passing down the narrowest fjord in the world, but rather than look at the great natural beauty many of the people on our tour decided it would be better to spend their time feeding the seagulls. Now I hate it when people feed wild animals, and I hate it even more when I have to worry about tons of these nasty birds pooping on me while I am trying to enjoy myself. You don't go to Norway to play with stupid seagulls. I will also point out that they were from a country that is surrounded by water and I am sure that have plenty of access to seagulls from home.
Tuesday we drove (and took multiple ferries) from Balestrand to Geilo (about half-way back to Oslo). This day was pretty uneventful, although we did drive through the longest road tunnel in the world -- the 15 mile long Lerdalstunnelen. Below is a picture that Janel took while we were driving of one of the lit-up sections of the tunnel which were added to help provide a break for drivers.
We were planning on doing some hiking in Geilo, which is apparently up in some nice mountains between Bergen and Oslo. The weather was absolutely terrible though, so we ended up relaxing in our hotel room.
Wednesday we completed the drive to Oslo, visited the Edward Munch museum in Oslo, and returned the car. Along the way back to Oslo our GPS decided to take us down a short-cut through some "Unnammed Roads". I am pretty convinced that it would have ben faster if we could have actually made it. After driving maybe 10 or 15 miles down these crappy backroads, we ran into some troubles. There had been a lot of rains and parts of the road were started to get washed out and we had to turn around before we got into trouble. Moral of the story -- don't always listen to the GPS :) ... especially when it tells you to take Unnammed Roads. Also along this drive we saw some pretty serious flooding. Below is a picture of a river passing under a bridge and causing some serious rapids.
After getting back to Oslo and dropping off our bags, we swung by the Edward Munch museum and saw "Scream" among many other of Munch's works.
Wednesday we spent the day in Oslo. In the morning we visited a bunch of little museums. We saw old Viking ships and got to walk around the Fram, a ship which was used in arctic and antarctic exploration. That afternoon we visited some city parks and a sculpture garden.
Friday we headed on home :).
Some interesting observations and learnings about Norway. Just about everyone there speaks English -- so it is a great place to go if you don't want to deal with foreign languages. Norway is not part of the EU. They spent years fighting for their freedom from Sweden, and finally got it about 100 years ago. They are also a very rich country, having found a large amount of oil in the 70s. Therefore, they decided to stay independent when the EU was formed. If you have been to Europe before, you probably noticed how they have wireless credit-card machines that they bring to your table at restaurants. Nothing special here in Norway -- but I did learn that these machines are actually cell phones and that is how they work. It is interesting that the US does not use these machines. I was afraid that I would be stuck eating a lot of nasty fish like herring ... but I did not eat any. The food was generally quite good, and we had a decent balance of fish and non-fish. Finally, they also have what I call "ready-set-go" lights like Israel but unlike other countries in Europe that I have visited. When you come to a stop-light (which is rare with all the round abouts), when they transition from red to green, they go through an intermediate state where both the red and yellow lights are on at the same time. This is like the "ready-set" stage where you shift into first and get an immediate start. This would be kinda cool in the US ... but probably not as big a deal since very few people here drive stick.
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