Relaxing the Tom Way

So, as many of you know, vacation with Tom does not always equal relaxing, but it does equal fun and exciting. Yesterday we took the ferry across the fjord to the town of Ornes where we biked 26km round trip on a road that is along side the fjord. We biked out to a waterfall that is the second tallest of its kind in Norway (only we don't know what kind it is...). We walked pretty close to it and could drink straight from the stream. Back where we started (but up a hill) was Urnes stave church, one of the oldest of its kind left in Norway. It was built around 1130 when Catholicism had made its way to Norway.


After taking the ferry back, showering, and eating, we went out for a night walk; however, it was still totally light outside. Our hike took us up the road out of town a little, through a cow farm, up through the trees (no switch-backs here) and to a point where we realized that we probably wouldn't summit. We did go just a bit higher to get a view

and were greeted by some curious sheep. I wish I could say I was all cool with it, but when I had sheep bahhing at me, staring me down, and walk right towards me, I turned to Tom for protection.....but he thought I was ridiculous and assured me that sheep are herbivores (which I knew, but they could still be biters...). Another thing is that Norway apparently doesn't have sheep dogs, which is good because we've had run ins with them before, and that really is scary! Anyhow, after escaping the sheep unharmed we returned back to Eplet and were back by 12:20, with plenty of light left.

Yesterday was just a warm up for what we did today. Our day started with biking up the road that comes down into town. It is not super steep, but it is alllllll up. Normally, I probably would have walked my bike a little, but the night before one of the couples here was talking about how they made it to the top without walking their bikes at all, so I guess my competitive streak came out. Once we were at the top of that road, it was more biking, still uphill generally. We then got to a dirt road, and I will admit, we pushed our bikes up those hills a bit. At the top we stopped and....climbed a mountain of course! We climbed to the top of Molden, at 1118 masl (3667 ft above sea level). We know that doesn't sound like a ton to our Denver friends, but starting at zero, it's still a climb!! We were rewarded at the top with beautiful views of the area and the fjord.

When we got to the bottom, we still had the second half of our bike ride to do. As described by the guy who runs our inn, it was "rolling" which we knew now meant more "up" than "down" (at least it felt like that at this point). We rode along the fjord again and though beautiful farms and pastures. At one point though, I saw Tom, who was ahead of me, being stopped by about four kids all under the age of six stringing a rope across the road so we couldn't pass. I could only image what was going on. It ended up that they were helping to move cows up the road and had to block were we were coming from so the last cow didn't walk the wrong way. So after the cow passed, we were back on our way. We rode on to a farm at the end of the road, perched right on the cliff above Solvorn. The owners let you walk across their field to the edge where you have a bird's eye view of Solvorn. We got finally got our payback for all the uphill we'd done with a long descent back to Solvorn to end the day (following a bit less direct route than the potential route shown above!)

And, tomorrow, the itinerary is to RELAX!