July 3-4, 2022

The weather here changes quickly. One moment it’s sunny and warm, but quickly it’s raining and chilly, especially on the bike. We rode in and out of rain, at times up above what seemed to be the treeline, past lakes with snow on the hills around them.

Our first introduction to what is coming…

Little of the land here is flat, and the mountains are very steep, which makes building roads a challenge. Hence the reason why there are over 1200 tunnels in Norway. Some of them are quite long, and few of them are straight.

As we rode to our campsite for the night, we rode through tunnels of up to seven or eight miles long. One in particular actually went in a corkscrew direction, circling downward mored than 360 degrees. We entered in rain and exited into sun snd dry roads.

We camped for the night near Eidfjord, on the edge of a beautiful lake.

Our campsite near Eidfjord. Great scenery.

This is 10:30pm. At least at this latitude it does get fairly dark for a few hours a night.

The next morning we rode back through the corkscrew tunnel up to Vøringossen, a large waterfall.

Looking out from above Vøringfossen.

Looking down to where the falls join together.

They recently built this stepped bridge across the falls. Some say it distracts from the view, but it is pretty cool. They’re still building more viewing platforms on the lower side of the bridge.

Trolls are everywhere here.

Walking back towards the bike, we saw a couple looking it over. I told Diana “You go talk to them while I use the restroom. Be there in a minute.”

As Diana approached them, she got what has become our normal greeting: “Are you REALLY from Texas?”

When I returned, it was immediately obvious from her accent that she was American. Sandra was from Shreveport, Louisiana, but had lived in Bergen, Norway for the last 23 years with her husband Thomas, who is Norwegian. They were both riders as well, though they were touring on four connected wheels at the moment.

We talked for a bit, and I gave them one of our stickers. Thomas said “Wait, I’ll be right back”, and returned with stickers for us as well as a very nice Travel Coin.

Thanks Thomas and Sandra!

They invited us to stay with them in Bergen, and we invited them to visit us in Texas.

We left Voringfossen as it began to rain, and headed further west and north to Tourist Central: Flam.