Monday, Oct 14

We left Alnes island today and headed inland to the shores of the largest and deepest Fjord in Norway: Sognefjord.  It was another nice, sunny day. Norway’s fall colors consist mostly of brilliant yellow trees. Today they glowed golden in the sunshine.  It was about a 5 hour drive. We stopped a few places along the way to take pictures.  

About an hour before our final destination, we emerged from yet another long tunnel, and spotted 2 glaciers on top of the mountains to our left.  There was a small road leading off in their direction, so we decided to take it and see how close we could get. It turned out we could get pretty close, indeed!  Best of all, we were the only people there – no tour buses full of cruise-ship tourists. This glacier is called Bøyabreen; it’s another finger of the large Jostedalsbreen glacier that we were at last week.  We parked and walked to the edge of the lake that inevitably forms below any glacier. It was just as lovely a turquoise color as the one we saw the other day. This glacier was bigger and not as high above us.  But, it was initially difficult to see how the water was getting down from the glacier to the lake. When we looked a bit closer, we saw and heard a waterfall inside a crevice of rock off to the right of the glacier.  It looked like we might be able to walk around the lake and get closer to see the waterfall. I was not wearing appropriate footwear; a pair of motorcycle boots instead of my hiking shoes. But, we decided to give it a try.  It was very rocky and muddy and at points we had to push trees out of our way that bent down toward the water’s edge. I came away with some mud on my leggings and some on my boots, but managed to make it around the lake. To our surprise, there were 2 chunks of glacier at the lake’s edge.  Rob climbed up on one of them to inspect the crevasses. Ginger and I inspected the base, taking photos and videos. We weren’t able to get close to the waterfall (I blame it on the inappropriate footwear), but it was really cool to see those bits of glacier up close. Rob even slid down, haunched over into a ball.

After making our way back to the car, we continued on to our place outside the village of Kaupanger.  At one point, we encountered a flock of goats just lounging on the road. There were probably 20-30 goats laying in the road,  At least they were kind enough to stay in one lane, leaving the other open for traffic. 

As the sun set, we spotted 4 female elk in a field near the house we’re staying in.

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