Lofoten, Norway

(as narrated by Seth)

 

Me and Grandpa at one of the airports.

Don't remember which one.

Boarding the plane to Sweden.

The trans-Atlantic flight or whatever it's called. 

Us preparing to board the speedboat history tour.

Same thing.

Just boarded.

"Yay, we're on a boat tour."

We went through a bunch of different areas. Sometimes we went fast, sometimes we didn't. Essentially the guide would either tell us about how it was in the winter (this place is a very popular tourist location in the summer because the water warm and very beautiful), or he would just give us little tidbits of history of the areas we were in. In between the narrations we would go really fast across the water. When we hit choppy water it was super fun because we'd bounce across the water. Surprisingly, we didn't actually get that wet. 

After the speedboat we had lunch and decided to go on a hike. The sign said it was only two miles up to Devil's Gate as far as we could understand (it was in Norwegian). But then it totally turned out that the two miles was just to a checkpoint. It was a lot more than we bargained for. It was long and hard but also really worth it. 

Stairs at the beginning of the hike.

After a while the stairs disappeared so we just had to scramble up muddy terrain.

This was before I started walking ahead of the rest of the group.

Great view

At the top. There was a little platform. We hung out for awhile.

Standing on the gate itself scared the crap out of me because right behind it was like a 50-100 foot drop straight into rocks. The view was gorgeous. You could see the city-ish thingie they had down there. There was another path you could have kept following up the mountain, but we were tired. The Youngs went up it and they came down while we were at Devil's Gate. Bro. Mattson packed little energy gummies and that's all that kept me going. The honey stingers or whatever. 

Grandpa at the Gate

While we were hiking we saw a couple mountaineers climbing up with all these ropes and stuff. It was cool to see these guys dangling over a huge drop while climbing a massive pillar of rock

Devil's Gate

Right as we started biking the next day.

Just a cool place to take a picture.

Right as we left to start the first day of biking.

Cool detour that we took.

Brother Young accidentally broke a law by picking a flower growing on the side of the road.

The stinky beach.

Cold.

Covered in seaweed.

But it was so much fun.

This was the day that stunk.

The wind was blowing super hard against you.

It got easier eventually and then it was really easy after that.

Bro. Young was a good motivator.

Another detour. This is the parking area next to the beach that we went to.

It was really nice and sunny right where we were, but nowhere else. One of the locals said, "I've never seen weather like this before!" (Apparently it was uncharacteristically warm and beautiful the week they were there. Almost no rain, lots of sun. They really lucked out.)

At the beach

Me, Everett and Felix on the rock.

Last day of biking, after we finished. 

We stopped by this huge mountain that made me feel really small.

There was a bridge and we threw rocks into the water.

It was really fun.

The house we stayed in for the last stretch.

It was a refurbished fisherman's hut. If you google 'Norway', a picture of this house will pop up. You can see through the floorboards to the water below. They had this really weird stair/ladder combo (really steep stairs) that got you up on a balcony thing. I sat there and played on the Switch for a while because I was really tired. Then Bro. Young got into the water. All I remember is him screaming because it was so cold. You could see huge waves of kelp in the water because it was so clear.

The house had a tiny water heater. I was the last one to shower and it was cold. 

But I got dibs first the next morning and it was nice and warm.

Me & Everett's room.

It was comfortable I guess.

It was a massive mess.

Really, really good restaurant that we went to.

It had all sorts of food that I've always wanted to try, like whale, reindeer, fish eggs (which were actually really good), and fish tongue. Stockfish is SO much better than any of the fish we have here. 

Right before the kayaking trip.

Kayaking group.

Our our way out we had to maneuver around huge clumps of seaweed and random logs and rocks. We went to this massive open area and it was just a gorgeous view of a huge lake and mountains all around it. We saw some locals who live on a little island and have to kayak in order to go anywhere. 

The ferry on the way home. 

It kinda felt like a low-class airplane and it took forever. But it was kinda cool because you'd see these gigantic waves hit the ship and then there's a huge spray of water. If I remember right, someone in our group got seasick. 

The bike routes.

The third day had a lot of bridges we had to go over, but they had great views. One of the days we went over a huge mountain. The wind was so strong that for a second I stopped pedaling up the hill because I was tired, but I kept moving up the hill. On the way down, that was so much fun. I was hitting at least 30 mph zooming down it. 

Definitely worth the money.

Back in the States with Spencer and Sydney!

So glad it all worked out.