Hiking Rampestreken and Driving Trollstigen

We went for our first Norway hike today and it was a great one! It's in Åndalsnes and it took us about 3 hours total. My garmin says we climbed about 100 flights of stairs. The way up was pretty brutal; it was steep and the "path" was muddy with lots of slippery roots and rocks to trip you up so you had to keep your eyes on the ground at all times. Which is unfortunate since the scenery was so beautiful! But luckily the necessary frequent breaks gave us time to soak up the wonderful views. We finally made it to our goal which was the Rampestreken view point. It was breathtaking! They had a platform jutting out over the valley so we had a great vantage point on all sides. It was difficult to decide which was more beautiful: the mountain valley or the fjord. We were surrounded by huge dramatic mountains with water running between them and everything was lush and green. It's hard to describe how beautiful it was so I'll let the pictures do the talking for me.

We finally made it down again (which is almost as hard as going up since we had to be very careful not to slip and fall!). Then we walked around town for a bit searching for the visitors' center. When we finally found it it turned out not to be very helpful, but it was interesting to see all the tourists in town that had just arrived with the huge cruise ship.

After lunch we decided to drive up to Trollstigen. I had no idea what to expect but wow! There were huge cliff faces on all sides with rushing water flowing down the mountain. We went up the super curvy steep road all the way to the top. This road is only open for a few months during the summer because otherwise it's too dangerous. At the top there was the Trollstigen Senter with a cafe and souvenir shops. But the best part was the walking paths which took us over the rushing water, along the snow banks (Matt and I promptly threw snowballs at each other), and out over the fjord. Matt said that he thought this was the most beautiful thing we've seen on our entire trip thus far, and that's really saying something!

The road up the mountain:

Mom and Matt made friends with a famous Norwegian Troll!

We were pretty tired after that we so we tucked in and ate dinner at home. Tomorrow we have a long drive to explore a new part of the country. Needless to say we've really enjoyed the beauty of Norway so far!