Today we drove north of Oslo about 4.5 hours to Øigardseter Fjellstue, where my grandfather Hans Anderson Hove was born and lived until he emigrated to the United States around age 19. Fjellstue means “mountain inn” and indeed the old farm is now a hotel aimed at hikers in the summer and cross-country skiers in the winter. Until recently it was still owned by descendants of Hans Hove’s parents. However, we learned today that they sold it to the current owner 2 years ago.
The wifi here is really poor so I’m unable to upload any pictures to the blog today. So I’ll just write a bit about what we did and then put the photos and more description in tomorrow.
Before arriving at the hotel, we made 2 spur-of-the-moment stops to see roadside attractions. One was a traditional stavkirke (medieval Norwegian church) and one was a short but steep hike to see a geological phenomenon that is quickly eroding away. It’s hard to describe so you’ll have to either wait for tomorrow’s picture or look at this newspaper article published in Norway about it. Due to erosion, since that article, only 2 of the towers is left and the rest have fallen over. And if you look at that picture and think that maybe there is more of these to see if you wander around the site … no, this is it! We were a bit underwhelmed by it since no one had mentioned to us how limited it is. On the other hand it was right near the end of our 4 hour drive and it was a nice peaceful place to eat lunch … the area around the formation is thickly forested in birch and pine.
After that we checked in at the hotel and went on a nearby hike called Formokampen. At the end of the hike you reach the top of a mountain where you have 360 views and mountains all around. You can see pictures of the hike and the view here that are probably better than ours!
After that we came back to relax and have dinner and were excited to see a lunar eclipse that is visible only from Europe — however the high mountains here are blocking the moon. Also at 10:20pm (the time of the full eclipse) it was hardly dark at all. We’re in the time of the year in Norway where although the sun sets, it really never gets dark the entire night.
Balents Trip Blog 