Where East Turns West: I'm Falling in Love and Her Name is NORWAY! (Olden, Norway)

Today we visited Olden Norway. It was flat out fantastic. I can honestly say that it was one of the best experiences of my life. Of course, my words and pictures won't be able to truly reveal how great this day was, but I guess I can give it a shot.

I left the ship at approximately 1:30pm and returned just after 5:30pm, just in time for all-aboard. What happened in those 4-ish hours was incredible. After locating a very basic map of the area I picked out what looked to be one of the tallest mountains (one of the ones with snow on top) and set out for the summit. As I ran I went from a paved road, to a gravel road, and finally, a very rough trail. In fact, when I got to the trail I nearly turned around. The trail didn't look very well defined (it wasn't) and so I wasn't sure if it would take me to the top of the mountain. Fortunately I gave it a shot. Though the trail was rough and a bit tricky to follow at time, it was fantastic.

Part way up the mountain I encountered a young sheep. I got some great video footage of me and the sheep. It got so close to me that I was able to reach out and touch it. After seeing the sheep I pushed onward until I found a hut/cabin by a lake way up in the mountains. At this point the trail pretty much disappeared. Hence, I scrambled across a bunch of boulders, crossed a few snow fields, and just kept running for the top. After several false summits I finally made it. My ascent time at this point was approximately 2.5 hours.

Knowing that I had to make it back to the ship by 6pm I began a very rapid descent. Trying to take a fairly direct line, I slid across quite a few snowfields. My snow field crossing methods ranged from digging my heels in as I ran, to sliding on my trail shoes like a pair of skis, to sliding along on my butt. After descending the snow and boulder fields I got back on the trail and continued my descent. Fortunately the mountain was covered in soft moss and mud which made the descent quite fast. A lot of times descending mountains involves a lot of hard pounding. WIth such a soft surface I was able to open up my stride a bit and gobble up the terrain quite rapidly.

Before too long I was off the trail and back on the road. Surprisingly it was on the road that I made some sort of wrong turn. Fortunately I knew the direction I needed to go and the road I took looped me back to where I needed to be. Though it added a little bit of time to my run I still made it back with time to spare.

Once back on the ship my assistant and I took turns show each other our pictures/videos from the day. After that we headed to the crew deck to take in the views as the ship sailed out of the inlet. Eventually it started to rain and I headed in for dinner. After dinner I went to another spin class. On my way back from spin class I stopped by the open deck to snap a picture. The picture is the last one in today's blog. For those reading this, please feel free to leave a comment with your prediction of what time of day I took this picture.