Jessica is here with me in Oslo

I was up bright and early to get all packed up and ready to go get my daughter, Jessica, at the Oslo airport. I took everything out of Odysseus' panniers and put it all into my tent, and I left the tent set up to dry out while I went to the airport to get her. I left the campground with plenty of time to spare, but my stupid GPS took me exactly 180 degrees in the wrong direction. After a couple of stops at gas stations to get proper directions, I got to the airport just as her flight was landing. It all worked out though. I parked the bike in an out-of-the-way long term storage place, picked up a rental car from Hertz, and Jessica and I headed back to Oslo to collect my tent and gear at the campground. By the time we got there, the beautiful, cloudless morning had turned to rain again, and we had to tear down a wet tent and store it away in the car. I am thinking that, with all this rain and cold weather, Jessica and I are going to have a much better time traveling around in that car than we would have had on my motorcycle, even though she was quite willing to ride behind me on it.

One of the very first things Jessica wanted to do was go visit some friends and their new baby. And what a lovely group they turned out to be. This is Grandmother Cecilia on the left. And there is Jessica at the top of the table. New mother Charlotte and father Eivind are looking quite Viking I think. Five week old baby Nora did not get to have her picture taken. Too bad, because I think she is a lovely little girl.

About 10 pm, supper over and dishes waiting to be washed, Jessica and I went to the famous Oslo sculpture park. I really think I outran those two guys who were racing me. I guess at 10 p.m. they should be slowing down a little.

I think this guy would be happy if someone took a few of his kids off his hands.

Jessica and I stayed the night in a cheap hostel in super expensive Oslo. I had to pay almost $80.00 for a cheap, rather crummy room in that hostel, but I was glad to have it instead of sleeping through the rainy night in my tent. 

I spent almost an hour driving around looking for a place to park the rental car. Oslo is a hard town to navigate because none of the streets run straight and square, so I kept getting lost. I found one parking place out on the street, but couldn't figure out how to walk back to the hostel, so I had to drive back to the hostel guided by the GPS and start over.

It all worked out though, and at 8.00 a.m. this morning we were on the road out of Oslo, and headed out on our adventure.  Jessica had done a lot of research on scenic routes to drive and famous places to see. She is a good tour guide, navigator, and traveling companion.  One of the first things she took us to is this very, very old wooden church.

While I was taking Jessica's picture, these kids came by and wanted me to take their picture too. Cute!

Here is the inside of the old wooden stave church. I was quite taken by the ability they had back in the year 1250 to make something this magnificent out of staves. They still hold worship services in it yet today, but because they can't heat it in the wintertime, they have to worship in a barn that they can heat when it gets cold.

How is your Norwegian, by the way. I bet with a little thought and effort you can read this traffic control signal where the road was blocked down to one lane due to construction.

Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, English and Dutch all come from the same Germanic root. All those languages have words in common, but the spellings and pronunciations are different from each other. I get the same feeling here as I had in college when we had to try to read the old English of Chaucer's day.

This part of Norway is very mountainous and watery. It is still very cold (another reason I am glad Jessica and I have a rental car) and the mountain lakes are still frozen over in places. There are a lot of big waterfalls too. Check out the one behind Jessica.

We kept seeing farm buildings with grass covered roofs. They even put grass on new buildings as a design feature. I bet you are jealous. What do you think? Would you like trees growing out of your roof?

And so, bedtime for this weary traveler. I didn't sleep much last night, so I plan on sleeping later in the morning -- not too late, though, because breakfast is planned at 8 a.m. A big day awaits.

Ron