Day Twentyeight - Jul 9, 2014
Trollveggen, NOR
Daily Didactic
A ten mile day, all of it inside Åndalsnes, which in Norway is not the complaint it would be elsewhere. The first thing out the window was Trollveggen, taking up its honest share of the morning across the valley, and down at the water the port lay so still it had borrowed the entire sky for a reflection. A mountain festival was assembling itself by the docks, and we wandered through it long enough to admire a troll figure built with real conviction, gray-haired and leaning on a staff like he meant to stay. Then we walked over to the depot for the actual point of the day, the Rauma Railway. The plan was simple: ride it to Dombås and ride it back. Two hours each direction, and the country obliges the whole way, the green mountainsides streaked with so many waterfalls it starts to feel like showing off, the Rauma River doing its work below the tracks, Trollveggen reappearing as the wall it genuinely is on the right bends. Dombås, when you reach it, is a tidy yellow station and a brief pause, mostly an excuse to photograph the platform and confirm you have been there. The ride home is the same view in reverse, which is somehow never the same view, and at one point the train slid past the yellow house we are sleeping in, a rare angle on home. Back in the nicest kitchen we have had this trip, the five of us made dinner. Sunny and hot, which Norway does not always grant, and two Alaskan thumbs up for the weather. The Low Point would have to be invented, so we will leave it honestly empty.
Today's Photos
