The Geiranger intestines

“It looks like an intestine”, remarked Traci, marveling at our navigation system's map of the road ahead. We are winding our way towards Geiranger, and the analogy is apt. Which explains why we decided later to skip Trollstigen, but we'll get back to that.

Yes, indeed, it's safe to say, and I'm here to testify to you: The only roads in and out of Geiranger are seriously twisty.

But hang on, let's recap. This morning we carbo loaded at the world-famous Bakeriet i Lom, the Lom Bakery, with a view to the cascading Bøvra river.

If you go there, which you should, and you happen to need to use the restroom, go upstairs. The upstairs bathroom might just be the nation's coolest; that sink pedestal is the front of a Volvo Amazon. You also have to appreciate the sense of humor required to paint the floor and the toilet lid with a yellow centerline. (They could have turned it up to 11 and painted skid marks, too, but that would have been gross. It's a restaurant, after all.)

The town of Lom is quite beautiful, despite all the tour busses and camper vans. The rest of a family took the time to walk around and admire the stave church, built around 1150, while I visited five (5) different stores and gas stations trying to purchase ice for our cooler, an expedition that turned up nothing. I may have mentioned that earlier.

Mia wasn't super impressed and doesn't have much of a sense of history anyway, so she mostly enjoyed the chance to run free in the grass around the church. You know, the well-kept lawn with all the pretty, upright stone decorations on it.

The drive from Lom to Geiranger starts out on a mellow note, on wide, smooth two-lanes lazily curving through a landscape of pine and birch trees and small farms. At Langvatnet, you switch over to Fv63, however, and shit gets serious. You are now entering an area of the country, and a road, that should come with a scenery-density warning. The whoa moments are about to come so fast and so thick we'll be dazed by the time we're through.

First, there's wild and rugged mountain crossing number two on our trip, the approach to Dalsnibba.

You can't make it out in the image above, but one telling detail you should notice if you're ever up there is that all the cabins are literally tethered with steel cables. Think it gets rugged enough in the winter? The pictures above were taken at the end of June. Which begs the question — why do you have a cabin up there? Well, what can I say. Norwegians like doing tough things and kicking back in places that want to kill you. That's just who we are.

The turn-off to Geiranger Skywalk comes on pretty abruptly, at least if you're traveling north towards Geiranger. You're all busy going whoa and wow and holy shit and then, screech, there it is. You pay a few kroners for the ticket and descend yet another set of switchbacks, dodging massive tour buses and camper vans up, then up, then up, and then up some more.

At the Skywalk, it's sleeting, overcast, windy, and freezing. The wind comes whooshing, hard, up the mountainside and hits the skywalk like the wash from a jet engine. We don't get the crisp, magnificent view of the valley below and town of Geiranger familiar from glamour shots, but as far as drama goes the scenery is spot on. You can kinds sorta work out the fjord and the town in the panorama shot below. If you squint and use your imagination a bit.

We didn't stay long. The Skywalk is awe-inspiring, but did I mention it was cold?

From Dalsnibba you start your descent to Geiranger, surrounded by steep hillsides lush with ferns and mosses and streaked everywhere with gratuitous waterfalls and streams. And by descent, I mean descent. The switchbacks are dizzying, and the steep-grade, watch-out-for-falling-rock, and sharp-curve warning road signs pass by seemingly every few feet.

And be warned — as scenic as the road is, whoever is driving isn't going to be soaking up the scenery, because you're too busy white-knuckling the effort not to get everyone killed or, best case sceenario, scratch the car. It's like this:

Once you make it down to sea level and pass Geiranger, carefully dodging the cruise ship passengers thronging the roadway, you get to do it all over in reverse, up Ørnesvingen, Eagle Road. It does reward you with a magnificent view, and one in which we could actually make out the town this time.

And here's the whole thing, sped up to intervals of .2 miles per frame:

Having belabored the point, let tell you what I'm driving at here: By the time we make it to the ferry dock at Eidsdal, I was exhausted. Not just me, but we were all suffering from a bad case of Scenery Fatigue. You don't know that's even a thing until you drive this road. The awesomeness is just so dense you end up positively numb. You just can't feel it any more.

And that's why we decided to skip Trollstigen. We pile out in Eidsdal for a quiet, late lunch by the fjord while we wait for the ferry. Trollstigen would add another hour and a half to the last leg to Ålesund, and we had to ask ourselves — sure, it's one of the world's most iconic switchback mountain roads, and the visitor center is an architectural gem, but do we really need more steep switchbacks and towering, emerald green moutainsides at this point? Doesn't it seem just a tiny bit redundant? The answer is no. No, we don't need any more. If you could still handle more extreme scenery at this point, more power to you, but we were reeling, punch drunk. Please, for the love of the gods, no more epic scenery! So we took our time, stretched our legs, and got rested for the last leg of day two, to Ålesund.