To Lom, unharmed

When we pull up at Leirmoen Camping, just up the valley from Lom, it's colder than a well digger's ass: In the forties (8° C, for you folks in the metric world), drizzling, and there's a cold breeze rolling down the valley from Sognefjellet, which we just crossed.

The plan was to pitch tents. The lady checking me in looks up — tents? Tonight? With a toddler, you say? I'm feeling the cold in my bones already, and it takes me .25 seconds to agree that, yea, maybe that's worth reconsidering. How much is a cabin? 500 kroners for the night, beds and heating for everyone. About $60.

Deal.

We'd left my friend Kjersti's house, fortified and replenished with hospitality, meatballs and gravy, Norwegian strawberries, and coffee, around 7 or so. From Kaupanger, we'd wound our way along the beautiful Lustrafjord, where we get familiar with the serpentine lane-and-a-half roads that become part of your life as you road trip fjord Norway.

Just past Gaupne, we have a view of the Feigumfossen waterfall.

Then, closing in on Sognefjellsvegen, somewhere between Skjolden and Fortun, we come across a herd of … aurochs? Or maybe highland cattle? Who knows, this wasn't marked on the maps, just another random wow moment we had so many of.

Because a random herd of shaggy, long-horned, ancient-looking cattle grazing a lush, narrow valley flanked by steep cliffs isn't awesome enough, someone threw in a gratuitous waterfall.

Soon enough, though, Rv55 starts ascending with some haste, and you find yourself in a rough, forbidding landscape. There's snow. There's ice. A few dwarf birches cling to life in sheltered nooks and crannies, but this is arctic tundra, even though it feels like just a few minutes since you were surrounded by grazing cattle and fairy-tale forest, carpeted with bright green ferns and a thick cushion of moss.

It's drizzling, and there's hardly anyone else here. The experience is overwhelming. This is a landscape for tough people.

We're glad we have this road pretty much to ourselves, though. It's wide enough for a car and a half and winds through some insane hairpins. Not having Polish truck drivers barreling around those corners or having to work around lumbering German camper vans is a relief.

It's the kind of drive you really should have all day to do, stopping and taking in the other-worldly scenery. It's getting dark, though, and we need to get settled in for the night, so we push through. And before you know it, the valley opens up beneath and ahead of us, and we start seeing green again.


Starting at Viki, just north of Gaupne, here's the drive at .3 mile intervals.

Snug and warm indoors, we turn off the lights and close day one. Tomorrow, cinnamon rolls at the world-famous bakery in Lom and then Ålesund.

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