We’ve had a wonderful previous few days, just with poor cell phone reception. We left our campsite at Hoh Rainforest Campground early to try and book it to the Kalaloch Campground in the hope on a campsite ( which we ended up getting!!)

The ride to Kalaloch was nice! Mostly downhill and pretty fast. The last little bit was beautiful. We stopped at Ruby beach (as seen below) and a few times when we got to the coast because it was so beautiful!

We made it to the campground by noon and got one of the last available spots! So that was pretty nice. Some of the campsites there have ocean views from the spot, so note to self, next time see if we can get one of those.

Ryan and I relaxed a bit at the site. They don’t have showers at the site, so we left water in the hot sun to warm up for a warm camp shower and then went to go look at some of the local beaches. On our way out we met another biker, Chris, who was also camping in the campground. He biked here from North Carolina! He’s on day 121, and is biking along the coast to San Diego before heading back east to go home. He hopes to do the whole trip in seven months! Good for him!

We also looked for something called the “Tree of Life“ but were not able to find it. (This will come back later!)We did, however, find ice cream, so I’ll take that :).

After a bit of exploring we went back to the campground and used our now warm water to clean off and switch into our evening attire! The warm water worked okay, and we were able to clean up a bit. We had some time to kill before dinner, so decided to walk along the beach! We ended up walking to our dinner spot, so we just popped in for dinner! Very cool that we could just walk along the beach there.

The dinner was probably the best food off the trip so far. We very much enjoyed the food. (We also got cocktails, but those were pretty awful).

To end the night, we sat on the beach to watch the sunset. That was beautiful.

We got up early today and are in the town of Quinualt as I’m writing this. We’ve gone away from the Ocean, so the temperature has picked back up some, but it’s not awful yet. We’re going to go look at Lake Quinault, and then bike to Lake Wynoochee tonight to camp, and then to Potlatch State Park tomorrow. We likely won’t have service until tomorrow night! So posting this at lunch at “Internet Cafe” in Quinault.

We’ve taken a bit of how hiatus from writing, but we’re back to blogging! This section of the trip is with Mark and Ryan (Darragh is in Cape Cod with her family and may provide separate blog accounts of her time there.)

For this section, Ryan and Mark are biking around the Olympic peninsula! We’ve taken an aggressive (maybe too aggressive) route that’s 50% on gravel and 366 miles. We modified to make it longer, adding stops in Olympic National Park! As all will laid plans, there will be some modifications after riding in the heat today.

Today was based on a song by Olivia Rodrigo, Brutal. (Although Ryan reports that Boogie Wonderland was stuck in his head all day, but it sounds more like to state we desired to be in, rather than the state we were actually in.)

We did 77 miles + 4 without weight for dinner, so we’ll say 80 miles. It was HOT today. Maybe we should’ve taken a hint when the place we had lunch was shutting down at 2pm when it was scheduled to be open until 8pm. (Side note, lots of respect for the owner who called his employees and told them to close it down ). We still had 30 miles to bike, but the camping around there was reportedly really bad and we wanted to get to the coast where it would be a bit cooler.

But from the beginning, the day started at 6am, with a quick breakfast at Matt and Liz’s house, and then out the door by 6:50am. Our goal, which we easily hit, was to take the 8:50AM ferry. In a stroke of good luck, there was also a top pot doughnuts near the ferry, so we got doughnuts for the ride.

After all my riding in Norway, I was a bit upset that I had to pay for the ferry as a bicyclist, but alas not everything can be free.

The ferry ride was beautiful, but there were no whales 🐳 spotted on the way. Maybe, next time! On the ferry, we meet a couple from Cincinnati who were feverent Michigan fan. The wife was an avid cyclist, and told us all about her biking. She has a Cervelo that weighs 15 pounds, so a different type of riding then us.

After the ferry, we had some lovely cycling in okay temperatures. We took our first gravel section, and had a blast. It was looking to be a great day.

But then, we started up the second gravel section on the route. That was when the start of the brutality started. It was starting to get really hot, and to get into the tail, we had to push our bikes through raspberry bushes. Ryan managed to make it through relatively unscathed, but I got a few gashes on my leg, which burn when salt from my sweat dropped into them. We pushed our bikes up the hill to start, and then started biking. The road quickly turned into the worst type of gravel road, actual gravel. (Ryan points out that sand is worse than gravel, which is correct, but gravel is still pretty bad.) We had a long and slow uphill over the gravel trying to get to the top of the hill. (Excellently guided by my new Wahoo bike computer I may say!) It was hot, and slow going, and sometimes very exposed to the sun.

To say we were relieved when we finally made it to town would be a bit of an understatement. We stopped at the first market we saw, bought water and Gatorade, and enjoyed the AC.

We stayed in that town Quilcene for 2 hours while we got food, and lunch, and brought our body temperature back down.

After we sat until 3, we got back in the bikes as they were sitting down the restaurant. They said we were welcome to stay, but we still wanted to do 30 miles. (Wanted maybe a strong term, we did 30 miles because we wanted to have a cooler night near the ocean).

Those 30 miles were brutal. Luckily, the road was closed too though traffic, so it was great for biking, and when we were in the shade, it wasn’t awful, but after even small climbs in the sun, we needed to stop to cool down. At one point we even stopped at Lake Leland and dunked our shirts in so we could have the evaporation help keep us cool.

If you want to see the full route, you can find it here! https://ridewithgps.com/trips/131484276

We made it to put destination at 5:30 PM. Ryan crushed some of the last few miles, and we were on a bike path for most of it as well! We were pretty tired setting up the tent, and another guy came over to chat with us. He had also biked in, but it sounds like he lives on his bike. He gave us lots of local recommendations, which was nice, but also told us story after story that was almost certainly bs. For example, he told us he’s been struck by lightning 4 times, and was ejected from an ambulance when the paramedics thought he was dead, and then he moved, and the surprised paramedic slammed on the brake, causing his gurney to fly through the front windshield. … Right.

Anyway, finally got everything setup, ditched the other camper, took an amazing shower, and went out to dinner! It was a glorious, but very quiet dinner as we rebuilt our energy!

Based on today, we’ve modified the plans for tomorrow. It’s still going to be pretty hot, so we’re going to do 25 miles in the morning, and then rent a car to drive up to our campground. The day after, we’ll take a bus from the car rental place to a few towns over and then bike from there to the campground. All in all, this will save 80 miles of biking across 2 days, which is great. It’s also supposed to cool down later in the week, which should be good!

Tomorrow night we stay at Sol Duc Hot Springs. Hopefully they have some cool springs as well. And then on Thursday night we stay at Hoh rainforest campground. Which should also be great!

We’re looking forward to some rest! Hoping for at least 10 hours!

We’re writing this blog post from what I can imagine a very nice refugee camp would be like. We’re packed in with probably 300-500 other people in a fairly small campground. One thing I miss about the US when traveling in Europe is our campgrounds. We have much much nicer campgrounds in the US. (Although, having them near towns with showers and washing machines is nice!)

We woke up early this morning, and got out of camp by 6:00AM to start driving back towards the airport for our flight to Detroit tomorrow. When we awoke it was drizzling and we were in a cloud, so no more beautiful pictures from the drive out!

The dirt road out of the campsite was pretty easy. I’m now ready for the Rivian to get sweet photos in the Cascades.

Once we were back to the ring road, we decided we mine as well complete the circle, as it was only an extra 25 minutes to drive that way. So we did it, and drove the 9 hours back towards the airport.

Our goal was to get back in time to go hike to see the active volcano! That would’ve been amazing. But we unfortunately didn’t make it in time. The hike closes at 6, and we were there at 5, so we hiked up to see a slightly older volcanoes 🌋 now dried lava flows, which was still spectacular!!

We’re now at a campground near Keflevik (where the airport is. Fun fact it was built by the US!).

We’re off to bed! We’re fly out to Detroit early tomorrow morning! Fingers crossed no one parks us in.

We had a nice lie in this morning and didn’t get up til 8am. A quick breakfast at camp and then we walked straight to a glacier.

We didn’t get to touch it or go on it because it is sadly melting. The water that melts from the glacier runs underneath the glacier and veins out into a web of rivers, much like the effusive volcanos. Therefore, there were many small and large rivers of freezing water that prevented us from getting to the glacier itself. Furthermore, those little rivers or lakes (if the water aggregates on flat land with no outlet) have icebergs!

Mark was so kind and took off his shoe (modern day Cinderella) and stepped in the cold water and grabbed an iceberg for me so today I held my very first iceberg!

Yes, the icebergs are fun to watch and they’re beautiful. They glisten in the light and are even more fun to discern shapes of than clouds! But, it is sad. The existence of icebergs are the breaking off of part of the glacier. Some icebergs warm so much from the sun that they break off even more from each other and float down the river and eventually end up in the ocean. Each glacier here has receded exponentially since 1890. I hope the next generation will get to see these glaciers, even just one. Their ephemerality make them even more of a beauty. If you haven’t seen one, do yourself a favor.

We completed our 7hrs of driving today on an F road. F roads in Iceland are gravel roads. They can be treacherous off-roading and some car rentals ban a short list of F roads. We were on one today & it was a blast. We crossed a series of rivers, one of which Mark held his breath while driving over. The land is largely flat on either side with large glaciers or volcanos jutting up from every horizon. Think Jurassic Park. Iceland is the size of what US state? Answer at the bottom. What’s Iceland’s population? Answer at the bottom. Sheep, cows and horses adorned the edges of the road again today. They amble along without looking up at us.

Camp is lovely. We had a beautiful little hike to a waterfall.

It’s 10pm and bright as day out. 5am wake up with an 11hr drive ahead of us. Last full day in Europe!

Seep well, wherever you are!

M+D

Kentucky. Did you guess that small?

375,318. Tiny, right? So as you can imagine we’re not seeing many people (besides tourists) or homes for that matter. 1.7 million tourists last year!

We have arrived in Iceland! we woke at 4:20am, checked out of the Radisson Blu and walked across the street to get our bus to the airport. We were there within 20 minutes, bag tag printed and through security within 10. We had a nice 1hr flight from Tromsø to Oslo. And then a 3hr flight from Oslo to Reykjavik. Iceland is 2hrs behind so it’s as if we have been up since 2:20am so I’ll do the best I can here!

We took a shuttle bus to our car rental and within 15 minutes or so we were up and running. Mark rented a Jeep, please let that be stated for the record :)

It has a camper van on top. Will he fit? What is everyone’s wager?

Once we got in our Jeep today around half 11, we hit the ground running! We drove about 120 miles today. We headed a bit SE and our first stop was a lava cave. It was soooo cool! ;) We learned that there are two kinds of volcanoes: erupting and effusive. There is a volcano currently erupting in Iceland. We plan to see in on Weds, before our flight, if conditions are still safe. The erupting volcanoes are the typical pointy ones everyone’s mind conjures up. The effusive volcanoes are flat, their lava spews and creates veins on lava running from the volcano. When the lava is exposed to the cool environment it cools, hardens and becomes black. But there is still lava flowing under that black layer. Our guide was hilarious and needs her own standup!

The below caves were made exclusively from lava from an effusive volcano that erupted for 3-6yrs 5000 years ago. Crazy!

The red marks are iron, the gold sulfur and the white volcano bacteria! NASA studied this very cave a few years ago because that bacteria may be the life we potentially find on Mars as it is volcanic. So cool!

Next, we stopped at a gigantic, ginormous, high, spluttering waterfall! It was beautiful but I know nothing about it hence the excessive use of adjectives.

Then, we drove 20 minutes to a crashed plane. It was a US plane that crashed her in 1973. Other details are varying online so hang tight till we get to the bottom of it. It was a 4mi hike out and back to it. We arrived to the parking lot at 5pm. We were hungry and tired but we wanted to see this plane so we power walked and got it all done with 1hr 10mins. We were impressed with our timing and accomplishment. Now it was dinner time!

We drove another hour to dinner and had a lovely meal at Systrakaffi. One of the best mushroom tagliatelle in cream sauces I have ever had. Each mushroom was different and bursting with flavor. Mark got a burger and the fries were perfectly seasoned.

We had one more hour drive to our campsite, arriving at 9pm. Our 6hrs of driving today have been absolutely majestic. The landscape has already diversified so much. Some green hills make me second guess that I’m not in Ireland. Other mountains are jagged and gray or dark black. There are glaciers that ascend above the cloud cover and it’s impossible to see where they end. It’s spiritual and awe inspiring. Caol Ait (pronounced kale oct) in Gaelic, meaning thin veil. That’s a place where the space between us and divinity is just a thin veil. I love that.

I hope everyone else is well. We miss you, and think of you often! Looking forward to sharing the rest of our stories in person! Night night!

M+D

We had a nice lie in on Sunday morning, knowing that hardly anything is open on Sundays in Norway. We woke at 9am and Mark realized that I had booked our Iceland tickets for Aug 31st instead of July 31. Oops! Not a fun mistake to make. So, the scramble and hunt to change that was quickly in motion. I called Chase Travel, who I booked the tickets through. They said they couldn’t get in contact with our airline, SAS, and so they couldn’t process anything. We took a bus ride to the airport to get in front of an SAS employee, but the airport is so small that the only employees there were baggage ones from Tromsø Airport and none specifically employed by SAS. They were able to give us an SAS phone number, which gave us information, so that was a clue in the saga. We took the bus back to the hotel, called Chase again and were able to get on the exact same flight, but with the correct dates. Three hours later and a chunk of change and it was sorted. Phew! We had a lovely breakfast of an omelette and parfait. I then headed out to the art gallery for a day two visit, while Mark stitched his bathing suit in the hotel room.

We are sauna hooked so we tried Tromsø’s sauna. This one was called Pust, which is Norwegian for breath. It was very fun. We couldn’t last more than 11 minutes in the sauna, followed by jumps into the Norwegian Sea. I found this water colder, but maybe that was because the weather was warmer in Tromsø than in Stokmarknes. We unfortunately didn’t take any photos. We decided that we liked Dypp a little more, and perhaps Bellingham needs one?

After a quick change we went in search of caviar. Unfortunately, the one fish restaurant open on Sunday was out of it. We still enjoyed a nice drink on the boardwalk. It was so warm we had to stay out of the sun. I think that’s a first this Norway trip. I asked the concierge in our hotel if they are busier in the summer or winter (as all Tromsø’s online recommendations seem to be northern lights geared) and he replied, “Oh far busier in the winter! Most people want to be somewhere warm in the summer!” Well, we missed that memo! We have largely had great weather, though. It has been chilly and gray at some point every day but we really lucked out not getting rained on while cycling. The chilly weather is perfect biking weather as well. It was nice to feel the sun and warmth today though.

We then went to a nice pizza restaurant and afterwards we watched the Tromsø - Bodø football match at a pub (Tromsø has pubs and is known nationally as a party town, but as they say, I don’t think they‘d be able to do much damage). Last night, our bartender warned us that this was a huge match and that the Tromsø - Bodø rivalry is alive and well. This is the same bartender that said to us, “What state are you from? You look like mountain people.” Keep in mind, this was said after we had showered and changed out of our biking clothes and put on our best ”going out” clothes. Yikes! I guess we’re not fooling anyone. We made it to halftime, with a score of 1-0, Tromsø. Tromsø was the underdog so that was exciting and they ended up winning 2-0. We had a quiet evening packing and finishing Master & Commander.

4:20 wake up for our flight to Iceland!

Some final thoughts on Norway:

1. It is so clean! There’s no trash or debris on the roads, which is unusual. Cleanliness is a national value, we learned. People’s lawns are perfect, flowers abounding, and their houses/paint are in great condition, especially considering the harsh weather they’re exposed to.
2. Eye contact is very important in Norway, but words are not. There is a lot of non-verbal communication and thus they have mastered the art of subtleties. Sudden/grand movements make people uncomfortable.
3. Cars are super respectful of cyclists.
4. Every fish is cod on the menu :)
5. Pubs are not a thing! When you google it, supermarkets are the only things to match your search and it is illegal for supermarkets to sell wine. They do sell beer, though. Wine is sold in a wine monopoly (really). We couldn’t even get a glass of wine to go at our hotel. Each town will have about 8 supermarkets and zero pubs. It’s not the culture. They spend their time fishing and hiking. Or indoors cooking, cleaning or doing art. We saw lots of galleries.
6. It is a late country. The roads are empty before 9am. We were turned away at 1:15pm for lunch being told, “You’re a little early for lunch. That starts at 2pm.“
7. The food has been absolutely fabulous! We truly ate our way through Norway. I only had one or two bad meals, and those were pizzas that were almost certainly frozen. It is a meat heavy cuisine. Every sandwich I got I pealed the ham off and handed it to Mark. Almost every dinner menu had a veggie option, but for the few that’s only option ended up being a pizza, it was not great. Otherwise, I had interesting and tasty and intricate vegetarian meals, even in very small towns.
8. We would recommend Norway a thousand times over! We of course only saw a sliver of it, but would return in a heartbeat. The part that we saw was jaw droppingly beautiful. Most of our rides were spent saying, “Wow!”, “Beautiful!” or “Look right! Look left! Look in front!” and each vantage point was unique and majestic. The photos show a fraction of its reality. There were lots of outdoorsy people there. Hikers, cyclists, rock climbers, kayakers, traveling by foot, bike, truck or camper van. It is an outdoor person’s fairytale. For those who are not interested in the outdoors, you’d be hard pressed to occupy your time in the towns/places we were. You can camp anywhere (you do not have to camp within an established campsite although there are those available as well), with only a few reasonable restrictions, so that additionally makes Norway a camper’s haven.

Thank you, Norway, for a great 11 days and see you in the future, whales!

We made it! Today marks the end of our biking portion of the trip. We’re currently in a nice king bed in the Radisson Blu in Tromsø, and very much enjoying it.

We woke up around 8AM this morning and were very efficient trying to get out of camp. Unfortunately, we needed to burn the rest of our fuel so we could safely dispose of the canister, and that took around 1.5 hours, so we had to sit and wait at the campsite for that time. Luckily it wasn’t too cold nor too buggy!

We got on the road shortly after 10, and made good time to Tromsø. We made it to town by around noon (23 miles) and first went to the post office to pick up our luggage that we didn’t take on the bikes. For the avid reader, this is the package we shipped from Bodø at the start of the trip. Thankfully it was there! And we got it no problem.

With our luggage in hand, we went to the bike shop that we rented our bikes from and returned all the gear. Thankfully that went smoothly as well! (It should‘ve! We paid a fortune for those bikes!!) We had an extra canister of gas from the trip that we have to a couple that was just starting their trip starting from Tromsø. The wife was very excited when we offered the free canister. She told us that she had just bought one from the store, but was going to return that one for the one we gave her. It also helped us, as we didn’t need to dispose of a full canister of gas!

From the bike shop we walked half a block over to our hotel, where they let us check in early! By 1pm, Darragh was in the shower and I was sorting clothing. Let’s just say a decent amount of laundry needs to be done. We looked at doing it at the hotel, but just washing a single shirt is $35. Pass. We’ll do it at the first campsite in Iceland.

After we were all showered and looking like normal humans again, we went out for lunch and ran into the younger Swiss couple that we’ve seen a couple times now on this trip. They told us they were taking another rest day in Tromsø. When we asked what campsite they were stating at (we first met them in a campsite in Stokmarknes) they said, oh no, tonight we’re in a hotel. Based on their phrasing (somewhat emphasizing the word “rest” in the same way I said it) I’m going to claim credit for giving them the idea of rest days, and I think they love it!

After lunch we did some shopping around town. I tapped out after 45 minutes, I’ve had enough :). Darragh continued shopping for another few hire hours and found some clothes she was happy with!

We had dinner out in town at a place called Bardus Bistro, then had a drink at the bar next door, and then called it a night. We went back to watch “Master and Commander” (such a classic) but _someone_ started drifting off about halfway through, and someone else has seen the film tons of times before, so it just became bedtime.

Tomorrow we’ll sleep in, and then enjoy the city! With more photos as well. Then it’s off to Iceland! I just confirmed the rental car, and that we can take it on the backroads of Iceland, so I’m excited for that!

The sun is set for 2.5 hours tonight, so it may finally get dark as well!!

This will be a short post, as all the photos are on Darragh’s phone, and she is sleeping soundly.

Today was a very laid back day. We did about 25 miles, mostly after dinner! We slept in in our lovely cabin, and then had a lazy morning. Darragh read (she’s reading a book on Survival) and I looked for Iceland plans and looked ahead to my trip with Ryan biking through somewhere in the PNW (not sure where yet).

We rolled out of the hut at around noon to make a 2pm ferry to the region of Troms where Tromsø is. I didn’t get this until now but, we’ve gone through a few areas of Norway. We started in Lofoten which is a district in Nordland county. from there we went into Andøya, which is a municipality in the Vesterålen district of Nordland. we were in Senja yesterday (I’m actually not sure what county or district that is), and are in the county of Troms today!

We’re camped what seems like at elevation, but we’re just on a small pass between two fjords. I still don’t have video uploads working, so we’ll have to wait for those :(.

We had dinner in a lovely town called Sommarøy. It looked like it was gearing up for a bit of a weekend, with people coming up from Tromsø. We ate at “The Artic Hotel“ and it was excellent.

We then crushed 22 miles in under 2 hours (that’s great), and are now cozy in our tent ready for sleep!

Tomorrow will have a nice shower! (My first warm shower in a week) and explore Tromsø!

If you look closely at the cover photo, you’ll see a tiny cabin in the corner. It has no running water or electricity, but it’s technically an upgrade from our tent, and we’re very much enjoying it!

Today started on the ferry from Andenes to Gryllefjord. Once again, free for bikes! The entrance to Gryllefjord is stunning, it’s very mountainous like the entrance to a fortress in a Disney movie. (Fun fact: Frozen was inspired by this area). It also left the astute biker wondering, how can we possibly get out of here? The answer, tunnels. Lots of them. I think throughout this trip we’ve been in maybe two tunnels. Today we went through six or seven. The tunnels are not the most fun to bike through. They’re loud when cars are passing, and it can be hard to see the roads surface. This, however, didn’t stop a Frenchman going the other way to come across the tunnel, stop us, and casually ask if we knew the ferry times of the ferry we just got off. No, we have no idea, and what in the world are you doing stopping in the middle of the tunnel.

We did around 45 miles today, all included. It was definitely the most elevation we’ve done in one day. So all in all, we’re pretty proud of the work we put in today.

While relaxing in Andenes last night, we decided to check out a Norwegian cabin tonight, so that’s where we are staying tonight! It’s very cozy. There’s no running water or electricity (even though the power lines run literally 20 feet away, go figure), but it has a wood stove to heat the place, that worked very well, a propane stove for cooking, and a battery powered pump for a shower in the back. So when we showed up at the cabin, we got to work warming up some water so we can have hot showers, and have a nice warm and cozy place to spend the evening.

It’s already 11pm! I’m still not used to how bright it is up here! So we’re off to bed, and tomorrow will be back in the tent! After that, we’re going to Tromsø where will spend two nights in a nice hotel before we head off to Iceland! We’re excited for that part of the trip!

Hi hi! (That’s the greeting here. I have messed up a few times and followed it up with, “How are you?” Don’t do that.)

Today, we took a rest day in Andenes, mostly to see whales, and to explore this northernly town before we ferry over to Gryllefjord - our first step out of the beautiful Lofoten Islands and closer to Tromsø. Lo means lynx, can you guess what foten means? Hint, a Birds Eye view of Lofoten from Google Maps may help!

We got up at 7, made our breakfast beside our tent and were out quickly, cycling 15 minutes into Andenes to make our whale watching tour. We got suited up in waterproof jumpsuits as well as life jackets and then had a wonderful tutorial by our guide who is on track for a PhD in sperm whales. We learned that sperm whales are the biggest of the tooth whales (blue whales are the biggest of the baleen) and their blow hole is on the left side of their head. They can dive to 1000 meters and typically spend 40 minutes under water, but 2hrs is the record! They then surface for 5 to 10 minutes and then return to deep waters. There are only male sperm whales around Norway at this time of year as mothers and calves are in warmer waters. Also around Norway in July are orcas, minke whales, and pilot whales (which are actually dolphins - what a funny joke). If you want to know more about what preys on sperm whales, their predators, lifespan, causes of death, their fins, how many there are, and how they got their name please let me know! I‘d be happy to share! But like Mark with the ship museum, I don’t want to overdo it :)

Then we boarded the ship. A small black speed boat (think Jason Bourne getaway boat). It sat 12 passengers up front, the captain, and our whale specialist. We were warned we may not see any whales. Typically orcas and pilot whales are found in pods and can be together. Sperm whales travel alone from other sperm whales and definitely alone from other species.

We drove 7 miles out into the middle of the valley, which has depths of 2000m. Our guide then put a hydrophone in the water to listen for whales. Sperm whales make a ticking sound for echolocation. She heard one! We traveled closer to it. Then she heard three. Then we traveled in a triangle, back and forth. Where was it? When was it going to surface? Would we have the 2hr stubborn sperm whale? Finally, he surfaced! He moved quickly, we approached from behind keeping our distance, he moved even farther. You never want to stress a wild animal so we backed off. The whale kept moving and then dove back under. Our guide listened again on the hydrophone. The sound turned from a ticking sound to a squeaky door sound, which is the sound of eating. Squids typically move in triangular shapes and so this sperm whale was chasing squid, one of their most desired meals. Thankfully, the whale’s speed was because it was busy chasing and eating and not because we were selfishly chasing it.

We let that one be. Hydrophone again and there was another 1 mile away. We arrived and it had just come to surface. We followed slowly, this whale didn’t speed up. In fact, it slowed. We turned off the engine and floated alongside this breathing 120ft sperm whale. We could hear and see its each breath. It was magical. The whale was calm, insouciant, and yet we couldn’t be any more in awe. I cried. Let out a few “wows” and “woahs” as well. I turned around to see my husband giggling at my reactions, but secretly I think he was awed as well.

The whale dove after 7ish minutes of breathing and that was it.

We headed back to the harbor after 3 great hours at sea. No orcas or pilots or anything else today. Some cute puffins swimming & gulls flying.

Mark and I had a lovely lunch at a cafe and caught up on computer time. We cycled down to where our ferry is for tomorrow morning, just to be sure. We popped into small bookshops, plant stores and sports outlets. Cycled back to camp, Mark spent a few hours on the beach while I read Deep Survival in the tent with a cup of tea that Mark made for me on the camping stove.

We cycled back into town at half 5, pizza dinner at an ok spot, and a drink at the hotel in town after. We heard a guy on the phone say, “Because I’m in an [expletive] country where the sun doesn’t set and I haven’t slept for a month.” Agreed, you wouldn’t want it to be like this all the time, but it’s fun for us while we are here!

Weather has been foggy and chilly today so I write this from the warmth and quiet of our tent.

Early morning for the ferry & tomorrow we stay in a little Airbnb cabin with no running water. Should be fun!

Night!

PS I am still on cloud nine from our whale time!

Friday was a quiet day. The rain never let up. It's hard to believe that much can keep coming down! Kesha, Vinny's brother, bought a horse last year and he has been entering into jumping competitions. Chesy, named because he's a chestnut, is an excellent jumper, coupled with Kesha's knowledge, talent, dedication and love of the animal and sport they have been winning a lot of competitions. Chesy is a big teddy bear who is highly food motivated (sound familiar?). Kesha saddled him up and I took Chesy around the ring for a few loops. He has a lot of energy and needed no prodding to start cantering and then galloping. I was wearing sneakers, instead of riding boots, and my foot couldn't get the hold I needed. Chesy started to gallop and I almost lost my footing and went overboard. Luckily, I was able to pull the reins with not much stability. It was so fun, but I could use more lessons and I am extra motivated now to do so. Then Kesha got on Chesy and it was magic. They synced and Chesy sang as he jumped over higher and higher fences. I was mesmerized.

Kesha then headed back to work; he is a plumber and is very busy! He said it's a mix of Ireland's government updating subsidized housing fixtures and the inability to keep talent in Ireland - as soon as plumbers are licensed they head for Australia, Kesha said. I got back to Vinny's and Claire and Jerry had already left for their 5hr drive to Dingle. The others were chatting, resting, entertaining the two baby boys or nibbling while sipping tea. I did a load of laundry and played with JP while Sonny slept.

When JP learns about a new person the first question he asks is, "Do they own a tractor?" He's in for a rude awakening in New York.

Around 2pm we said bye to Vinny's family, the O'Reilly's, and started our hour drive up to Annagassan in county Louth to visit our other first cousins. Nicola is marrying Ian tomorrow, and Nicola is daughter to my dad's brother Gerard. We received big welcomes from our family and were very kindly offered three rooms in their neighbor's, Tommy and Joan, house. Tommy and Joan, like my Uncle Gerard and Aunt Bernie, are retired and loving life in Annagassan. Out their front door is the Irish Sea and out the back is a river. The town is bursting with flowers: flower baskets, hanging flowers, flowers in gardens, flowers in windowsills. There isn't a scrap of trash to be seen. And of course, every town in Ireland has a pub. The Glyde has a cozy pub in the front and a lovely bright restaurant overlooking the Irish Sea in the back. After Tommy and Joan showed us our rooms and made sure we had every comfort we could imagine we headed over to The Glyde for drinks and dinner. Nicola's brother is Gary and Gary is married to Denise. We met Gary and Denise's baby Iarle (Gaelic for Earl and pronounced EAR-la) who was a huge hit all weekend long.

With an Irish wedding ahead of us tomorrow, we played it safe and headed home for an early night and guess what? A Jack Ryan.

Mom and Dad woke up early on Thursday and headed up to Dublin to pick up Clara and Eoghan - welcome to Ireland!

Jerry, Mark and I headed out for breakfast and brought some back to Claire who was soaking up sleep time since last night's sleep was spent on a plane. We packed up, checked out, and started our 40 minute drive to Glendalough, which means Valley of the Two Lakes. The two lakes are very creatively named Upper Lake and Lower Lake. It's a spiritual place as St Kevin retreated there in the early 500s. He found it peaceful and a great place to find God, in the solitude of nature, away from others. Others thought the same, though, and St Kevin was soon joined by followers. They created a simple but efficient living space in the 6th century. In the 900s, the Vikings invaded Glendalough as mostly everything was set up for them. The land and structures have remained a Catholic space. There were lots of tourists there with us on this sunny Thursday.

We started off at Lower Lake, walked around Round Tower, an old church, and priests' home. Round Tower, pictured below, was fascinating. The lowest entrance is 12ft above the ground, so you need a ladder to enter. Then the tower was used as a meditative/prayerful practice of climbing circulating stairs. It was high enough that it could also be used as a vantage point for oncoming threats. In the case of a threat, the ladder would be lifted up and placed inside the Round Tower, and the door would be locked so they were safe from invaders.

We took a beautiful trail to Upper Lake where there was another church, or what's left of it, as well as St Kevin's sleeping place. We couldn't get to it, but apparently if you walk around Upper Lake you can view St Kevin's bed nicely from the other side of the lake. We had three maps all showing different locations of this bed, on top of the opposing opinions of fellow tourists walking by so instead of an endless search we said we'd look for it on Google Earth.

After our walk through Glendalough we drove a bit to find a lunch spot that had fewer tourists. We had no luck with the place I found online. Again, Google hours were not the same as real hours.

We stumbled upon Round Stones Artisan and I had the best lunch of my life! Highly recommend for all! I got a kimchi sandwich that was on the freshest foccacia and the salt on top was perfectly flakey. Accompanied by a very fresh salad and a lovely mug of tea. Ireland knows how to do pottery! Claire said "yum yum yum" beside me in between most bites :) She got a sampling of two salads and soup and found everything fresh, tasty, unique and perfectly seasoned.

After lunch, we continued 30 minutes north to the Wicklow Mountains and to a great viewing spot called Sally Gap (thanks Ta for the recommendation). This was one of the highlights of the day for me. The weather was dry, thankfully, but there were clouds. Still the scenery, mountain range and surrounding areas were so beautiful. We stopped a few times, walked to the edge of the cliff and just basked. We saw people in vans that were camping and some others with hanggliders. I really would love to do that sometime! Camp there and spend a few days hiking, biking and flying with a small wing suit keeping you safe...

We then continued about 90 minutes north out of Wicklow, through Dublin, and to Meath to my cousin Vinny's house. Vinny is my first cousin. His mom is Jackie, who is my dad's sister. Vinny was very nice to host all 8 of us! His wife, Eimear is the best and they have very cute boys, JP (almost 4) and Sonny (almost 1). We had a wonderful BBQ dinner and then headed to the infamous Mrs O's. We had great chats, lots of laughs and a walk of the castle ruins.

We then got home to have the ritualistic "chip sandwich:" Tayo's on buttered bread.  Night night!

The weather today was amazing. Other than a slight headwind, it was sunny almost all day, and the views were stunning. I’ll try to pack this post full of the photos we took.

We got on the road at 9:30, and easily made it to Risøyhamn for a treat and tea + water for Mark. The first place we went was closed, but so very nice German women (probably in their 70’s!) told us the grocery store down the way had a nice cafe, so we went there. As a side note, we’re some of the youngest people we see doing this trip (minus the few kids we’ve seen with their parents). There’s a lot of retirees that are doing it. Some are taking e-bikes, but most are doing it on acoustic bikes!

We were quickly back on the road after our stop and on a backroad that would take us along the coast up to Andenes.

We stopped for lunch in another grocery store/cafe. This queen was particularly interesting because I think it was entirely self checkout. Or at least during some hours of the day.

We got back on the bikes after lunch, but took our time exploring beaches and other scenic areas.

We also passed a lot of building for Andøya Space! They’re building some rocket launch sites along the coast. There’s another aerospace company here too: ISAR. Not sure why they’re here, but I assume it’s a good place to safely launch rockets!

This route also has one of the most beautiful public toilets I’ve seen! (Darragh said the insides were not as nice!)

We also played with the Drone’s “follow” mode today! I unfortunately forgot to record the time it followed both Darragh and myself, but we did get one great video. (Which may have to wait for better service)

By 4pm we made it to Andenes! We’re staying at Andenes camping right now (which is mobbed with people. One annoying thing about it staying light so long is that it‘s never really okay to just pee outside your tent)

Luckily for us, we have a great little private spot:

We tried to get on tonight’s whale watching boat, but we missed it by just a bit, so we just went to dinner instead!

We had a lovely dinner at a place called “Arresten” and then walked around town a bit before going back to camp! The pier and lighthouse were pretty beautiful!

At camp, we had a quick treat for dessert! And then went for a walk to the beach and to the bluff.

We’re off to bed a bit early tonight to go whale watching early tomorrow!! We’re both pretty excited!

With a short day ahead of us, we took our time making breakfast and taking down camp. Sunday night was significantly less crowded in the campground than Saturday (which makes sense) and so there were no bike tourers staying with us last night, but it was nice to have a quiet night and slow morning.

Most of the ride today was gloomy and overcast unfortunately. This is especially a bummer, because it means we don’t have a lot of good photos from today. Hope y’all enjoy our writing :).

The major town we went through was Sortland. Sortland was a very industrial town, which was odd in comparison to everywhere else we’ve been. All the restaurants and cafes were in malls, and almost all the stores were as well. It was if someone had dropped midsized town America strip malls in Norway, and told the town they could only build stores in them.

However, I was looking for some Norwegian style pants, and so went shopping. I first started with the outlet store in town, but nothing really fit well. I did manage to pick up a nice camping pillow for Darragh, for a very good price there. We then went over to Sports1, where I found a shirt and pants that I like! I don’t think they work well together, but I’m a fan, especially of the pants.

I love that I could wear these pants into a restaurant, and no one would even think twice about it.

Darragh patiently waited for me as I tried on a few round of clothes, but I’m happy with these! We’ll see how they with out in Bellingham.

After a lovely lunch in Sortland, (see pictures below) we took off for our afternoon of biking. The skies started to clear a little and we got beautiful views of the fjords and surrounding areas.

The ride to our dinner location was uneventful. We were on a busier road, so just cranked out miles. (Not that any mile isn’t beautiful here. Just that this was just the standard fjords + mountains that we’ve been well acquainted with).

Our dinner stop was supposed to be this lovely restaurant called ”Andøy Friluftssenter”, but they were closed on Monday’s. Luckily, the owner was there, and had some sandwiches out. He was very nice to us and we bought the 3 remaining sandwiches he had. (Hopefully no other hungry bikers come through!)

The owner chatted with us for a bit, and told us his family owned the property for 150 years. He started a restaurant + campground there 27 years ago as a family business. We were glad we stopped! And even more glad for the food! As you can see, there’s not a lot of other restaurants around here, and eating just bars/snacks wouldn’t have been fun.

We pulled off and found a campsite just 20 minutes down the road for dinner. And when I say found a campground, we looked at 3 different spots for them:

We got into camp around 6:30, probably the earliest we got in all trip! So we got the drone out and played around with it some. Here’s some photos of us, and around the campground.

After a bit of planning for tomorrow and some blogging, it’s already 10pm! (I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s amazing how bright it is. It makes it really hard to keep track of time. I’m wondering if this will help with jet lag as we go back to the states!)

Tomorrow we’re headed to Andenes. Our plan is to stay there for two days just make sure we can do some whale watching! (Which Darragh is only a little excited about 🤓). We’ll likely do laundry again, and take showers! From there, we only have two days of biking to Tromsø, and four days to do it, so we’re figuring out what we’ll do in that time! We’ll let y’all know when we figure it out!

A night time photo at 10:45pm.