I can now add Mosjøen and Mo I Rana to the places in Norway where I have been rained on. Despite that, there were plenty of dry moments on the road trip north today.

We started in Brønnøysund and during a good breakfast I realised today was actually a public holiday in Norway for some reason. That reason is Kristi Himmelfartsdag, which translates to "the supermarkets are closed or in some cases open in smaller configurations".

The Brønnøysund Bridge

This is one of the different things Norway does, along with not believing in bath mats and adding bacon to condensed milk. (I tried some Bacon Ost on bread this morning and I was left with only more questions.)

The drive was shorter today so I cruised a lot more and we stopped at various rest stops which often had little walks attached.

A lake with little islands by the road.

A large, long lake ringed by mountains, just after a tunnel. With a nice toilet.

Another way up in the last of the snow with a board walk to a small lake.

Another was next to a fast flowing, glacial river and a track rest area. And a toilet. No pictures.

Where we stopped for lunch - Mosjøen - was along a river facing a wide mountain range where instead of waterfalls running down the face it was still snow packs filling the vertical gaps in the rocks at higher altitudes. Lucky it took me twenty minutes to find a working car charger because after I did it stopped raining long enough to reach the river and assemble some tuna sandwiches with stolen breakfast rolls. It rained on us on the way back to the car.

We reached Mo I Rana, and without many options for dinner, I tried the double chicken burger with chips at Circle K. That was still nearly $30 but it fed both of us so not a bad result. Circle K also has chicken salt in 1 kilogram shakers.

After dinner I tried another walk to the town's only open supermarket, which I did not realise was downhill. It rained on me several more times, but I did see a few neat things on the way back up the hill.

It was still sodden in Trondheim this morning. We couldn't even sit down to eat cereal and yoghurt by the festung to watch the sunrise. The sogginess of the place followed me most of the drive north and east to Holm. Literally, as my shoes and socks were soaked. It rained in Steinkjer where we filled up with more coffee. And it rained as we drove over the bridge into Grong. As I plugged in the charger, the rain started to clear.

Some mist in the trees worth stopping for north-east of Trondheim.

Another day of adventures for the Koppen

We walked down to the river and visited Grong's Coop to buy lunch ingredients. The rain still abated as we enjoyed a delicious lunch of tuna, tomato, lettuce and hummus stuffed into a horn in a foresty rest stop called Hessienget.

The hole in my bread roll was a sign of things to come.

My lunch was so huge that I knew I had to press pause on it in order to catch the ferry from Holm to reach our destination of Brønnøysund. Starting the car and checking the map, it was evident that it was a lot tighter than I'd thought. And unlike other ferries, this one only ran every hour. I'd been extremely time efficient with ferries up until this point - even for the ones where a delay meant waiting ten minutes for the next one. I cursed myself for putting that record in jeopardy, and cursed some more as we hit a convoy of white RVs and motor homes crusing under the speed limit almost instantly after leaving the rest stop.

Well, it took some driving, but both the BZ4X and my also-clearly-late-for-the-ferry companion ahead of me managed to fast forward our way through the Helgelandskysten scenic route. Along the way I caught glimpses of fjords, mountains, trees, rocks, pristine nature under nice, afternoon light diffusing through clouds that weren't actively raining. If today had been day one of the trip I think I would have stopped multiple times for various waterfalls. As it turned out, it was just amazing scenery for the race to the ferry.

After all that, we made it to the ferry terminal with minutes to spare before the ferry arrived to unload and then load. We joined the queue of cars, watched the boat unload, and then anticlimactically watched it finish re-loading and run out of room many cars ahead of our position in line. With a toot of its horn it set off, and all the remaining queue pulled over to the first lane to wait the hour for the next one.

Well, this was a good chance to stretch the legs, finally throw my wet socks in a bin, eat the rest of my sandwich, and watch the ferry cross the waters and then back to us. We made it into the next intake, and then drove the remainder of the way to Brønnøysund which appeared to be this part of Norway's equivalent of Victor Harbor, and the same amount of action as to be expected still a week before summer.

The sun was now out. We checked into the hotel, then left for some $40 beef burgers wearing dry socks. The sun was now brighter than it had been for days, and this was uplifting for me because it was time to drive to Torghatten - the main reason we'd come past this way.

Torghatten is a mountain with a hole through it. And I knew you could climb up it into the hole and that while it was steep to get up, it was only a couple of kilometres round trip. The experience ended up exceeding my expectations. After a lovely drive over another cool bridge, and past a few more robot lawn mowers, we parked in the shade of the mountain and climbed up the steps and into the cavernous hole.

The view from both sides of the hole.

The warm, evening light welcomed us, shinining into the hole from the other side and into my soul. It was an incredible place. Looking west was like staring at some video game map. Views in every direction. Even looking back up at the hole.

After climbing down the other side we turned back and did it again. It was such a good mountain I felt the need to walk up it from two directions.

My mood was much sunnier after that.

I expected Norway to be a drizzly place, don't get me wrong. And I appreciate that I spent about two weeks here in May under blue skies. But recently, it's the timing of the rain has been demotivating the last few days.

Hiking up a hill, blazing sun. At the top of Aksla at sunset, cloud and drizzle. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean Highway - drizzle. Waiting at Vestnes for the ferry an hour earlier - sunny. Driving into Trondheim in the afternoon traffic - sunny. Walking back up the hill from the old town - raining. 11pm and trying to go to sleep - sunny.

But there have still been many good places to eat an apple. I've had an apple and nuts in many scenic places on this trip so far. Today's view while I ate was this:

This morning we climbed to the summit of Meraftafjellet, east of Ålesund. We have done a lot of hiking this trip so far and a lot of inclines but this hike felt like the first time we'd actually climbed a mountain. Just a thin trail to follow through bogs, over boulders, up rocks and between trees. A good challenge, and with amazing views at the top despite the typical Norweigan blue skies and bright sunshine.

After lunch, we walked into the Ålesund old town for the second consecutive day and again we got rained on by the water.

I wanted to like Ålesund a lot more than I did while here. Its colourful, art-deco downtown along the canal gave me Venice vibes but all we got were tourists from cruise ships, kitschy shops, and scaffolding. You know, like Venice. But I didn't feel a vibe. It has everything you'd want in a town. Good panoramas from a nearby mountain or two. Cool buildings. Seaside and mountain views. Nice houses with some awesome backyard trees visible from the road. But something seems missing.

I reflected on this, as I ducked out to the Kiwi Mini Pris for some dessert strawberries, and grey clouds rolled over me again. If I lived in Ålesund, in one of these apartments lining Borgundvegen, what would my life be like and would I enjoy it. (Technically according to my Lyca mobile agreement I do live in Ålesund off Borgundvegen...)

Which of the green spaces would I walk Nash and what pub would I come second at trivia at with friends?

Norway as an advanced society has really rammed home that all humans are the same and they just want to eat hot, salty food and scroll their phones and take the same photos and get home safely. There are lots of great places to live in the world, but the best ones are where your friends, family and dog are at. That's the vibe I've gotten here today. I never got that vibe in Venice. I could have stayed there forever...

And really, is it Ålesund's fault that it stands in a climate not suited for drinking an Aperol Spritz with a slice of orange at any time of the day ? A little bit, I guess, because the city did burn to the ground in 1904 and they rebuilt it where it stood instead of moving it to the Mediterranean. I did enjoy my walks up the various hills, especially after dinner in the low light of evening. It's a city at the centre of an archipelago. If you treat the wide expanse of glacier sheathed waterways all around that reflect the still standing mountains from which the glaciers came, and think of those as canals instead of the lone Ålesundet, you can appreciate its natural beauty. And I did enjoy a beer while wearing just a t-shirt and pants under the heater, behind the double-glazed windows that looked out over the mountains.

Each of these photos was taken in Geiranger, at descending altitudes. A phenomenal geography that I was privileged to spend the past two evenings at.

Norway waterfall fatigue is a real thing. They are everywhere, the equivalent of dead kangaroos on Australian road trips. Even the kitchen tap of every place we've stayed has gushed rapidly by default. But you do see some occasional epic ones which make you pause.

Dalsnibba is the mountain where we stood in the snow, which then melts in spring to create the torrents which carve through rocks to create rivers, which gravity pulls over ledges until eventually the water reaches the fjord, carved by glaciers millions of years ago. Standing on the prow of the ferry that took us and the car from Geiranger to Hellesylt was an incredible experience, an hour of being a tiny human in a canyon of rock. Like the water, we had found our way through meanderings and cascadings to this point.

Yes - it's a FJORD

Yesterday's drive slash controlled descent through the winter wonderland of snow haunted me as a missed opportunity for more pulling over the car to take photos of Norway. So, after some very cold hikes in the morning up the top of the Ørnevegen's switchbacks, we used the afternoon to backtrack up the mountain. This time with a bit more electricity in the battery. Which was good. I'm developing an appreciation for the heated steering wheel feature after I initially dismissed it back in Oslo as unnecessary.

One of the most important lessons I've learnt as Photography-Brad is that the absolute best time to take photos of a place is the first time you see it. Novelty fades really quickly in a new locations as your mind adjusts to the terrain and architecture and light and it's not until you get back to Adelaide and look at photos you took that you realise how different things really were and how you could have just pointed your camera anywhere and taken additional memorable photos. Another important lesson I've learnt is that just because an environment is novel doesn't mean it will translate well to a flat, digital photograph.

So we drove up the snow and fortunately the weather was similar to our previous drive, with plenty of atmospheric mist, but also just enough sunlight to diffuse the clouds and spread light in the different places. It was a tranquil place. Beautiful. The photos don't do it justice.

After the drive yesterday, it was nice just to take our time up in the snow - and then back into the cold car with the steering wheel warming my fingers through the gloves.

The Stryn river.

The drive from the Stryn Kiwi Mini Pris to the cabins at the Geirangerfjorden Feriesenter is only 77 kilometres. Far shorter than other drives I've done so far on this trip. But not many have been this memorable.

We finished loading up with food; Salad, bread, sausages, tuna, yoghurt, corn chips and salsa. We left town, passing the cafe we'd had our first real coffee at, and following the meandering Stryneelva river which is not much of a sight from the ground, but in the air the curves look pretty cool. (I saw a picture of it in the window of a house on Bruagrenda (Bridge Alley) on the walk to go get that coffee.) I tried to take a similar photo myself earlier in the morning, but couldn't find a track up the hill. I did take this one from as high as I got.

We kept driving through the valley towards some not so distant mountains. A little bridge moves the Rv15 from the north to the south of the river, right as the waters open up into the long and wide Oppstrynsvatnet, whose dark surface reflect dark skies and ripples in the wind. Clouds hang just above the tops of the snowy mountains.

There are lots of good rest areas on the side of the road to stop at and admire this, but all the ones with benches were taken. We stopped briefly at a glacier museum with a small garden out the back, but they wanted to charge us to eat there and we didn't want to look at the garden when the mountains were so spectacular and visible from everywhere on the road, so we kept driving.

The distant mountains became so close that we were suddenly driving on switchbacks and the urge to pull over for more photos hit me. Around the next bend was a rocky outlook over a dark valley with just a few streaks of light piercing the clouds. And of course it had a picnic table, which was empty and waiting for us.

Hjelledalen utsiktspunkt

After food, the road continued to climb with another switchback, followed by a long tunnel. It was obvious we were on an incline, but I did not expect to emerge into rocky snow land, submerged in the clouds, with smattering of houses because of course people live there.

It was at this point I started having concerns about the amount of charge in the car's battery. I had not topped up in Stryn because I was paying for a charger that night and the rate was the same no matter how drained the battery was. When I had started driving we'd had range of over 200km, so this wasn't totally motivated by thriftiness. But I hadn't expected the steepness.

We entered a second tunnel, with more incline, and came out even higher - right among the snowy peaks. It was a winter wonderland. Absolutely pure white and amazingly beautiful and unfortunately not a very good place to run out of car battery. It was hard to enjoy the scenery because the battery kept dropping lower and lower and the friendly message to "plug into a charger soon" distracted me from the frozen lakes and icy mountains.

Somehow, despite feeling like we were on the peak of the alps, the road kept rising and the battery kept dropping. We turned off all the systems and just drove and hoped.

Finally, at last, there was a sign warning of a decent length decline and the little blue charge line on the dash switched to the good side. As we descended, the battery went up, and up again, and finally after a long way down without stopping for any photos I felt comfortable enough to stop for a look-see. There was a little, flat spot with some huts beneath a mountain. What made this sight so particularly surreal other than its picturesque beauty was that it was evident that we were still quite high up a mountain.

There was also a bus stop there.

After that, the decent resumed along with the recharging and we left behind mountain fantasy land and hit more switchbacks and the descent into Geiranger. A cruise ship was in port at the time, and the winding roads were packed with tourists in big groups which gave me an excuse to drive quite slowly and enjoy the way the town had been built up the mountainside.

We finally reached the cabins, by that point with over 10% of the battery now available again. We checked in to another place to sleep with an amazing view of nature. After some downtime, and staring at the fjord, I cooked some sausages and we had enough energy in both our bodies and the car to do the waterfall hike.

View from the shores by the cabin. Hard to convey in a static image how enormous the landscape is.

Goats on the way to the waterfall. Later saw a dog that reminded me of Nash devouring goat poops.

Finally, after that, the cabin staff helped me get the charger working and I put myself to bed for the same purpose - to have enough energy for another day of getting up and down this spectacular landscape.