Last night, we taped our camera to the top of the car and set it up to take a time lapse series of the midnight sun. Around 4AM, I drifted just far enough into consciousness to remember our project. Excited, I promptly crawled out of the tent to check on its progress. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning as I sleepily stumbled to the car to investigate! Sadly, the results were a bit of a let down.
For unknown reasons, our camera had stopped firing. I'd configured the settings to take a picture every three minutes for twelve hours, but there were only about forty frames. A little bummed, I started the process once more and went back to bed. Inexplicably, it stopped after fewer than ten shots the second time around.
We plan on doing this more often, so hopefully I can figure out the cause of this weirdness. In any case, here are the rather poor results; the last few with the sun were taken around 4AM.
Back in bed, I managed to fall asleep for a few more hours. Later on, when "morning" happened, we ripped the tape off the car, broke the tent down, and carried on further into Norway.
It was a day of driving; our desintation was Nordkapp, or "the north cape", the northernmost point in mainland Europe. As it turns out, Norway is incredibly beautiful. Like yesterday we spent most of our time oohing and awing at our surroundings. Just around every curve there was something like this:
…and this:
…and this!
Of course, we stopped regularly to take photos of the landscape. There were so many great scenes that I finally finished my first roll of medium format black-and-white film, and then got halfway into the second. I can't wait to see the results!
Just before our road turned north towards Nordkapp, we introduced ourselves to a British couple at a rest area: Will, Becky, & their van Jules. The chatty pair have been touring Europe for nearly year, chronicling their adventure at adventures-of-jules.blogspot.com. It was nice meeting you guys!
After a nice talk about weirdos on the road, and Santa's hometown (Rovaniemi, Finland), Becky and Will drove off in Jules, also headed to Nordkapp. We stopped for lunch and then continued there as well. Reaching the island, we drove under the sea once more. This tunnel was three times as long as the one in Vardø!.
On our way through, we passed a group of cycle tourists, one of which looked to be carrying twice as much stuff as us! We shouted "NICE WORK!" and gave him an enthusiastic thumbs, passing with a very, very wide berth. On the other side, in the pouring rain, we arrived at a toll booth. Just to enter, we would have to pay the equivalent of €25. What about coming back, I asked? Oh, just another €25!
We instantly deemed this to be far, far too expensive, flipped a u-turn and headed right back into the tunnel. After reading Becky & Will's account of it, we're glad we did. Back on the mainland we pointed our car to the much more affordable land (relatively speaking here) of Finland.
We miss cycling quite a bit lately, but it was a great day for a drive.
