Happy Trails

Off of the main trails, there are often little side trails beaten down.

In mid-November, we had an amazing prolonged frost. What you see in the photo is not snow, it's just a frost that sort of grows on everything, never melting away, but just getting thicker and taller. Should've taken some closeup photos, but if you've ever had the type of freezer that isn't frost-free (guess you have to be of a certain age to remember those), and you remember what it looked like after you hadn't defrosted for a long time--well, that is what it was like.

View of mountains on Kvaloya from the ski path.

These are just some photos taken at various times in the last couple of months along the many trails we traverse. During the summer, we did a lot of exploring to find varieties of ways to get to different places, which was a lot of fun, and also helpful--if one path is not so good, whether because of mud, or snow, or ice, there are other options. Since we walk most places (the cost of taking the bus everywhere would add up very quickly!), it's nice to find the shortest paths too. Just a couple of weeks ago, we extended our walk along the ski path to a part we hadn't taken before, so there are still a lot of new-to-us trails for us to follow. In Norway, people have right of passage through any place that is not fenced off, so it is not unusual to see many well-worn paths that branch off from the main trails, where people take the shortest routes to their destinations.