From The Nest

Fall Foliage

Look at this gorgeous tree....there is nothing like fall in good old New England, famous for it's "leaf peeping" road trips to look at the spectacular colors. People come from all over the world to witness the change in seasons in New England.

It has been so dry this year, however, that a lot of the leaves turn colors and then are simply cascading off the trees in droves. So, you have to be vigilant and get your photos snapped quickly, before they all fall down.

It is a wonderful time of year, though, I always have loved the fall...

back to school, munching apples as you walk through the woods on a "leaf peeping" trip, cider, pumpkins, hardy mums and decorative kale, cooler nights, that change in the air when summer lags behind and fall begins.....refreshing and comforting at the same time.
And, oh the nights are so good for sleeping......

Just love it!

more later,

carol

Art to Walk on

A few of my new rugs have come in and one is this bright red strawberry design. I really like the black background and the red berries coming off the black....very graphic looking.

In my kitchen, it looks great in front of the sink area and picks up the red highlights I have around on accessories and vintage pieces I collect. And, who doesn't love a nice red juicy strawberry?

Welcome to my garden! Great fun rug for the gardeners out there, soft and pretty, with a nice message and of course, a few flowers.

More garden fun. This little area rug has the seed bag with the fork and trowel we all use the most in our everyday gardens.

Just a few samples of my artwork used on rugs, colorful and fun, that make nice accents in and around your home.

I am always working on more designs and the new beach and coastal images on area rugs for 2008 will be coming in January.

later,
carol

Welcome Fall

My house is decorated for the fall....the hardy mums are out, the pumpkins and decorative kale. I planted tiny mums and placed those cute baby pumpkins around the edges of the old iron urns on top of my two topiary trees on the front steps. The fall flag showing an appliqued squirrel holding an acorn is flying with it's dark burgundy colored background, the basket on the screen door is filled with bittersweet, mums, pheasant feathers, fall leaves and a tiny partridge sitting on a decorative kale, all ruffled with dark and light green colors and a touch of purple. The appropriate fall colored ribbon is tied around the basket adding a touch of fall color to the wicker.

My neighbor across the street Roz, always calls my house the "Holiday House" because at each change of season I am out there decorating. It is true, I love to decorate with the change of seasons and could hardly wait to bring the fall display out front.

It looks very pretty and fall-like since my house is a fall house anyhow. It is a Victorian house built in the late 1890s and is painted a harvest gold color, with dark red shutters and cream trim, so the fall color palette is already in place. Nothing like the house of an artist you know.

I love the fall, it is my favorite time of year......the only thing is that ........it is 90 degrees today and feels like summer....not at all fall like.

oh well, lots of watering to do to keep the "fall display" fresh for fall.....whenever that may come.

more later,
carol

fall weekend

The Captain and I drove down to Kennebunkport, Maine this weekend, to spend the day with our friend BJ Lantz, who was visiting from Florida. BJ and I both were part of a panel discussion on Art Licensing in Las Vegas last year and she also exhibited with me in New York at the Surtex Design Show. It was great to see her and catch up on things and we are planning to meet in Atlanta in January for the annual gift show.

After a great lobster roll lunch at Allison's restaurant right in Kennebunkport with several other friends who were also there, we all went antiquing to my favorite Antiques on Nine shop just down the road. Not only do they have some great anitiques, but they carry some home decor accessories as well, so they are up on trends and colors and what is hot in the decorating world.

The owner also does buying trips in Europe and carries great enamel ware from Holland and France and I went home with one of these great flour tins in blue and white.

The new enameled flour bucket is already on the back porch holding a beautiful new flower!

Black and white is still hot and these lamps were so pretty with the black base and white vines.

Again picking up the black and white theme is this needlepoint pillow with a tapestry look in black and white.

How cool this looks, a great big bowl of colored marbles.

We all were taken with this great tin rooster that sat outside the shop.

Down the road from Antiques on Nine is my favorite nursery, Snug Harbor Farm. Tony does such a great job of displaying things...here is his artistic way of arranging hardy mums by color so it looks like a giant rainbow.

Everything he has is healthy and fresh and his decorative kale plants were so gorgeous and big!

More of the rainbow of mums.....

After drinks at the Arundel Wharf with BJ and the gang, we left to drive home, stopping at a few more antique shops along the way.

Sunday was the first day of fall and almost 82 degrees so of course we packed a picnic and headed out to the boat. Sitting on the mooring, we are looking back at the town on this absolutely gorgeous fall "summer" like day here in Marblehead.

The Captain took us on a long boat trip out to Baker's Island and down to Manchester and all around the Cape Ann area. Everyone was out sailing and boating and we passed this group of folks kayaking from Salem over to Marblehead Harbor. The water was just sparkling with the sunshine dancing along the tops of the ripples on the waves. The air was fresh and clean, the sun was shining, it was just a spectacular day!

In the late afternoon we came back to the harbor and tied up once again to our mooring and did a few things on the boat to keep her "shipshape".

After a few chores on the boat, we simply relaxed and soaked up the sunshine!

Nothing like being on the boat with the Captain, enjoying this last taste of summer and just relaxing after a great fall weekend.

more later,

carol

Reindeer Farm in Lapland

While in Lapland, we spent an afternoon with a Sami reindeer herding family. It was really interesting to learn about their traditions and how important reindeer are to the Samis. Here is the son, Janni with his reindeers. He is holding a leather bag filled with reindeer food and they know that bag and they know when he had this in his hands, they are going to eat!

There is nothing like having reindeer food in your hands to make new friends.

The reindeer are very sweet animals. They are very soft and have the most amazing antlers that were covered in velvet and when they ran up to us to get the food, the little bones in their legs rub together so you would hear this click click click noise which was so funny.

This was an old tractor that belonged to his grandfather and they just never got rid of it. Pretty wild huh?

After feeding a bunch of the older reindeers, two new babies that were born in the spring wandered by and I am saying to her "Oh, it's OK baby, I will give you some food", she was so darn cute I wanted to take her home with me.

This special white reindeer is used by this Sami family to pull their sleigh in the winter months.

We just could not stop feeding them they were so much fun to play with and ate right out of our hands.

They invited us into their tent and to share in the fire. We were served cookies and tea and coffee in handmade wooden cups, while the Mother sang old Sami songs that were 400 years old. She is holding a drum that she heated up over the fire to tighten the skin to make the right tone that she wanted for her songs.
Janni's Mother is a mountain Sami and his father is an Inari Sami. When they started to date they both spoke 2 different dialects of the Sami language. Janni said they used a lot of body language to communicate.

This is the fire in the family tent where they all gather for special occasions and I believe he told us they keep the fire burning at all times.

Here we are toasting the Sami family as Janni makes a traditional toast welcoming us to his tent and to his family. We are holding the traditional Sami wooden cup that is actually hand carved from a burl on a birch tree and all the Sami men make these for their families. It is a long standing Sami tradition.

Janni is showing me the antlers and how soft they are now with the velvet on them. Soon though they will rub the velvet off on the trees and the antlers will then fall off to be replaced by a new growth of antlers. I think this happens once a year.

Next we practiced the art of lassoing. It is harder to do than you would think. This is how the herders catch the reindeers when in a large herd, they lasso them.

Here Janni is giving the Captain a lesson in reindeer lassoing.

We drove around in this Inari event van while in Finland which was quite large and very comfortable.

The Captain is looking at an old knarly tree in the woods by the Sami settlement.

This white vegetation on the ground is lichen and this is what the reindeers eat along with mushrooms. The leaves of the other little plant are turning red because fall is coming to Finland.

I was so interested in the Sami culture and their strong tradition of handicrafts. They basically try to use everything from an animal or from nature so nothing goes to waste. Here are some of the Sami Crafts that I brought home with me. The handmade reindeer boots are made from the hide and skin of the reindeer and all sewn together by hand and do not have soles on the bottom of them. You wear these out in the snow to keep warm and the toes curl up so you can clip these boots to your skis as well. In Finland they put straw in the bottom of each boot to serve as an insulator. I think I will wear socks here in the US of A, however..

The earrings are all hand made in sterling silver and gold and have small inlays in the center of the earring made from reindeer antlers that have been hand carved with drawings in a style similar to "scrimshaw" that the whalers used on whale bone. Even the little box is made from a birch tree.

Reindeer antlers are used for so many things and here you can see a knife and a reindeer antler bottle opener...apparently they are bringing their crafts into the twentieth century now.

Here is also a sample of a traditional Sami wooden burl Birch cup, this one fancier because of the reindeer antler inlay with the hand carved images.

The little pouch is made from a reindeer as well and is used for special things and the children carry these with little treats inside.

As an artist I especially appreciated the workmanship that went into each and every one of these crafts they made. It was really fun and interesting to see what they created and why they made it, even though many of the items are useful and served a purpose, they have a sense of style and decoration to highlight the items with some artistic flair.

Like all creative cultures, the Sami share a love of design and of function and making things look nice as well as being useful.

Creative touches always make everything look better, don't you think?

Pretty cool I would say.

more later,

carol

Finland/Lapland

After we arrived in Kirkenes which is right on the Russian/ Finnish border, we left the ship and met up with our guide from Finland, Reima. He was a tall Finnish outdoorsy kind of guy who had taken 3 months once to ski to the North Pole and hunted moose and wild animals and lived off the land.
Kirkenes is only 6 miles from the Russian border and there were a number of Russian fishing boats in the harbor and there is a lot of trade between Russia and Finland here. The airport has 100 Finnish troops posted there at all times to make sure that the Russians don't try to spend too much time there. This is also very near the port of Murmansk which fascinated us as that is where in the movie, "The Hunt for the Red October", Sean Connery as the Captain of this incredible new nuclear powered submarine, takes it out to sea for the first time.

We got into his van and off we went.

Here is the Captain with Reima standing along side the salmon river in Finland.

After driving through some beautiful scenery and noticing how much flatter Finland is than Norway, we stopped at a Sami settlement and craft shop. Don't you love the old bike and sign with the flowers?

This 150 year old church was built by a Russian Csar who wanted to show Norway that Finland was off limits to them. It is now a Lutheran church. There was a small Sami craft shop there featuring some of the wonderful items that they make from reindeer and birds. They trap the ptarmigan bird who is pure white in the winter time and then eat them, using the feathers and little feet for brushes and other items so nothing goes to waste.

Never seen a sign like this before....we are now in Finland and reindeer are everywhere, unlike Norway where only the Sami can herd reindeer, in Finland, anyone can own and herd them so you see them all over the place along the sides of the roads.

The next sign we saw was for the sheep who are quite prolific in Northern Lapland.

We have seen this sign before in Canada and in Maine. Since there are so many moose in Finland and especially in the southern part near Helsinki and Porvoo, they have fences all along the sides of the highways and lights to warn you if a moose has traveled too near the roads since they can cause serious accidents to the cars. We saw this 2 years ago when we were in Helsinki and driving up to Porvoo and were curious why there were chain link fences for miles along the sides of the highway.

We stayed at this hotel in Inari, right near the lake which is the second largest lake in Finland and quite pretty. The same family that runs the hotel now has been there since 1943 and the two children are running it as the parents finally retired. The son Heikki is the chef and brother to Kaisu who runs the hotel part and is a very interesting girl. She lived in Helsinki for years and wanted to come back to Lapland where it is peaceful and quiet and get away from the busy life in the city. She is only 42 so I found that interesting she wouldn't want to be in Helsinki where so much more is happening. They are known at this hotel for their great food and it was wonderful at every meal. They were very sweet and friendly and their English was excellent.
The Finnish rye bread, the Ruisleipa was so good, they sliced it down the middle as it is thin and round and served it with butter at dinner...just delicious. Hikki also made sauteed reindeer meat with mash potatoes and lingen berries, fried red trout from Lake Inari, pork fillet wrapped in bacon, hunter's toast and beef cutlet with mushroom sauce and salad with an amazing balsamic vinegar that was just out of this world, and warm bilberry ( from Lake Inari islands) pie and ice cream for dessert. We needed a little walk after all his great meals!

Which way do we go now? Reading the Finnish language was a bit out of the question, so we just sort of walked around and asked people where things were. Everyone was friendly and spoke English, even way up here in Lapland.

The second day there we walked through the woods on our way down to the village and noticed all these mushrooms next to the birch trees. We later found out that they have a symbiotic relationship. The mushroom feeds off the roots of the birch tree and gives nutrients to the trees in return. The more mushrooms the better for all the reindeers who will eat these and put on some fat to get through the long cold winter months along with lichens that they normally eat. They were just so pretty- bright red with white polka dots....mmm....I think I am inspired to paint some of those when I get home.

Lake Inari is so pretty and this is the ferry boat you can take to go for a ride and out to visit some of the islands in the lake and pick bilberries.

At the Siida Museum in Inari, which is the Sami center of culture and development, we visited an open air Sami settlement, one of the last ones that was spared during WWII when the Germans burn most of them all down after the war.
I am standing in the doorway of a typical Sami house, quite small with 2 main rooms and a small room for sleeping, basic and simple.

This Sami tent was used for the cooking for the village and you can see the large cast iron cauldron hanging over the fire.

After spending the morning at the museum and learning all about the Sami culture and their amazing crafts, we went for a walk in the village. We went down by the lake and I took this of the Captain between the sides of two boats that created an archway to the lakefront.

Pretty little town, very small, only 700 people live here and mostly of the Sami culture. It is a different way of life, simple and quiet and very peaceful.

more later,

carol

The Northern Lights

The next town we come to is Vardo which is known for it's fishing and fish processing plant. You will notice also that the houses here are much like the other ones I have shown here on my blog. Even the colors are the same from town to town......the Norwegian uniformity kicks in once again.

As we approach the dock you can see a closer view of the homes of some of the fishermen that are built right along the shoreline and very close together and much the same size as well.

Do I see a new color here???.....I cannot remember seeing this shade of green before...perhaps we have an individualist in this town?

Now for the most exciting night on the cruise.....we saw the Northern Lights!!!!!!! It was simply amazing...they were literally dancing in the sky, moving about, then disappearing, much like an etch a sketch toy when you draw something on it and then erase it, it leaves a ghosting of the image...then they would reappear in another part of the sky.

This all happened at 11pm as we were leaving the port of Berlevag, it was a cooler evening, very crisp and clear and lots of stars were out. We were looking for them as one of the guides had told us we might be lucky enough to see them on a clear night........and boy, were we ever!!

The lights swished around the sky in white, pale pink, blueish green, pale green colors, prancing and moving around like they were listening to music, pulsating in and out and up and down, it was just magical.

They were very active changing from one minute to the next, darting across the sky, swirling in an arc, with flashing lights and then leaving this transparent trail of where they had been....just a spectacular display.

To say we were riveted to the sky is simply an understatement....I didn't even want to blink for fear I might miss something.

I think it was one of the most amazing and awesome things I have ever seen in my entire life. Just breathtaking, really.

The Northern lights in Norway....with the Captain.....how lucky can one be!!

more later,

carol

Nordkapp, the top of Europe

The next stop was at Honningsvag where the Hurtigruten stops for the morning. This town is only 1300 miles from the North Pole so you can see how high up we are. There are no trees at all, except for those that are planted around the houses, just a lot of rocks and tundra in this alpine terrain. The town was all clustered around the waterfront and the houses are much the same we have seen everywhere in Norway. Today we are boarding a motor coach for the 22 mile trip up to Nordkapp, Europe's most northernly point at 71 degrees 10' 08"N.
Nordkapp was actually discovered by a British sailor trying to find the Northwest Passage to China named Richard Chancellor. Each year more than 200,000 visitors come to this cliff top to see the panoramic views of the coast.

On the way up to the cape we stopped at this small Sami settlement. The Sami are the indigenous people of Norway and Finland and are generally reindeer herders. They are much like our Native Americans, living in teepee tents and off the land. They raise the reindeer to eat and use much of it's body for clothing and shoes, the antlers for tools and ornamentations, the sinews in their legs for thread, etc. They dress in brightly colored costumes with reindeer hide pants and are known for their wonderful handicrafts. Their colorful shirts represent the area they live in, different colors and ribbon trim denoting different areas of the country. I found them fascinating as most of the Norwegians we met are a very homogeneous group of people. They seem to go out of their way to blend in and here are these people wearing bright colors and known for their reindeer herding and their wonderful crafts. Seemed quite a contradiction to me.

Here I am with the reindeer herder in his full Sami traditional costume and his reindeer.
The Sami primarily live here in Finnmark towns around this area where it is rich in Sami culture. The Sami Parliment is made up of 70% of Sami women who play a major role in the history and culture of the people. They have their own language and schools as well.

Each part of the costume represents something in the Sami tradtition. The hat is famous for representing the points of the compass and the Sami man has one for winter and the other for summer, same style, but the winter one has reindeer fur around the headband.

This is the summer Sami tent, the lavvo, is what they use to sleep in with reindeer hides on the ground to keep them warm.

In Norway, only the Sami are allowed to own reindeers, which they raise primarily for the meat. They ship the meat all over Norway and most Norwegians seem to enjoy reindeer meat, although we did not.

The skin of the reindeer is used for clothing and boots and blankets and all sorts of things. The Sami are very clever in utilizing each bit of nature they can to survive.

As we drive further north we see a lot of these avalanche fences. The average snowfall here is about 6 feet, but without any trees or shrubs the wind blows the snow around making the few roads they have here impassable for days and dangerous because of the large drifting snow mounds that can form. In the winter the road we are on to Nordkapp is mostly closed due to this danger.

When we arrive at Nordkapp there is a large hall that shows a multi media film about the changing seasons of this area along with the ubiquitous gift shop and small restaurant. They also have all sorts of displays and exhibits of the history of the area since it is Europe's most northerly point overlooking the Barents Sea with huge steep cliffs that are over a 1200 feet high.

The first thing you see outside the hall is this sculpture dedicated to children that was done a few years ago. Apparently they had some sort of conference here with children from all over Europe and this was a monument to peace that this conference represented.

We are standing on the official monument to the Northernmost point in all of Europe. Everyone took their turn getting photographed here as behind us is just thousands of miles of ocean leading up to the North Pole and nothing much in between.

All around the high plateau you see hundreds and hundreds of cairns everywhere. We had seen this in Iceland a few years ago and were interested in what it all meant. According to the guide the cairns actually marked the old foot trails around the high plateau areas and are actually protected by the Norwegian government. People now leave cairns as just monuments to their visit here, but the old ones go back hundreds of years and actually served a purpose. The small white rock on the top of this cairn was left by you-know-who. I just wanted to leave my mark there as well and it seemed cool to add to one of the cairns already there. I did not know about the government protected cairns at that point, but I am quite certain this one wasn't that old as it was on a big rock right near the Nordkapp Center Hall.....mmmmmmmmm

These are some of the incredibly steep cliffs you see off the tip of Nordkapp....there is nothing there but rocks and sea and this huge wide expanse of ocean going on for hundreds of thousands of miles.

We arrive back in Honningsvag on our way back to the ship. Again, note the house styles and colors and see the similarities with other areas I have photographed. I liked this sculpture a lot and it was so "Viking-esque" I thought, it looked like some of the images we saw at the Viking Museum in Oslo.

We walk through a bit of the downtown area back to our ship the MS Richard With.
We arrive back in time for a late afternoon lunch and some of the wonderful goodies that they always put out for us.....here is our ship in the harbor as we get ready to set sail once again.

Here are a couple of the cute Norwegian girls that waited on us in the restaurant each day. They undergo a pretty intensive training period to work on this ship for 2 years and then have to take a written test at the end of their training period to see if they can become permanent staff members.

Having a nice lunch after our tour that morning, cold cuts, soups, breads, salads, fresh rolls, warm dishes and lots of sweet choices for desserts. Always fresh and always good.

As we sail away from Honningsvag we passed some rock formations called the church and the chapel. These have been carved out of the side of the fjords by the wind and the elements for many years and are a famous landmark in this area. There are always so many interesting things to see here you just cannot miss a moment.

more later,

carol

King Neptune

After returning from the Svartisen glacier trip back to our ship, we headed out to the open sea and across the Lofot Sea and the Vest Fjord out to the Lofotin Islands. We passed one of the other mailboats on it's way going south and sounded our horns as we passed each other.

Soon we would see the "wall", the line of mountains that goes for 100 km in length and rises from the sea like an enormous stone wall. This crossing can be quite rough but we were fortunate to have a smooth sail across as we approached the famous Lofotin islands. We passed Rost where there are about 450,000 pairs of puffins and other seabirds that nest here in the summer months. The sun was behind the clouds and it was getting cooler as we headed out towards the open sea. We stopped at Stamsund first, where we got off and walked around the island for a while. Only about 1050 people live here and of course they are all fishermen for the most part.

You can see from this photo how dramatic the rocks and islands are as we approached Svolar, Stokmarknes, Sortland, Risoyhamn, Finnsnes and others, sometimes stopping only for 15 or 20 minutes and other times for an hour or more.

The evening felt dramatic to me as I stood on the stern deck looking out on the mountains....maybe it was the sky or the fact that it was getting cooler as the sun sat behind the clouds and the mountains, making it seem a little awesome and dark. Then the wind picked up a little. Each place we stopped was a relatively small village of similar houses, centered around fishing, with only a handful of people trying to carve out an existence on these far away islands.

Just as we were leaving the Lofotin Islands the sun was finally ready to set about 9:30 pm or so......talk about dramatic, this was just a spectacular sunset against the craggy mountains rising out of the ocean. The colors were so bright and just beautiful, it added to the drama of the night, something Hollywood could not have created as well as this. That Mother Nature is really something, isn't she?

The next morning as we were arriving in Tromso, was the King Neptune "baptizing" party for all of us as we had crossed the Artic Circle. We all were to report on deck at 10 am and the head of the Hurtigruten office was there to introduce the ceremony and to explain the tradition of meeting King Neptune.

Then I was asked to step forward and kneel on this little platform they had set up, my head bent over and downwards, towards the deck. The next thing I knew, King Neptune was pouring ice cold water filled with ice cubes on my head and down my back, you can see the large aluminum pot standing in the foreground of the photo...it was freezing, but it was part of an old maritime tradition that if you cross the Artic Circle you belong to King Neptune and get "baptized" as one of his followers. Who was I to argue? The entire crew and passengers all followed suit and got their indoctrination as well.

No hard feelings, right? They handed out cups of cheer to everyone to celebrate the event as I stood with my new friend, King Neptune. I said my good-byes and then I went back down to my cabin to change out of my wet clothes and get ready to go into Tromso the next port we were coming to that day.

Tromso is the city where Roald Amundsen and other Artic explorers planned their trips since it was the closest port to take off from to head out to the Artic. Polar hunting and research expeditions are the focal point of this town and it's history.This is the largest town in the polar region of Scandinavia and is located a few hundred miles inside the Artic Circle. Lots of traders came here with seal and artic fox and other types of animals skins to trade and sell.The entire area is growing dramatically with universities and hospitals expanding almost daily here.

Polaria is a national center for research and information related to the polar regions, particularly the Artic. They have quite an exhibit here of various types of clothes and tools and ships that were taken to the Artic by the early explorers as well as a small aquarium with 4 bearded seals that I believe are the only ones in captivity. They also had one of the last seal hunting boats that you can go on that was put on exhibit at the museum back in the 60's. They had a wonderful multi media documentary about Svalbard and Spitsbergen in the Artic Ocean, the archipelago that lies within 400 miles of the mainland, about an hour by plane from Tromso. It has the world's most northernmost population on these islands, mostly Norwegians working for oil companies and some Russians. It is a fascinating place with polar bears and walrus and artic fox and beluga whales and bearded seals and all sorts of animals and birds. The seas around Svalbard are mostly covered in pack ice. I have now added this fascinating place to my wish list of destinations....just to be able to see the polar bears in their natural environment would be worth the trip alone.

This church was built back in the 60's out of concrete and the shape of the roof symbolizes the way in which the Northern Lights brighten up the winter months in Tromso.

The massive 75 foot stained-glass window was added in 1972 because during the Midnight Sun months when the sun is always shining and so bright, the parishioners of the church had to wear sun glasses to the services to block out the sun's rays that came streaming in the glass windows. So, the colorful window was added to block some of the sunlight and make it possible to go to church without wearing your sun glasses.

Outside of the church there is a fantastic view from where I am standing, overlooking the entire city and back to the pier where our boat is docked.

Another remarkable sunset tonight as we left the Tromso area and headed north to Hammerfest and Honningsvag.

more later,

carol

Svartisen Glacier

This morning we were up early to get ready for our trip out to the Svartisen Glacier. It was my favorite day of the cruise. The sky was so blue and it was so warm it was hard to imagine we were going to an ice cold glacier. We also crossed over the Artic Circle earlier this morning which was really exciting and tomorrow we are going to a special very traditional ceremony to be "baptized" by King Neptune since we crossed the Artic Circle so stay tuned for that.

About a half hour from Ornes, the big ship stopped so that a smaller boat could come along side and pick up the passengers going to the glacier. We all went down into the bowels of the ship and this enormous door opened up right on the starboard side of the ship. You can see the 2 crew members looking out for the other ship to meet us.

In a few minutes the ship arrived and passengers started to walk out through the new door in the side of our big ship, to a gangway that attached to the smaller boat.

I am looking up as I board the smaller vessel at the passengers that were not going on this wonderful excursion. They really missed out on a fabulous day!

We passed this wind farm on the outcroppings of some small islands along the way. I don't know what all the fuss is about these, we have seen them many places in Europe and I don't think that they are objectionable at all. We also saw a number of fish weirs where they raise salmon, about 750,000 in each group of weirs. You could see them jumping and splashing as we sailed by. They feed them fish meal that is made locally of crab and herring and that is why these salmon are pink.

The first view we got of the mountain as we came around some little islands passing yet another fish weir.

The reflection of the mountain and the first look at the glacier as we arrived in the end of the fjord where our boat was going to dock, gave us a sneak preview as to what was about to come!

We walked up a small hill and as we came up over the top this is what we saw. We are standing on the hill above the tree looking down at the lake and up to the glacier. Words cannot describe how breathtaking this view was. The sun was shining down so hard and reflecting on the lake that it was extremely bright and actually hard to see.

Here we are in front of the glacier and the lake. Simply inspiring to see and the air was so fresh and clean, sea eagles were soaring above us and the mountains had fresh "confectionery sugar" snow on their caps. The lake was formed by melt-off from the glacier and all we could hear as we stood there was the sound of a waterfall in the background, which was the normal glacier melting into the lake. It was mesmerizing.

All along the lake in front of the glacier were hiking trails, so we decided to hit the trails and walk around the lake. Here I am going up one of the trails wearing my warm jacket and boots. The more we hiked the warmer it got and it was soon up to 65 degrees! We came across large moose tracks right along side of the lake. The guide later told us that they have so many moose up here that the following week there would be a hunting season so as to thin out the herds.

I kept looking at this view, trying to take it all in, it was so beautiful and peaceful and just awesome to see.

The Captain enjoyed the hike as well and was equally amazed at how pretty the view was.

We came back up the hill after our hike and found a chalet that served light food and drinks. They had huge pieces of 1,000 ice from the glacier in a freezer that you could chip off a piece to use in your drink. It was so clear and hard and apparently takes hours to melt. I sat outside in the sunshine with a large glass of cranberry juice with glacier ice in it and did a sketch from the patio of the chalet looking out to the tree and the glacier. It was so warm that off came the jacket and sweater and I was down to my tee shirt, it felt like summer and there I was in front of a glacier.

Here is the Nordfolda, the smaller vessel we took out to the glacier. We then left the glacier area and headed out to Stotts, a tiny remote island where only 47 people live who are primarily fishermen. There was nothing much there, a small post office, a tiny grocery store, a fish pier where they process the fish after they catch them, and a few houses. I mean, this is remote, the few families that live there send their kids to school on a boat and a doctor visits the island on a ship fully equipped with medical supplies once a week or so. There are lots of these little outpost islands all over the coast of Norway and the government helps the inhabitants as much as they can with medical boats and school boats so the people can fish and live this lifestyle.

One of the fishing boats tied up at the old pier.

Some of the islands little fishing homes along the bay.

When you arrive on the island you see this sign posted pointing out the various places to see.....

Here is the main fishing pier where most of the boats tie up. It was very picturesque, but just not much happening there. We went for a walk and found some sea urchins along the beach and took some photos of the waterfront.

One of the Captain's close ups in front of the Stotts Fish Pier.

On the way back after leaving Stotts we passed by all sorts of interesting sites. We sailed by an really old church from 1130 that was right along the water, we saw one of the only 3 radio towers that allow the military to communicate with their submarines under the Artic ice, and then a very special unexpected treat as the King of Norway was out for a jaunt on his ship the Norge, and we sailed right by him and sounded our ship's bell to say hello. Nothing like passing the King of Norway on an afternoon sail!

We are returning to the ship, now docked in Bodo, and entered the same way thru the starboard side door and the gangway.

Here's the Captain in front of me, walking over the gangway back to our ship the MS Richard With at the dock in Bodo.

It had been such a wonderful day and we enjoyed each and every minute of this amazing excursion.

Still thinking about that beautiful glacier and lake.....just so peaceful and pretty.....

more later,

carol