Tromsø, Norway (Arctic Circle)

To celebrate the end of our lives in London and our move back to the USA we planned one final trip.  While we put quite a few options on our list, a week in Norway ending up winning out.

 

The first part of our journey took us to Tromsø, a city in Northern Norway and 1200 kilometres within the Arctic Circle.  Fortunately we had read up quite a bit on how to layer your clothes to keep warm in this climate which made all our outdoor time that more enjoyable.  During our time in Norway there is actually no sunrise or sunset.  The sun never rose over the horizon.  This meant basically all activities were in the dark accept for the twilight type glow that occurred for a few ours each morning. 

While in Tromsø we chased the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis), went dog sledding, hiked in the snow, visited a reconstructed Sami tent, and of course caught up on all of the history behind famous Arctic expeditions that tied back to the town.

Jolene was on a regular look out for the Northern lights and was using multiple official websites to track current sightings and projected strength that day.  She had me convinced that based on projections we may not even get to see them while there but it ended up we were pleasantly surprised to see them most nights.  A special thanks to Eric who let us visit his horse farm off the far end of the fjord, and gave us our first views of the northern lights along with answering quite a few questions we had about the lights, all the new stars we could see, and Norway in general.

Our most exhilarating activity was definitely dog sledding.  Jolene and I got our own team of five dogs to lead us through the middle of northern Norway.  I drove and Jolene was the passenger (who had to shift from side to side or me and our stellar team of dogs would flip us over as we weaved through the snowy forest).