We had noticed the day before that the hill heading up the road from where we had been parked at Ana Sira is very narrow and we saw vehicles having to reverse to get out of the way of oncoming traffic. So we figured we would avoid any traffic problems by leaving early, and that's exactly what happened.
This is a fairly common sight in Norway...
Free "camping" at the side of the highway.
Because it's easy, many people choose to overnight at roadside rest stops. It's certainly not our style, but obviously a lot of people don't mind.
We made it to Flekkefjord well before most people were awake and found parking at an empty lot right downtown. We had good reason to be at this particular parking lot... it was right beside a tourist facility that has free laundry and free showers!
And the tourist building is open from 6am to 11pm, so we went and put a load in right away. We weren't the only ones... but there were two washing machines, and only one dryer. For some reason, the other guy chose a wash cycle that was almost three hours long. We chose the shortest cycle at 40 minutes. We would have ours dry before his was even finished washing.
We went for a walk around town...
The town of Flekkefjord (pop 10,000).
You can see Max parked on the right.
Fantastic mural on the side of this building.
Pretty flowers.
Main street shops.
This building is now a pub. Interesting roof ornaments!
The Flekkefjord Grand Hotel.
The original main street that dates back to the mid 17th century.
Fancy road art.
We went and picked up a few groceries. I happened to notice this maple syrup from Canada...
There's not much we miss from Canada, but the one thing we do miss is our maple syrup. Here in Norway, you can buy a 250 ml bottle of Canadian maple syrup for 89 kr ($11.45 CAD). That's $45.80 CAD per liter. The same liter of maple syrup at a Walmart in Canada costs $14.47 CAD.
We miss it, but we don't miss it that much!
It was almost 2:00pm when we set off to find an overnight spot. I had a place in mind only 30 kms outside of Flekkefjord, but from looking at the map it might be too close to the main highway.
Scenery along the way.
More bridges and tunnels.
View from the bridge.
We pulled in to the free camping spot to find one one van already there. But there was nobody around. There is room for three, maybe four at the most. But it's a nice spot in the forest, near a small river. And it's close to the highway, however it's right near this point that the highway goes through a tunnel... so you can't hear any road noise at all!
After a couple of hours another motorhome pulled in. We ended up meeting our neighbors. A couple about our age from Germany, and a family from Belgium.
Nice people, and we enjoyed talking to them around the campfire in the evening.
We went for a walk down the road, and there is a beautiful swimming hole that the locals use...
People in for swim. If it warms up enough today, we might go down there ourselves.
It won't likely be warm enough for me, but Ruth will probably get in.
It's a nice enough spot we're going to hang out for another night. It actually feels like we're camping!
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And in Canada...
Always nice to get back to where you started enjoying the great outdoors.
ReplyDeleteWith the water coming from a falls it is guaranteed to be cold.
Be Safe and Enjoy your neighbours.
It's about time.
Actually the water in the small river wasn't very cold. There was a little spot down the river where someone had a thermometer in the river and it read 23C (73F)..
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