Beautiful Day

I took my time waking up this morning - what else is a saturday good for if not for sleeping in? =) Peter was supposed to come and move some of his things in the early afternoon, but when I reminded him via text that the last bus to and from Tyssedal was around 2:30pm, he decided he'd try on Monday. I'm hoping the electricity is on by then...
Dave Henrickson called in the afternoon and invited me up to Skjeggedal with him and the family. Both their younger daughters were visiting (from Bergen and the UK), and had brought another friend and her two daughters, to accompany Julia, the grand-daughter. So Dave and I were the sole representative males in the group. It was a really fun time though - gorgeous weather!
We rode in the cart/trolley up to the plateau at the top of these mountains - it's a huge national park almost in the middle of Norway. Takes a couple days to get around by car, and sits a thousand or so meters above sea level - great for wildlife and various winter sports, summer backpacking, etc...
This particular area of Tyssedal/Odda is known for the twin falls that used to fall from this plateau - the longest falling twin falls in Europe, until a company decided to divert the river to go through holes in the rock and through pipes for hydro-electricity. First, though, came the dam for hydro-electricity. Here's a picture of it from the trolley - it's one of the largest hand-quarried dams in the world- built around the turn of the century, I believe (don't quote me). That's the thing about being a tourist without having a guide - you find yourself trying hard to recall bits and pieces of information that you weren't paying incredibly close attention to at the time. I guess I could look it up on google, but who has time for that these days?
This river eventually comes out in Tyssedal, goes under the rock through a special tunnel built for it, and enters the fjord. There's a path called the Kaiser's Way that comes all the way up from outside the Slottet, along the river and to the dam. This is the way that the workers came up - they lived in the area of the Slottet and would travel up to work on the dam. But the name of the path comes from Kaiser Wilhelm - apparently Ringedallsfalls (the twin falls) was one of his favorite places to vacation, and he'd always go along that route.