“It’s only 90 miles to Sortland” says my long lost brother Stein in Trondheim. Norwegian miles. That’s the first time I heard that term – but I knew we could do it. It turns out there are 10 kilometers to a Norwegian Mile. So a 900 km day ahead of us – with a ferry to catch near the end. We’ll see how it goes. We intended to get going at 6am and Sarah was the only one ready at that time – so she and Rolf got a cup of coffee while I checked out. We were on the road really before 7am and made good time to the arctic circle. Beautiful. Desolate. The first time for most of us but it turns out Marilyn of course was over this road once before and Karl-Peter reminded us that his plane to Nome stopped in Kotsebue, so technically he has crossed before. Still, this was a Kodak moment. Marilyn stacked some rocks, because obviously everyone ahead of had, one for each of us. On we went and what a steep drop to coast again. Most of the road was good but the trucks were something else. Now the Washington State Ferries would never do this but as hard as we kept at it, it was pretty certain we weren’t going to make that 7:30 pm ferry. We came around the last corner (with another car on my rear bumper) and into the parking lot, and there was the ferry with the gate closed. It was 7:35 and it was still there. I expected to see the prop wash as it left. That is the story of my life – ask Karen, my earliest memories are chasing (missing) ferries. What?? They opened the gate and seemed to signal us in. I didn’t slow down; I slid into the waiting bosom of the ferry with the other car still hot on my rear bumper. When I shut off the engine and looked over and gave the driver (now) beside me a thumbs-up signal, he smiled back and gave the thumb up back, but then came over and said (Marilyn said, in Norwegian) “You were driving too carefully!” That is the first time I have been accused of that. Wow. What a miracle. Alive and on the ferry to Lofoten/Vesteralen.
An hour ride to the other side and a chance to see where my grandfather Johnie Johnson left 90+ years ago.
We actually did the unthinkable. We arrived a day early. Drude had one more day of work – staff meetings at school. We slept in and Drude's husband Jostein took a day off from his job with the kommune agricultural department and drove us around Sortland and the surroundings. There actually was a circus in town for the day, so we saw camels (there was much more) in Sortland. Incredible. When Drude got home we all went out to the lake place and roasted hot dogs over the fire on the lake shore. The lake is known as troll lake and there is a story of an entire family that years ago, drowned crossing the lake on their way to a wedding.....or something like that. Tony has a beautiful cottage there and the traditional Norske way of celebrating mid-summer is as a family and building a bon fire and making as much smoke as you can. We piled moss onto the flames while we talked and drank coffee.
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