Summer vacation, day 13
Continued from day 12
Our new “base-camp” was at my mom’s place in Brønnøysund and we enjoyed the comfort after having spent almost two weeks in a lavvo and in a tent.
The plan for today was to drive to Sausvatn – my childhood paradise – and kayak in Strauman. I’ve heard about these waters all my life tried to imagine how it looks like. In 2018, I could for the first time see how Strauman looked like (from a distance) and promised myself I go there one day – with my kayak.
That day was today, and together with Anne. My family at Saus would look after Karma while we went on our small kayak adventure.
We drove down to Estraumodden and launched our kayaks from there.
My GPS map was dead wrong in places and what was water on the map was nothing but that in real life. After a clumsy start, we sought to the center of Breidvassbukta and “drove centric” for the rest of the trip.
It was nice here, but perhaps a bit too wide for my taste. I wanted channels, straits and narrow places. Besides, we had a considerable headwind.
No complaints, though. I enjoyed every second and realized that some of these mountains would be far easier to reach with a kayak. Like Hardangsfjellet. Which I hiked in 2009.
Eventually, Strauman got more and more narrow and I hoped that we could have some narrow channels ahead of us.
But at Asplia – the end of the road running parallel to our route – we literally ran out of water.
We then decided to take a lunch break. The old road, the abandoned truck and the camping wagon took away what otherwise could have felt like a touch of wilderness.
It was a rain shower day, but so far we had more or less been in the clear. When we returned, the weather was just brilliant!
But after a while, the sky got dark again. We did consider going into Sørstrauman, but we were sort of “done” by now and just wanted to get back.
When we realized that it wasn’t a crocodile in the water, we could relax…
On our last stretch back to the starting point, the heavenly gates opened up…
After getting the kayaks back on the top of the car and changing into dry clothes we drove back to Saus to pick up Karma. The folks at Saus are my family and good friends and I’ve been coming here since I was a small kid. Jorun (my dad’s cousin, but as we’re the same age she’s more like my cousin) served heavenly waffles and I just couldn’t stop eating.
We had to take a break from the waffles as a hawk was attacking 3 magpie chicks. The chicks did clever maneuvers and stayed alive until magpie mom came to their rescue. Now, it was the hawk that had to run for its life…
It was altogether a brilliant day!
Continued on day 14
Trip statistics: 11km, 0 vertical meters, 3h:20m
Pictures (Canon EOS RP/ Iphone8) from the day:
