Rondane
When Leigh and Joe came to visit, we wanted to take them into a hut, but we had to find a hike that wouldn't be too much for their boys Jan (7) and Griff (5). We had been in and around Rondane several times before, mainly staying at our friend Lars' family cabin in nearby Mysuseter. Those previous visits were all in the snowy months, when there is a 12 km ski across a windswept plateau to get to Rondvassbu. But in summer you can drive to the national park boundary, leaving a 5 km easy walk on the service road to the hut. Perfect.
Rondvassbu is a comfy full-service hut with numerous 4-bunk bedrooms and spacious sitting rooms. The weather during our three-night stay was a little, um, uneven, so we spent a certain amount of time lounging around in the nice warm hut playing card games and Scrabble. Leigh led the kids in yoga exercises, and here Molly and Zoe are translating a picture book about hekser -- witches-- for the boys.
But we did manage a few day hikes. On one of our two full days at the hut, Leigh and Joe took all 4 kids for a wander above Rondvatnet (the lake by the hut) while Nancy and Rick took a more ambitious hike up to the top of Vinjeronden, which was buried in the clouds when we got there.
On our way back down Rick snapped this picture of the big alluvial fan across the lake from the hut.
And here's the eastern half of the Rondane mountains as we saw them during our walk out. Nancy and Rick hiked up Vinjeronden, the middle peak, and Joe, Molly and Rick went up Storronden, on the right, at around 2100 m the second highest peak in the area. Rondlslottet, left, is a little bigger -- we'll have to try that on another trip! And one of these days we'll scan some slides from our winter visits and put together a web page to show how beautiful these round mountains are when they are buried in snow.