Skei weekend

Thursday, May 9^th was a holiday here in Norway, so I took the 10^th off and made it a 4-day weekend. I rode the bus up to Skei to visit Katarina. We immediately went out hiking, with Oddbjørg and Janne. Oddbjørg drove us to the next dale, Stardalen. Was it fun? You bet! First we wandered here at Tverrdalen, but couldn’t get too far. The river was too high. So we went to visit Olav at his milking barn. Here’s how he milks his cows:

This machine is smarter than my smartphone! The cow wanders up to it when she feels like it. There’s a little food in front of her. The chip in her ear lets the machine know who she is, and if she has been away for more than 2 hours, will agree to milk her. Brushes clean the nipple-grabbers, then the device moves back and forth until it finds all four nipples. The smart machine measures how much milk she gives and records that with her identity. I was SO impressed.

  

Here are the cows lounging around at home. There’s a section for young cows off to the left. The fairly complicated feeding system is off that direction, too. The whole building cost over 9 million kroner.

Olav couldn’t run off and play with us, sadly. Next, we headed up the waterfall across the street from his barn. That big red building with the black roof is his barn, as seen from partway up.

Here’s the waterfall in full rush of spring melt! Katarina is coming along the left side.

Me, talking away, Katarina on the left and Janne on the right.

This is the campground at the waterfall, complete with grass roofs.

The rest of the weekend, Katarina was working, so I was relaxing. Here are pictures of the reflections of the awesome clouds in Jølster Lake.

This one shows buds on the tree on the right, a waterfall on the left, and the ice still melting off the surface of the lake in the distance.