The final day of our adventures landed us in the car a lot more than we had planned, but it was still a really good day.

First of all, I have to tell you that camping on a mountain plateau here is COLD – even in July! We spent the night in the Dovre National Forest, and at one point during the night I woke up totally shivering, despite lots of clothing. I checked, and it was 3 degrees outside! (about 37F)

We drove to Oppdal and found a cafe.

We enjoyed a cup of coffee, and then walked around the town a bit.

After that, we set the GPS for Trondheim, Norway’s third most populous city. We parked just outside of downtown, and our first view as we neared the river was pretty amazing.

We visited the cathedral – which by the way is so totally different than most any other church you’ll see in this region of Europe – and then began making our way to the fortress.

Along the way we came to Gamleby, or the old town It is home to a very iconic wharf area and a super cool bridge, and we just had stop for a few photos.

The views from the fortress were pretty great as well.

We headed back to the city center and had dinner at a food truck – incredible burgers! Then it was back to the car. The plan was to start driving towards Lillehammer and find a place to sleep for the night.

Unfortunately, we had no luck in finding a free place to camp this night. We tried a few spots that just wouldn’t work, and eventually ended up driving into Lillehammer.

We thought we’d found a spot near the top of Lillehammer’s ski jump, but as we started to get our gear out of the car, we noticed that we were being swarmed by mosquitoes. That was it – it was getting late and dark, we were tired, and we were over it. We packed everything back up and at almost 11:30 at night, we decided to set the GPS for home.

Not 30 seconds after packing & starting to drive, we finally managed to check off the final thing we’d hoped to see on this trip. William yelled out from the backseat, Zack looked up and hit the brakes, and a big moose crossed right in front of us!

This final checkmark completed, the boys contentedly settled in their seats and dozed off. After a couple of stops for gas and to stretch our legs, we pulled into the driveway at home around 3:30 in the morning.