Pictures of Really Old Stuff

I don't have too much to write about these days...Kevin is back to work and school hasn't yet started for me, so I'm just hanging out with the beasts, reading, cooking and spending time outside in the long-overdue nice weather. Since I have nothing much going on now, I thought I'd post some pictures from when Kevin's parents were in town. One day we drove up to Beitostolen to take a hike with the dogs, have a picnic and enjoy the interesting scenery above the tree line. Mother Nature wasn't too cooperative, so we ended up leaving the icy rain of the mountains as soon as Kevin's dad had a chance to make and throw a snowball (he lives in Florida, so it was a treat for him). Even though our day didn't turn out quite as planned, we ended up having a great time on the drive back. There are a lot of ruins and remnants of an ancient society in the Slidre valley area so we stopped to walk around and take some pictures. That big rock in the protective gazebo is called the Einang stein, and it is actually a grave marker from about 300 A.D. etched with runes. The Einang area has been turned into a nice little park with a walking trail that leads tourists from one ancient site to the next. There is an old smelting pit and several burial mounds (third picture) from the 400's. The last photo was taken by Foss where several thousand year old stone carvings of moose have been found (I'm guessing the red paint was added at a later date to help preserve them and make them more visible). Kevin and I have begun to pay more attention to the road signs in Norway, and we have noticed that whenever there is a white sign with a 4 leaf clover shape, it's generally a good idea to pull over and check it out, even if we can't understand the Norwegian writing on the sign. This clover symbol means there is some sort of tourist attraction--sometimes it's a stave church, sometimes it's a waterfall, sometimes it's a museum, and sometimes, like in this case, it's a bunch of really old stuff that's worth taking the time to pull over for!