Arctic–Alpine Botanic Garden Part 1

We got up this morning and by the time we were ready to go the wind had gotten crazy! Luckily there was no wind last night, but also luckily we parked perfectly so the wind was almost hitting us straight on, but it was still rocking us around a bit and sleeting and just a mess. The one side of the car is covered in little pieces of leaves that were blowing up against it! At first Raymond was like it is fine! We can still go! And I was like a) do we really want to go walk around in this?? You just opened the door and it was crazy out. And b) this wind is way too strong for us to drive in! Like we are tall and I remember from Iceland not to drive in wind this strong with a tall vehicle! I remember video of a camper being blown over on the road! I don’t want that to be us!

So then he looked at the forecast and was like yeah…this wind is way too strong. I think he wanted to just go as he is really worried about being stuck up here as he had some work things that came up while we were gone that he will need to deal with after we get back, nothing bad, mostly good stuff, but some things that need done, so I think he is a bit stressed by the snow and wind and everything as he worries we won’t make it out of the mountains (I’m much less worried about being trapped…we might have to go slower at times but we have so much time we will make it south! And the forecast now is not as bad, but the forecast is not the most accurate). The wind forecast was for crazy wind until 4pm so we were like well we will just hang out and see what it is like this afternoon. I said we can always camp near Tromsø and go spy in the morning if need be…I didn’t have much on my to do list for Tromsø so I didn’t think it would take all day and it would be fine.

So we were hanging out and all of a sudden at 10 the wind just stopped. We sat for a few minutes and it didn’t start up again so we jumped up and got ready to go and headed out while we could! First stop was the Arctic–Alpine Botanic Garden at the university as I like botanical gardens. I thought this one was pretty small so it might take a half hour to wander through…but two hours later we got back to the car! There was so much to see!

This is the world’s northernmost botanical garden and it was so much fun! There were all these rocky paths to wander through and look at things. There were a lot of flowers that were dead now, but still plenty alive to look at! And all the pretty colors! Lots of super tiny succulent type plants and larger interesting things. I loved it! I have two posts of photos just cause why not?Read more