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Author: Hanneke

I started my first blog when I left the Netherlands (my home country) for an internship in Alaska in 2004, to keep my friends and family updated on my adventures over there. Little did I know it would be more than 13 years before I'd move back to the Netherlands! I spent a year in Toulouse (France) before starting a PhD in meteorology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK) in 2005. That's when I started this current blog, first in Dutch but I soon switched to English. I really enjoyed life in the UK, and was actually planning to stay there after my PhD, but "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans" and I ended up moving to Tromsø in Northern Norway in 2009. Tromsø is a photographer's dream, surrounded by spectacular mountains, with the light ever changing from the midnight sun in summer to the dark days compensated by aurora-filled nights in winter. I learnt Norwegian and got a job as a weather forecaster - I got thrown in at the deep end, doing radio interviews and speaking with fishermen with way-too-strong dialects straight from the beginning, before I was anywhere near fluent in Norwegian :D I survived though, and slowly started to do some research on the side. I got more and more involved in research projects and in August 2015 I moved 2000 km south, to Oslo where I started working 100% as a researcher. A year after moving to Oslo, I met Michiel at a music festival in Brussels :) and we started to travel very frequently between Oslo and Rotterdam, where he lives. You can't do that forever though, and I soon realized I found the perfect "excuse" to finally move back home, something I had been considering many times before. So since July 2017, I'm living in Rotterdam! I'm actually taking some time off before finding a new job, and I'm looking forward to lots of adventures in the near future - so stay tuned!
USA Adventure Part 6: Goblin Valley

USA Adventure Part 6: Goblin Valley

After our hike in Little Wild Horse Canyon, we hurried to nearby Goblin Valley State Park. I found out about it by coincidence, and after seeing some fantastic photos of the park I was determined to add it to our itinerary 🙂 We got there just before sunset, the perfect time to walk around between the goblins. State parks are less strict than National Parks, and here you could walk wherever you wanted. You could even climb the goblins, though of course they didn’t recommend it – they can collapse quite easily and the nearest hospital is a LONG way away.

A goblin! They varied in size, but most are bigger than a person Rows of goblins, and in the mountain wall in the background you can see new generations of goblins...

The goblins are officially called hoodoos and are formed by weathering sandstone. The result is an endlessly fascinating landscape, I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland wondering around some otherworldly landscape.

A Goblin-twin Incredible landscape!

Goblin Valley is remote, there are no villages or towns anywhere near. Around sunset, there was only a handfull of people wandering around, and in the end we even had the place to ourselves.

Some of the goblins looked like they were made of playdo Paul overlooking the Goblin Valley

The sunset was painting the goblins a deep orange, so pretty!

Goblins, goblins, goblins :D A fascinating landscape, painted deep orange by the sunset

There are a few nearly-dry creeks in the valley, some of them had beautifully cracked soil. We also found lots of these mini ant hills.

A mini ant hill - we saw lots of those in Utah Cracked soil

Here you can see one of the creeks, supporting a few flowering bushes.

There were a couple of nearly-dry streams that supported some flowering bushes Paul & The Goblins at sunset

We spent the night in a yurt at the Goblin Valley campground, which was a fantastic experience! There are two at the campground, and ours was separated from the rest of the campground by a high mountain wall. We felt completely alone there, but we had electricity, water, and a toilet nearby – luxury camping 😉 The stars were really amazing, we tried to take a startrail photo with our yurt in it. We didn’t know that you can’t just take such long exposures (more than 15 minutes) with a digital camera – the sensor will overheat resulting in hot pixels with strange colors. So the image below isn’t exactly noise free, but still, you get the idea… The last photo shows our yurt just after sunrise, so beautiful!

Startrails and our yurt... pity we didn't know that such long exposures don't work well with a digital camera! Our yurt in the morning light

I wish we could have stayed a couple more nights at the yurt, but it was only available for one night, and we were moving on to Capitol Reef the next day.

Mørketid is here…

Mørketid is here…

Today we saw the sun for the very last time – for the coming two months it won’t come above the horizon. Last Saturday we ceremonially said goodbye to the sun by eating a mørketidsbolle (dark-time-doughnut) at the beach…

Goodbye sun!

The dark time does have its advantages though – plenty of opportunities for seeing the aurora! And the sad feeling of saying goodbye to the sun was soon forgotten this evening – we got quite a show…

Aurora from Ersfjordbotn Looking north from the foot of Store Blåmann

The aurora started as soon as it got dark, but I had to eat something before going out, and I left the house at 17:30. Some clouds were moving in from the south at Ersfjordbotn, so I moved to a place with a view to the north.

Rocks & Northern Lights At times the northern lights were brighter

There were some clouds here too, but it didn’t matter. I was fiddling with my camera trying to get a photo of a frozen puddle, when I happened to look behind me: WOW!!! The sky had gone crazy!

I was playing with the fisheye lens, trying to use a frozen pond as a foreground I turned around and suddenly the sky looked like THIS!

For a while, fast-moving aurora filled the whole sky – it was very impressive 🙂

Even the fisheye lens wasn't wide enough for capturing the bright active aurora A bright beam straight overhead

It calmed down again, and I decided to drive back towards Tromsø. I made another stop near Håkøya, as I noticed the lights had started dancing again…

Aurora reflected in the fjord Trees and aurora, taken near Håkøya

And even though the show continued, I drove home for some hot chocolate and photo editing. I got back just after 21:00 – not bad! A great start to the mørketid, bring it on 😀

Whale Safari

Whale Safari

In the past week, whales have been spotted everywhere along the coast near Tromsø. Some reports said there were hundreds of them! Of course, we had to check it out… so yesterday we took our inflatable boat to the beach at Grøtfjord and we went out in search of whales. We saw a flew splashes at the horizon, and because the sea was very calm (almost flat) we figured it might be whales – but it turned out to be waves crashing on a rock 😀

Then we saw a huge group of birds and decided to check it out. They were swarming over a school of herring that was surfacing, the sea was boiling with them! The birds flew up and circled around us – a spectacular sight!

The sea boiling with crazy herring We were surrounded by LOTS of birds!

We thought the whales would surely come to eat the herring, as this is the reason they are around now – but there were no whales to be seen. We entered a few fjords, looking for activity – but nothing. Instead we spotted a big jellyfish 😀 Luckily it was a very mild day and there was no wind – so we didn’t get cold sitting in the boat.

The fishing boats were out for herring too A colourful jellyfish

At some point it started to get dark and our patience ran out, so we returned to the beach, slightly disappointed. We had already gotten the boat out of the water and started taking it apart next to the car, when a group of people approached us to ask if we had seen the whales. They had also just come back from a boat trip, and had seen lots of whales, just around the corner! They strongly encouraged us to go back and check them out before it got completely dark. It didn’t take long to decide: we were going back 😀

And after being directed to the right place, it didn’t take long to find two humpback whales! We could see their spray from a long way away. It was so exciting to get close to them – at times only a couple of meters! At first I was a bit scared, as our boat is small and they are so BIG, but they move very graciously and I got the feeling they are quite aware of their surroundings.

YES! Our first whale sighting :) It was very exciting to get so close to these mighty creatures

We followed them for a while, as they surfaced and dove under again. Unfortunately it was quite dark by then, so the photos we got are quite grainy and not always very sharp. But the experience was unforgettable 🙂

A fin with barnacles :) Diving under

The two of them… the town in the background is Tromvik (on the the left), and the island on the right is Vengsøya.

They are so big, yet very graceful in their movements... There were 2 of them swimming together

They were spraying and breathing out with funny noises. Apparently their breath smells really bad, but we didn’t get THAT close 😉

Blowing out Mission succeeded, happy girl :)

At some point they dove under, showing their classic tail (we didn’t get a photo unfortunately) – and I knew that meant they are diving deep and not coming up for a while. Indeed, they didn’t return and we also decided to go home before it got completely dark.

What a day! The online papers and other websites are full of stories of people’s encounters with whales, it’s been quite a magic weekend for many – even people without boats, as they appeared really close to the coast. Check out these photos from a family in kayaks, these amazing pictures from near Musvær, and a series of pictures taken from Sommarøy. And my favourite series of photos from Espen Bergersen where you can actually see the herring jumping around while the whales are eating – fantastic! He saw orca’s too – I’m jealous 🙂