15-Jun-2001 -- My brother and I left Porsgrunn about 3 p.m. this sunny afternoon, and drove the 60 km westwards to Drangedal on my motorcycle. The view from the road is pretty scenic at places, and the curvy roads are fun to ride by motorcycle, although the quality of the road could have been better.

After a little less than an hour, we reached the junction to the dirt road we believed to get us closest to the confluence. We drove the dirt road for a km or so (slowly, I don't drive an offroad bike), until we met a closed gate. Here we parked the bike and started the hike (picture 2). The GPS showed us we were 6,6 km NE from the confluence. We'll walk that in just a little more than an hour, we said to ourselves.

After walking along the road for an hour, we came to a point were we had to abandon it, and started to head into the forest, directly heading for the confluence. We vere now 2 km east of the confluence. We had go through dense forest a part of the time (picture 3), cross muddy plains and the last km we had to climb 150 meters to get to there. During this climb we understood that we should have brought more food (we had two apples and a banana) and water instead of coffee. City slickers in the bush... The hike trough the bush was a lot harder than we anticipated.

We finally reached the confluence after 2 hours, after walking 7,7 km. We used point averaging a few times on our Garmin 12 CX until we found the exact location (picture 4), and took the obligatory pictures at the confluence (picture 1). Then we enjoyed our coffee and the (mashed) banana.

The confluence lies almost on top on a little hill, the altitude is about 300 meters. It's located in a woody area with mostly pine forest around it. A little bit east of the confluence there is an astonishing view of the surrounding area. 100 meter east of the confluence there was a beaver pond, about 20 x 30 meter, with a dam at one end to keep the water in. No beaver was in sight, but the chewed off trees spoke for them selves.

Already pretty exhausted, we tried to walk a smarter way back, by finding a road that was closer to the confluence than the one we left. But with the rather coarse map we had (picture 5), it was hard to find the road, and we walked througt the bush until we found the same creek we crossed erlier (picture 6). We followed the creek to the point were we crossed and went the same way back.

We vere back at the bike a quarter past 9, exhausted and starving. We ate our most satisfying hamburger ever in Drangedal that evening...