Another Summer House (Jutland!)

In my previous Summer House post, I explained how we were able to win these cool summer houses for a very low cost through work. At the summer house on Fyn, Zac couldn't join us, but he was all in for summer house #2 in Thy National Park!

This was the summer house we really wanted because it's located in Thy National Park! The park is situated along the coast of the North Sea in the Nordjylland/North Jutland region of Denmark. I think it's best known for being the home of the migrating sand dunes.

Historically, the sand dunes were in constant motion, destroying buildings and lighthouses and stuff as they migrated inland, so plantations were created to try to halt the movement of the landscape a little and protect the homes. Lots of trees were planted to secure the ground, and native grasses and hardy shrubs were able to move in. Many of the trees didn't make it, but you can still see a lot of them, and the dunes, relatively still now, are mostly covered in hardy, low vegetation (and the occasional child).

Unfortunately, the coastal plantations were mostly planted with invasive conifers, so now, they are working on removing invasive species and restoring the native oak and birch. The work will help bring back native habitats, which will then increase biodiversity by allowing native mammals, birds, and insets to return to the area.

* * *

We drove through the rain about 4 hours and 45 minutes to get to North Vorupør, the small town on the North Sea where we would be staying for the week, but we broke up the trip with a few rest stops and everyone fared OK.

We had no trouble getting into the house, and we were very pleased with our accommodations. The house had plenty of space for all of us and was very cozy. The beds and furniture were comfortable, everything was clean and tidy, and it was situated pretty much in the center of the national park, so we never had to drive too long to get up or down to the things we wanted to see.

Harrison enjoying his own little loft!

We spent Saturday evening getting beds made up and putting away groceries, but Kaden and Zac and I walked a little over a mile down to the oceanside to check out the beach and the restaurants. There is a large beach that extends from either side of a big pier. Old wooden boats are kind of docked up on the sand because it's a launching point for them, there was an enclosed child-friendly swimming area protected from the open sea, and we saw lots of great little restaurants and ice cream shops.

There were places in town to rent everything you could possibly want, so it was no surprise that we saw people fishing off the pier, surfing, scuba diving, kite surfing, and jetboarding.

We decided there were enough restaurants and cafes to keep us fed every night of the week, and plenty of places to buy ice cream, softice, and churros.

* * *

Danish summer is wild and the weather changes rapidly, so you have to be prepared for anything. In the course of a few minutes, you could experience high winds, torrential rain, and lovely blue sky with bright, hot sunshine. If you wait for the perfect day to go do something, you're going to miss out on doing a lot of things, but you can watch the weather and try to time your day around the sporadic weather a bit.

Sunday was certainly looking like a mixed-bag of weather phenomena, but we woke up, saw the blue skies, and quickly rounded up the kids. They didn't love being rushed out the door, but we told them it was better to get going when the sky was blue than to try to motivate ourselves to go out into the rain later.

Our first hike was about a 20-minute drive north of our base. It's called the Isbjerg route on the Hantsholm Game Reserve, a loop of about 1.6 miles.

At 56 meters above sea level, the Isbjerg dune is the highest point on the reserve! (Denmark is a very flat country.) The Hantsholm Game Reserve is an animal sanctuary, but we were not lucky enough to see the lovely sea eagles or the red deer and roe deer that roam. I don't know if that's because they like to lay low or because we had Harrison with us...

Anyway, the hike started as a gradual, uphill slope through some low mosses and grasslands that led into a small landscape of plant-covered dunes.

There was a large wooden staircase to help ease the climb. Zac challenged Kaden to make it up the entire thing hopping on one foot, and he made it surprisingly far! I love that he's always up for a challenge.

The view over Nors Sø was pretty, and Harrison asked me to take a picture for his phone background. I love that he appreciates picturesque surroundings.

Harrison played on the small dunes for a bit, then we found what we think was Isbjerg and stood on top of it until Zac said he didn't like the look of the clouds rolling in and felt that we shouldn't be on top of the highest point when they arrived.

As we moved on, the hike took us across a small heath, and then down a muddy tree-lined trail through some dark forest area.

Khloe found a little toad friend, as usual. I love how much she adores animals!

There were some incredible fungi dotting the ground, beautiful carpets of moss and lichen, and pretty ponds covered in lily pads. Harrison saw something run through the trees and swore it was a wolf, and we remembered that there have been wolf sightings in Jutland, so we kept an eye out but never saw another indication that they were around.

We passed an older couple foraging chanterelles, and I think it's kind of cool that you can forage at your own risk there.

We stopped just before the car park and sat around a fire ring on a pond at the edge of the forest to have our sandwiches. We found cool spiders and watched the little toads jump around and tried to catch damselflies. It was a nice time.

* * *

The afternoon turned out to be pretty decent weather-wise, so we thought we might try to do another small outing after we cleaned up a little. I have never seen a sundew in the wild, and since this should be the time of year they are out, and since you can find three species of them in Thy National Park, I thought my chances of seeing one were finally good.

I found a little pull-off on the map near a heath where they have been spotted before, so we drove there. It felt wrong to go off the path, but there were no signs saying we couldn't, the park app said you can roam anywhere where signage doesn't prohibit it (remember that Denmark is a nation of "do at your own risk"), and so we went traipsing through thick heath and dune vegetation, down through boggy hollows, and back up over the dune ridges to no avail.

I mean, I thought I saw one in a flooded natural spring that had popped up, but with my poor eyesight and bad phone camera, there was no way to confirm.

See the tiny red dot in the center of the pic? Sundew? It was glistening. Let's say it is.

We called it quits after Kaden saw a snake and I remembered that the park website said, "If you see a snake, it *is* a viper." Psshhh. They barely ever bite humans. I probably didn't endanger my children in my quest to find a carnivorous plant. Multiple times.

On the way back, we stopped at the Thagaards Plantation route. This was one of the places they planted trees to try to slow the changing landscape, and it is the oldest one in the park. Here, you can see some of the old, hardy trees that survived the harsh conditions, but the wind and shifting terrain have resulted in trees with wildly warped shapes. They are very cool.

It was a beautiful hike and the weather was good to us.

The trail even led us up to a large beacon on the coast! We learned that in the 1880s, 23 of these beacons were erected along the coastline of the North Sea in Jutland. They were made of iron and wood painted red, and the shape of each one was unique so people at sea could determine their exact location during the day based on the shape of the beacon they could see. There are only 11 left, and three of them are in Thy National Park. I think this is the only one you can hike to without adventuring off the trails.

That evening, we cleaned up and went to a nice steakhouse by the sea. Zac thought his stake rivaled the one he ate at Churchill's in Spokane, which is really saying something! The salad bar and potato bar were amazing, and the ribs were some of the best I'd ever tasted. I settled the bill in Danglish, and we were very full and happy when we left.

We took a stroll to an ice cream shop down the path and ate our dessert as we walked home.

We got absolutely DRENCHED on the walk back, but we were proud of ourselves for walking to and from dinner and treats even though it added a little over 2 miles to an already long hiking day.

* * *

Monday, we headed out for another cool hike (selected from the list of many since it afforded me another opportunity to find sundews). This was the Penbjerg route, starting at the Lodbjerg Lighthouse. It was a 3.5-mile loop marked as difficult due to the elevation changes and the sometimes underwater terrain, but so far, all the trails we had done were marked as difficult for the same reasons, and we were all doing fine.

After Harrison calculated the age of the lighthouse for us (240 years old), we set out.

Almost immediately, the trail was impassible. I mean, it was totally amazing and beautiful, but we did have to slog through some invisible water under the shrubs and make it to higher ground without losing sight of the trail overall.

We made it around though, and found our way back to the path after a wrong turn or two. The second challenge was an intensely steep dune with very deep sand. Talk about some cardio! It was fun, and we laughed all the way.

Harrison had fun "Fortnite sliding" down the dunes, and he and Kaden had play fights all the way down. Back on the heath landscape, I just trailed behind everyone else marveling at the plants. I can't even explain how amazing the heath smells. I can't pinpoint exactly one plant or one area...it's just the whole thing. Freaking incredible.

We passed some medieval burial mounds and were over halfway done with the loop when the path started getting pretty flooded and mucky. This was like pure bog water - black and impossible to tell how deep it was. For a while, we picked our best routes up the sides of the path and through the shrubs, but soon, even the shrubs were hiding wet terrain and our only option was to pick the parts that seemed less deep than others and wade through. No, we do not have waterproof hiking boots yet.

Anyway, we helped Harrison across as best we could, and he and Khloe ended up making a game out of it to stay in good spirits. Zac and I didn't care too much since our feet were already wet and we knew we'd need to clean our shoes anyway. Kaden decided that if he ran through the heath, he'd spend less time in one place and therefore, sink less often in the watery parts. Unfortunately, he tried to run up what he thought was a hill and ended up running directly into the center of a tall shrub, where he remained stuck for a short time. It was hilarious.

In the midst of our muddy trek, I got word that we have a new baby nephew, so we all temporarily forgot about our drenched, muddy feet and paused to fawn over a picture of Katie holding her brand new little bundle. I can't show a pic of the baby because it's not mine to share, so instead, here's one of all of us saying, "Aww!" 

A little while after that, Zac and I saw what appeared to be a massive leech swim through one of the puddles, so we told the kids not to dawdle and hustled back to the lighthouse. We cleaned our feet off as best we could so we could enter the lighthouse and climb to the top, but we were all pretty exhausted and then we found out adults have to pay to walk up to the top, so we decided to just go back to the house and hose ourselves down.

We all put on our sandals and walked into town for pizza and burgers. The food was surprisingly delicious and we were all starving. The sourdough crust on the pizza was incredible, and the fries with the burgers were crisp and sprinkled with sea salt and thyme. So good!

The kids had been amazing troopers all day, so we walked down to the ocean and bought ice cream and churros, then sat by the sea watching all the activity before heading back for the evening.

* * *

Tuesday was very rainy all day. There was a short break, so Harrison and Zac went out to kick a football around behind the house for a few minutes, but the break didn't last long, so we all hunkered down for a hyggeligt rest day. We even tried out the sauna in the house, which was actually pretty nice.

* * *

We promised Harrison some time on the beach, so after lunch on Wednesday, we drove into town to hang out in the sand. We settled on a spot and Harrison immediately got to work on his castles and dungeons. I read a book and made a little sand labyrinth. Zac and Kaden skipped rocks in the ocean and Kaden tried to play with the beachball, but it just kept blowing away. Khloe helped Harrison for a bit and then laid next to me to read a book, too.

There were a lot of people catching fish just from the shore, so we watched them reel in a few. Harrison decided to make a big shark in the sand, and even though Kaden mocked it for being too long, a nice Danish woman came along and complimented Harrison's shark craftsmanship up and down, so I think he felt very good about it.

It was fun to just lay around and play in the sand. Zac even made a little beach zen garden!

We ate dinner at a burger restaurant in town and then decided to take a different route home. Instead of walking down the road, we opted to walk down the beach for a while and then cross over the dunes to get to our road. The kids started climbing a pretty steep dune and jumping off, so eventually, we had to climb up there, too. It was fun to sit on top of the dune and just look out over the little surfing area where people were trying their hardest to catch the best waves.

The boys had a great time jumping off the top of the dune and landing in the sand. As a parent, I was incredibly concerned about broken bones, but I tried to relax and just let them have fun.

And later, we finished our puzzle!

* * *

We got up a little earlier on Thursday so we could drive a couple hours north to see another great area of Denmark. Our first stop was Grenen, which is a beach on the very tippy-top of Denmark. A big sandbar juts out into the sea there like a big finger. Or rather, it juts out into two seas! 

On the sandbar, the North Sea and the Kattegat Sea collide. There's a very stark difference between the two bodies of water and it's totally surreal to see them just crash into each other. We clearly had to go stand on it.

Skagen is an artist's dream destination, I guess because they find something magical about the light up there, and there are many art museums and shops through the main town. We stopped in Skagen for lunch, and I thought we would enjoy a pleasant stroll overlooking the picturesque yellow and white houses that dot the landscape as we ate ice cream or something, but it was so crowded. We ate lunch and then just made our way out of town. It's a popular shopping destination, too, but we had grown used to the casual pace of our little national park town and there were far too many people for our liking.

We drove past the Gray Lighthouse, which helps keep ships from running aground on the sandbar, as so many have done.

We also walked past a couple of sealed-off WWII bunkers and Drachmann's grave, the final resting place of Danish painter and poet, Holger Drachmann. The artists love Skagen so much, they want to be buried there!

South of Skagen is the Råbjerg Mile, the biggest migrating coastal dune in Europe. You're allowed to walk the entire thing and basically do whatever you want (again, at your own risk, as there are quicksand pits and stuff on occasion), and of course, we wanted to go play on the dunes. Kaden actually really wanted to bring his snowboard and snowboard down the dunes, but before we actually saw them, we weren't sure any would be big enough to make it worthwhile, and more importantly, we had zero room for a snowboard in the packed car.

The wind was whipping through the dunes pretty hard and we were sanblasted in the face almost instantly. Our shoes were full of sand and I finally took mine off for a bit. Khloe and Harrison wore facemarks for a while to keep from inhaling the airborne sand, but Harrison and Kaden started play-fighting and his got filled up with sand pretty fast. Of course, they didn't care at all once they found dunes they could start leaping off of...

The wind did some very cool things to the sand. There were beautiful little waves that covered up the footprints soon after you made them, and a few areas where the damp sand and the wind made perfect little hoodoos.

The dunes are kind of near some low marshy areas and the winds move them ever closer to Skagen and the surrounding towns. In the pictures, you can see weird dark spots in the sand, and these are actually fairly damp in comparison to the very dry, fine sand. The dunes were really something to see!

I also found a whole scarab beetle, so I'm pretty sure The Cave of Wonders was close by.

* * *

Friday was full of possibilities because it was going to be a really nice day. I wanted to go on another hike and smell the heath and look for sundews. Harrison wanted a beach day. No one else really expressed strong opinions, but Zac mentioned that we were near some other WWII bunkers, and when I verified you could actually climb up and go inside, we decided to go. Plus, it was near a beach, so Harrison could play in the sand again.

We drove just a few minutes south to Stenbjerg and hiked up to the bunker.

The observation bunker served as a way to warn troops farther north about approaching ships. The small crew could look out across the horizon and report sightings of ships coming over the horizon, and then another observation tower would report the same ship when they could see it, and they would use the data points to calculate how fast the ship was moving and when it would arrive in the narrow passageway between Denmark and Norway.

Out one side, we even spied one of the other beacons!

Around the back, there was access to the crew bunker. It was a mildly dangerous ascent into the bunker - boards with nails sticking out, rusty metal...ya know. We did it anyway and the kids wandered all the way through until they arrived at the end where a ladder goes up to a hatch. We didn't climb it, we just went out the way we came and then opened the wooden hatch from the outside and looked down.

The beach was just a short walk from the bunker, so we walked and chatted about WWII and the German occupation in Denmark a little. At the beach, Harrison dug a chair, Kaden and Khloe dug a big hole, we waded into the surf a little (but not too far, because we were pretty sure it wasn't safe to go in much further...we were right), we read books, we looked at jellyfish washed up on the shore, looked for cool rocks, and then went back to the house to de-sand.

We made our final walk to town for dinner and ice cream (we at so much ice cream this week) and then headed back. Zac and I went for a walk up the road over the dunes to watch the sun set over the ocean, but we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes and sunset wasn't going to officially happen for another 40 minutes or so. We cut our sunset date short, but it was still really nice. We all went to bed a little earlier than normal Friday...we were exhausted! Climbing around in the sand all week really wears you out.

* * *

We had a great pheasant living behind our summer house, so he woke us up at an appropriate time with his grating squawk Saturday morning.

We packed up our things, tried hard to vacuum all the sand out of the house, and drove home. Marabell was very happy to see us, and we will pick up Han in the morning.

We had such a nice time, and I think we will go back there again someday. There are still so many areas of the national park we didn't see, I never found a sundew, and we didn't do any birdwatching (well, except that pheasant).

Zac and I are constantly amazed at how beautiful Denmark can be, and it's been great to see different areas of the country this summer. Now, back to work until our next adventure!