Flekkefjord, a beautiful city in southern Norway. Six class mates and I visited this area for some hiking. There are a lot of flora and fauna. Most trees are birch in this area, everything is covered in a luscious green moss. Every couple hundred meters you would see a heard of sheep. Occasionally, you could also catch a huge mound of ants. The land in this area was very hilly. Since it was raining the previous days, the low areas were very marshy from all the water falling from the tops on the hills into the valleys.

Day One: Five of the seven in the group packed into a car. We drove about two and a half hours until we found the DNT parking spots. Relying solely on our phones for maps, we set off on a path that we thought would lead us to the hut. About four kilometers into the hike we realized we were starting to go north instead of south. Having to look at the maps for a while we found a junction not too far ahead that could connect us back to the path that we were supposed to be on, so we continued. Finding the junction, we stopped for some lunch. We carried on down the path after a thirty-minute break. Hiking up and down the hills with wet feet from the marshy valleys, we came across two white houses that looked like they could be our DNT hut. We searched around for a door that fit the key but we had no luck. Not knowing which way, we should go because there were multiple signs point in different directions, we split up in two different groups. One group went the right way to the hut and found it shortly, the other group walked for about thirty minutes before turning around to find the others. We made hearty dinner together that we all deserved after hiking about twice as much as we were supposed to. Then we all went to bed early that night.

Day Two: We all woke up, ate some breakfast, and went for a stroll down to the ocean while we waited for the other two to arrive at the camp. Around noon we went back up to the hut to meet them. We shortly ate some lunch and set off on a marked path. After walking for a bit, we decided we wanted more of a challenge. Looking up at the nearest hill, we all set off to the top. We did this hill after hill until we were too hungry and tired to go on. Going back to the hut for dinner, we ate, then made a fire. Eating our body weight in smores and waffles we all went into a food coma after.

Day Three: Setting our goal high, we woke up early the next morning. We left after breakfast for our twenty-kilometer hike in the rain. A little over half way through the hike the sun came out and we stopped for some lunch. We thought about how long we have taken to get where we were and how much farther we had to go, then all decided we would rather turn back to go for a swim in the ocean and enjoy the warm sun. After enjoying the sunny day, we had dinner and cleaned the hut to prepare for the early morning we had the next day.

Day Four: Waking up to a clean hut, we ate our breakfast and set off. The group who came the second day went in the opposite direction as the group who came the first day due to parking in different areas. Our plan was too met at Brusjell, there we would go on a 5-kilometer hike to some sea caves. My group got to the entrance of the hike first. We waited in the car for about a half hour until we started wondering where the others were. Acting, we drove to the spot where they parked their car, when seeing their car was still parked in the same spot we got very worried, we wondered if they got lost or if someone got hurt on their way back. Getting together we formed a search party. We thought about how bringing a whistle, so they could hear us if they were lost. We also thought about brining a tarp incase someone was injured and could not walk. As soon as we were all ready to go, we turned around to see the group walking out of the forest. They told us how they got lost up a hill and how all their phones had died so they could not look at a map or contact us in any way. The group decided that it was wet and too late in the day to go on the hike to the caves, so we headed back to our home in Kristiansand.

In the end, even though we got lost many times, it was still a fun relaxing trip. Everyone got along well, we all bonded individually, making the group cohesion great. I think seven was a great number of people to have on this trip for making the cohesion come easily. We could mingle with people individually, be by ourselves or be together as a group and the trust would still be growing between us. I think we all learned a couple important lessons during this trip. One would be to always bring a paper map. Some phone maps do not show all the information you would get on a paper map, such as contour lines or where DNT huts are. Another lesson we learned was to spread the equipment through out the group. After the second group got lost on the last day because of dead phones we realized the other group had not only one but five portable phone chargers.