Lapland.

Oh, that was an amazing week! For those who don't know what I'm talking about I was on a hiking trip with my Dad and the second oldest brother in Lapland (North Finland) for a week. Rationally that doesn't make any sense to go on a trip like that: we drove like over 1000 kilometres to get to Lapland, and at the destination we drove about 35 more kilometres (maybe the worst road ever!) to get in the middle of the woods (= in the middle of nowhere), we took our huge&heavy backpacks (ok, mine was the lightest: only 14 kgs) with us and walked 80 kilometres in 5 days just to get back to our car and drive back home! Haha! But the reasons we got there were not to get something rationally reasonable out of it. You know the reason if you've done something like that. The experience of living in the wilderness for few days is just so different than our busy, ordinary daily life. Only things you gotta do is walk forward or have a break if you feel so, watch the beautiful scenery around you (and in my case: take pictures), eat when you're hungry, talk or be just quiet, find the place to camp in the evening and settle down and reload your batteries for the next day by having some sleep. And in the morning you start all over again. That's just so good to forget all the duties and hurries - you know, even those undone and should-have-been-done-a week-ago ones. And when you haven't got much to be worry about you've got plenty of time to think about things what really matter! Like life in its entirety :) You're able to get some important aha-experiences. Usually you're too busy to get them. That's what I call a real vacation! Well, physically that was quite hard, but mentally sooo refreshing! And I gotta admit that I've got loooot of stuff at home. My new room is so small that I don't have places for all my belongings yet. And during the hike I was carrying all what I need in a backpack (all right, my Dad was carrying our foods and the tent and my brother had a primus cooker in hi backpack, but you know what I mean).. The things what really matter can't be the belongings, I realized it again.

So, we were hiking in Urho Kekkonen National Park (Urho Kekkonen was Finland's president back in the day). That 80 kilometres we walked contained many kind of things and I'm gonna tell you about few of them.

Weather conditions. This was maybe one of the most fascinating things of our trip! The weather was really unstable. There was like every kind of weather within a couple of hours during the first two days. It was raining and sleeting, snowing and hailing - together and separated. And every once in a while the sun was shining. Sunshiny moments were really warm, but the cloudy ones were definitely fall. One day we were climbing up to the top of a tunturi (well, there is no word for our "mountains" in English, compared to Real mountains, they are just hills, but they are bigger than our hills, so I'll use the Finnish word, tunturi) called Ukselmapää (I would like to here you trying to pronounce that, haha!). At the foot of that tunturi it was like something between summer and fall,

Directly translated this place is called Paradise Valley

but at the top there was snow and the weather was like in winter. That was pretty fun :) Imagine a beautiful winter day with bright sunshine.

On the very top.

We took some pictures at the very top and then continued walking. And suddenly it was like a blizzard! I took a picture of that but it doesn't tell the whole truth

The Blizzard

It just came out of nowhere. We had to hurry to get down from there, cause you never know how bad the bad weather would get at the mountains. So, we got down and after 10 mins the sun was shining again and there was no sign of any blizzard.

Wildlife. A loooot of Beautiful scenery - and some great shots of it :)

And some reindeers of course!

I talked to them in English :) I thought they'd understand that better than Finnish, cause a LOT of tourists especially from Germany visit Lapland. I think reindeers hear English more than Finnish. What a pity that I can't speak any German.. Hahaha!!

And mosquitos. And buffalo gnats (we don't even have buffalos here in Finland, so what are their gnats doing here!?). And some tiny little bugs called polttiainen in Finnish. And guess who's a bit allergic to all kind of bugs - I mean their bites.. But those bugs are part of the experience! They belong there. It was weird, cause the first two days we didn't see like any mosquitos at all, cause we were at the tunturis, but then we came down to bog areas and that's were the bugs rule.

Camping. We spent three nights out of four in a tent and the last one in a wilderness hut (those are kind of cabins by hiking trials and they are available to anyone). Usually when I sleep in a tent (I don't do that very often, but when I do) it's summer - warm and hopefully dry weather. Well, this time it was like few degrees below and raining or snowing or hailing every night we spent in the tent. The last night, when we were sleeping in the wilderness hut, was dry and warm :) By the way, if you don't realize how comfy your own bed is, go and sleep in a tent few nights. You'll value your bed so much more!

Oh, and the same thing with a washroom.. The weather was so cold during the hike, that we were not willing to wash up in ice-cold water what comes straight from tunturis. Somehow that's nice cause you don't have to pay so much attention to your appearance. And actually when your hair is enough dirty, you can make every kind of hairstyles without any styling mousse or stuff like that. Like this one for example :D

My hiking hairstyle, haha!

But I still value the feeling called fresh&clean! So, our washroom is definitely fine - I love it!

Nevertheless, I really like camping with a tent - or should I say tenting :) The best part of it is the atmosphere at the campfire. There is something so special in it! I didn't light any of our fires, but the feeling when some wet wood finally catch fire and start to heat you is really nice. And if your socks had got wet during the day, you can hang them near by the fire to dry them. Well, my hiking boots were not really waterproof so I did that a lot :D Oh, and camp pancakes! Yum!

River crossing. This could have been part of wildlife or camping, but I wanted to have a new chapter for this. As I told the water in the rivers and creeks was ice-cold. We did get across many rivers and creeks - most of cases we were able to have our shoes on without getting them wet while crossing but four times we had to take our shoes off and wrap the legs of our pants and wade across the river. Wow, that was COLD! *shivering* Imagine that cold water that it hurts when you stand more than 20 seconds in there. And then some possibly slippery rocks and a huge backpack to your back :) That was awesome! That really does hurt, but when you get to the other side of the river you are so proud of yourself - full of zip and pep! And afterwards your feet feel really good too :)

Lapland. I really love the North part of our country! Somehow it feels like you'd be abroad, because of the loooong ride and different scenery and just because it's so different compared to normal city-life. And at the same time kind of pure patriot love and pride surface: this beautiness is part of my fatherland! I think our patriotism is not so visible, but somewhere down in our hearts we just love our country!

And. Finally I found a place from Finland where people wouldn't laugh at a cowboy hat (if I would have bought one from Canada)! Well Lappish hats are NOT cowboy hats, but they look like kind of same. Take a look.

The Finnish one...

...and the Canadian one :)

And! WLC campers, didn't we tell you that Santa Claus lives here in Finland - in Lapland! Hahahaha!

Direction sign on the highway.

The sign says:
"Welcome.
Santa Claus can be met
at his office every single
day of the year."

Santa Claus Office

So, that was something about my great adventure in Lapland! I've got some more to tell to the coming posterities! "Listen, my children, when your granny was young..." Haha!

Now I'm back from the wilderness, getting used to civilization again :)