Yes! We’ve had so many nice sunny days so far and we really have been enjoying the spring.
And it’s been coming fast. In Hanko (The most southern town of Finland) there’s almost no snow anymore!
These pictures have been taken east from “Neljän tuulen tupa” cafeteria. There is area “Furuvik Nature preserve” (Furuvikin luonnonsuojelualue) where you can freely walk around and even take suntan but just don’t destroy anything from the nature.
We visited once again. It is always so beautiful and relaxing. The Seurasaari area has multiple museum areas and buildings -you need to buy a ticket if you wish to go inside those buildings.
But area has also a lot of hiking pats around the island and the most amazing thing is that so many animals are so used to the people and you can feed them from your hand…
You can easily feed bluetits, great tits, squirrels, mallards, swans and geese from your hand if you bring some nuts/ seeds with you.
Didn’t take too many pictures this time. I had my videocamera with me!
And then my video from Seurasaari island, enjoy!
This was the only overnight motorcycle trip I made with my wife this summer!
We were riding from our hometown in south-west Finland to Sysmä. It’s a small city on the eastside of lake Päijänne.
On friday we ride to Sysmä like this:
In the beginning I was riding on the big road all the way to Hyvinkää. But from there I chose the smaller roads. We made first stop at Saloinen village.
We continued riding but soon it was time to stop for awhile and admire the sunset at Pulkkilanharju.
At this point I was regretting that I didn’t take the drone with me! The sunset was so incredibly nice!!
We slept in a small cabin in Sysmä Camping area and we ate breakfast in the hotel that was only few hundred meters away.
It was still very early when we were already walking in Päijänne National Park and checking the viewing tower of Päijätsalo.
After we left the National Park area the weather started to be much brighter! It was nice idea to stop at Vääksy Canal.
Vääksy Canal has only 1 block and the surface height difference is 1,2 meters between Vesijärvi & Päijänne.
The block is located under the (old) mainroad of the village!
This was my first time in Vääksy Canal -what a lovely place to spend even longer time!!
We still made short stop at Hämeenkoski…
And in Ylimmäistentie (to put on rainsuits because it was about to start raining!)
This winter we didn’t have snow until 3d of January. It didn’t even feel very strange because last winter we didn’t have snow at all! But then around 10th of january started the “crazy winter” -we cot half of meter of snow in only 2 days and then crazy cold weather!
In the beginning of January we visited Imatra and we got to enjoy the real winter before it started here in South Finland.
When the very cold temperatures started my working car’s heater didn’t want to operate anymore so it was impossible to work until I found what was wrong and it was fixed!
At the moment it seems that I have stop my business because Covid-19 and return to do ordinary work -but we’ll see what happens.
17th of January we got to see a rare halo in the sky! It was a cloudbow. I’ve never seen it before and now I got quite many pictures of it!
Now the sun is shining brighly in the sky, the day lasts more than 9 hours and spring is getting closer! 3 days ago it was still crazy cold when the sun was setting (-16°).
Kopparö recreation area is located in Raasepori and you need to take a short ferry ride to enter the Sher Landet (Skärlandet) island.
After you park your car and start walking the trail is very wide in the beginning. But soon you will see small bay on the right side and the trail is getting smaller. Here you will go across the suspension bridge.
The structure of the bridge is quite scary. I will share a video in the end of this blog about it.
Right after this bridge we started to hear bird screaming with very high note. It was like “Kvik – Kvik – Kvik!” But the volume of the shouting was extremely loud. And only few minutes after this we saw them flying in the sky -Two White-tailed eagles!
This was a second time for me when I’m seeing this mighty bird. I guess these were two young ones because they were shouting all the time!
(Mama! Mama! Look at me! I’m flying!!)
Soon there was another bridge so we moved from Långön island to Stora Sandö island. This is like the “Main island” of the Nature path.
The trail goes almost around the island and because it was quite warm we chose to turn to the left. I knew there would be a place for swimming!
We didn’t have our swimming suits with us but it wasn’t a problem. We both did the the skin-dipping!
The walk between Sandöedet and Stora Sandö grilling places is the most beautiful part of the trail! You can walk almost all the time very near to the sea and admire the clear water of the Gulf of Finland!
We reached the grilling place of Stora Sandö and took another break there to eat our snack. I also made a Droneflight to take few pictures and the video of this beautiful area.
After our snack my wife started to collect blueberries. Soon the half-a-liter bottle that we had was full of berries and we got to eat fresh blueberry pie at home!
The whole trail is almost 8km walk and we did it all!
In the map it looks like this:
In the beginning of this blog I said about the suspension bridge that I was little bit worried. So I made a video about it. It’s only in Finnish.
After packing our stuff and cleaning the cabin it was time to drive again. It was 50 km to Kuopio where we made about 2 hours stop. It was 1st time for my wife in this beautiful city.
We parked the car to the new garage they have under the market square and came up to make a walk in the city center.
I have a BIG minus comment about the parking garage!!
We went down to our floor (underground) from the side of this market hall and there was a sign that there will be this payment machine. But there wasn’t!! I had to walk to another elevator to find the damn thing!
KUOPIO! Not like this!
Our route went off from E4 highway in Juva but I had chosen quite small gravel road. Finally we entered the Pistohiekka & Lietvesi area. There is one special viewing point just beside the road.
From here it was only 80km’s to Imatra so in the afternoon we’re back in our house in Meltola. The summertour was over.
The route for this day was like this:
We woke up little bit earlier than normally and had breakfast. Then we took a short drive to Korkeakoski (High rapids). 08.10am we were ready to start exploring…
There was also a naturepath starting from the rapids but we didn’t read any reviews of the path. It was a bit disappointment since the path didn’t follow the river in the canyon. Anyway the thick Savonian forest was beautiful but there were totally too many mosquitos!!
After getting back to the cabin we started packing our stuff… But while we were packing we suddenly decided to stay in this beautiful place one more night! So we didn’t pack our stuff but we headed to the canal that was also nearby.
There’s actually 2 canals, the old one is built in 1866-74 and it was mainly used for log driving. But in the same time the population in Savonia was growing and people started to use boats to move around our country… The new canal was built in 1981-83.
The total length of the canal is few hundred meters and the distance between two block gates is 240 meters. The difference of the surface in these two lakes is about 3,5 meters. I made also a short flight over the old canal…
Since we didn’t actually drive anywhere I’m not putting the route…
Ahkionlahti Canal is located about 6,5km’s northwest from Maaninka.
And again we had quite a perfect morning for swimming! And for morning walk near the Marjaniemi lighthouse.
There is actually an active fishing village beside the lighthouse and a pilot-boat station so it was very interesting walk!
And on the other side of the island there is a weird art-installation called “Organum”. This is a 3 piece echo-chamber in the middle of the forest.
The artist has made few similar all over the world!
His name is Lukas Kühne.
Then we started driving… First the idea was to stay on the western coastline but since the weather forecast didn’t promise too nice weather we kind of pointed rendom place on the map and it was Iisalmi. Then we started to find something interesting to see there and we found Korkeakoski. And that was actually located in Maaninka which belongs to Kuopio nowadays. It looked like a very nice place!
But the drive became also a race against the rain! When we finally arrived to Maaninka it started raining right away. We chose to rent a cabin and we were quite happy that we found very nice one just beside the lake!
The route for the Day 12 was like this:
Waking up beside the river in Lapland is quite nice. I took my drone up even it was max 50m.
Later the weather was not very nice in Finland either. But there was a chance that it wouldn’t rain so we decided to go up to Aavasaksa -after we crossed the Arctic circle…
Aavasaksa is one of the first “Tourist attractions” in Lapland. There was visitors from other countries already in 18th century. In 1881 they built “Emperor’s Hut” for possible Russian Emperor visit but it never happened!
Aavasaksa is 242 meters high “mountain” just beside border of Sweden and Torniojoki -river. On the top of the hill is also one of the Struve Geodetic Arc -points. We took a walk around 2,5km path on the top of the hill. We had to take our raincoats because it was raining a little bit.
We also checked little bit of the city of Tornio -I was very interested how they had arranged the check in points on the border? But it was just a border patrol car beside the road before Sweden.
There is an old church in Alatornio. This was built (1797) only 11 years before Sweden lost a war against Russia. And the church was built honoring the King of Sweden -I would say quite bad luck for him!
Then we drove all the way south of Oulu to the island of Hailuoto! Because weather forecast was quite nice for the evening and for next morning! Yes, the evening was nice but there was also quite strong wind!
Trying to make a dinner in this kind of wind was interesting. Ok the food was great but there was some sand and small stones as a spice!
Route for the Day 11 was like this:
Escaping the rainy Norway…
This was second day with rain and the weather forecast didn’t look nice at all… So we decided to drive back to Finland. In Norway we spent 2 nights in a car, 1 night in a camping area cabin and 2 nights in a hotel. Temperatures were mostly about 10-13 degrees celsius and it was cloudy.
After 2 hours and 150 km’s we reached our homecountry Finland. It was still raining! But only about 50km’s later the rain had stopped and we saw blue sky!
In Muonio we decided to buy new camping cooking system (Trangia). And it was a good decision! From Muonio we took Levi as our goal! And there we drove straight to the top… Or not quite, you still have to climb about 100 meters higher from the parking area. The top of Levi is 530 meters.
There is nice wooden path to walk around in the top of this “mountain”. It’s only 700 meters but the views are quite amazing to all directions.
We had even a rainbow in the beginning of our walk!
Then it was time to find a place for sleeping in a car. There was nice lean-to just beside Ounasjoki -river. A perfect place to get to know better all of those mosquitos…
The route for Day 10 was like this:
Go - Za 