Lapland - Urho Kekkonen National Park

There was a good reason why there was no sign of life from me the last few days. The reason was Lapland. But here is the whole story.

1. Departure Day
After a lot of discussion and planning we finally decided to go by car to Lapland. We were seven people, so we needed two cars. First of all my car and as second car we rented one. On 4.10 after the lectures and lunch, we started our journey to Lapland. It took us about 9 hours to drive ~800km to Rovaniemi, were we spent our first night. Normally the cheapest Hostel in Rovaniemi cost about 25€ per person, fortunately I found a camping place near Rovaniemi with nice cabins. We got one 4 person and one 2 person cabin and paid for all together 70€. (Normal price 60-68€ for the 4 person cabin) 10€ per person is not much, that's why we decided to sleep the last night also in this place, but more about this later.

2. Day 1 at Urho Kekkonen National Park
The original plan was to stay in a cottage outside of the National Park and make daytrips to the inside. Like some other plans before, this plan also was wrapped around. BUT, like all the other wraparounds, the new plan was much better, even when i was very skeptic about it.
We or let's say the bigger part of the group wanted to go directly into the park to the first reachable free cottage. (There are several free cottages inside the park)

It was already 2 o'clock pm when this decision was made. So we drove to one of the National Park entrances, the one at Kilopää. We parked our cars there and only put the most important stuff in our rucksacks. 15 km was the distance from this entrance to the first free cottage. I'm not a "professional" hiker, that's why I thought we will never make it 'till it's getting dark, because it was already nearly 4 when we left. But, fortunately we really made it in time. I think it took us about 3,5 h to get there.
I was forced to use the nature toilette, because in our hurry I can't visit a real toilette before we left the entrance *ggg*

200m after entering the National Park we took the wrong way, that was not a good start, but fortunately this happened only once :)

This was the first impression we got there:


First of all, before you expect too much colors, the "ruska" time in Lapland (ruska == autumn colors) was already over, 2-3 weeks earlier would be the best time.

On the way to the cottage i tried to get some impressions of the nature, but we were "running" so fast, that it was nearly impossible *g*. But the landscape was very nice, even without the autumn colors. For example we have crossed some "rivers":

And finally reached our cottage (this photo was from another day):

We were quite tired. So we eat and marked our territory and went to bed early.


3. Day 2 at Urho Kekkonen National Park

On day number two we decided to make a roundtrip to a hill to get an overview. Everybody knows that the hills in Finland are not very high, but the climate make those hills and the area look like at 2000m in Austria.

The trail was very nice and the whole distance was about 16km for this round. Here is a photo of me at the top of the hill, with a very nice surround view.


As you can see, the weather god was very nice to us. The temperatures weren't that cold. I think the coldest night was about -1° and the highest day temperature was about 6°. (Btw. the weatherforecast for 10.10 says snow for Lapland in this area ;) )

This part of the park is in the wilderness area, this means no marked trails there. Hannes was very good equipped with a map and a gps, so we were never really worried about that ;)
After lunch at the mountain we walked through the bog on the back of the mountain down hill through a very nice landscape, where we found our first reindeer corpse.
We walked a long a very beautiful river valley 'till we got to a fireplace at a very nice lake. We all enjoyed this trail very much. Some of the group decided then to walk some more kilometers, Roman and I decided to walk home and prepare the ovens and the fireplace for the barbecue in the evening.

The river valley:

As I already mentioned, on this evening we made a barbecue with sausages at the fireplace. Mhhhmmm!!!!

4. Day 3 at Urho Kekkonen National Park

On the last day we had to go back to the entrance at Kilopää. The main plan was to go another route back to get some more impressions of the National Park. The route would be about 20km. So we left the cottage to walk this route. Unfortunately decided Roman after 20 meters to slip and fall into the river during the crossing. So he was totally wet and pissed off. (understandable)
However, he decided to walk back the way we came on the first day and not this route, because the other is shorter (15km).
I got no good feeling to let someone walk alone this path, so I decided to go with him, while the others stuck to the original plan. In the end I think It was a good decision, because 20km could be quite hard to walk. We reached the car about 1,5h before the others, so we went to Saarenkylä for shopping and were reunited with the others after that.

About 6 o'clock pm we went back to Rovaniemi to our cabins.

5. Rovaniemi - Arctic Circle

On the very last day we wanted to see some sights in Rovaniemi and wanted to visit the Arctic Circle with the Santa Claus Village. We started the cars about 9 and wanted to leave the camping area, when this strange noise came from the front of my car. I stopped to check what is was. It was my V-belt, some parts of it were already ripped off ;(

I phoned ARBÖ in Austria, because i have this special insurance for holidays. The arranged a tow-car, which took 2 hours. The woman at the camping place was very nice and she invited us meanwhile for a coffee in the main house. The others were meanwhile in the center to see some sights. The tow-car brought me to a repair station. I waited 10 minutes, because they had lunch time, then they started immediately to repair my car. The repair took about 12 minutes and cost 58€ for the v-belt and 11€ for the working time. It was really very fast and I was really happy about that. So there was time to go to the arctic circle, where i got me my certificate for passing the arctic circle and of course a obligatory "kissing the arctic circle" picture:



I also visited the Santa Claus main post office. There you can buy postcards and put them in a special mailbox. They deliver this postcards exactly to christmas time with a special stamp on it. It would also be possible that Santa Claus sends some greetings, but this fat, white bearded, red clothed old man want 7,80€ for that, .... no thank you ;)
A lot of souvenirs there, so if you wanna loose a lot of money, this would be a good place for it.

Finally we started our way home to Lappeenranta. It took us about 9 hours again and we arrived about 1130 pm. Unfortunately I overlooked a 80 km/h limit, so I will get a fee for that ;(

It is impossible to tell all things that happened on that trip, so please forgive me that I will not mention everything here, this would need a lot of time to read and write and hell lot of space ;)

However, the trip was very very very nice. Thanks to all participants, you all were great and it was really fun and a wonderful, unforgettable trip.

Of course there are a lot, lot, lot of photos in my gallery (And still more to come, so look out for them). I also got a lot of videos, but I will not publish them in the internet at the moment, because it would took to much space (~1,5 GB).