Its a long way to Rovaniemi

Last night Runo offered to be our chauffeur today for the drive to Rovaniemi.  

Is just a little drive for those of us from Australia - a mere 543.2km!  This way, we get to relax a little during the drive and Donna gets a break from being main photographer and Runo can give us snippets of his knowledge and wisdom en-route.  It is a lovely gesture and greatly appreciated.  

We meet him at their home just before 9 am and drive almost half the length of Finland, stopping for a quick lunch and fuel at a roadstop before arriving at the air-base at Rovaniemi about 4:45 pm - just in time for Runo to get his military flight back to a base near Jyväskylä at 5:30 pm.  He will then get a bus ride home that will take him about an hour!

The drive is on really good roads and we are constantly being teased by the promise of moose sightings - these signs are placed about every 500 m along the road.  Bit of false advertising really, we saw none.  Not one! 

As we travel further north, the crops change as do the forests.  The same crops are harvested, but the yield is smaller, the crops do not grow as high.  The forests also thin with the trees not having the girth or the height of those growing further south.

Runo explains that the only way that these farmers are able to continue farming is with the government subsidies provided to ensure that farming land is still worked.  When you see the size of some of these smallholdings, it is easy to see that none of them can be financially viable.  After a long, dry summer last year where many crops failed, this year has been more productive and the wrapped hay is testament to this.  

This part of Finland has a large timber growing and processing industry with much of it going to paper production and China. We pass quite a number of timber trucks, seeing that the timber logs are significantly smaller than what we are used to seeing at home.  In fact, the way the logs are loaded on the trucks reminds us of the layout of the timber frames you find in Ikea and similar Scandinavian house stores back home!

Finland is the land of the lakes and from time to time, we come lakeside with many of them.  Lots have boats resting on the shoreline, exhausted after a summer of fun-giving.  We also see lots of signs to camping spots along their shores.  Runo's parents have a cabin in Eastern Finland that the family uses from time to time.  Lucky them, although I am told that the mosquitoes can be horrendous!

At last we arrive and drop Runo off at one of the back gates at the airbase, complete with requisite mounted plane, before contacting our hosts for the night and collecting the key to their inner city apartment.  Kikki is very welcoming and friendly and has provided a good selection of tourist information in their modern and tastefully decorated apartment.

We head in to town for a bite to eat only to find that the University here is also having the O week celebrations this week.  I watched two groups for a couple of minutes - one group would sing/chant and then the other group would reply in like.  Boisterous yes, but all good clean fun from what I observed. 

As the crow flies, we are only 50 kms from the Swedish border, but we don't do things the easy way - first we are driving back to Riikka and Runo's and then on to Helsinki for the weekend.

We are off to Santa Claus Village back across the Arctic Circle tomorrow.

But before we go to bed, we are going to have a look skyward - the Northern Lights were seen here two days ago - wouldn't THAT be a bonus!