First week of vacation and time for our annual roadtrip up north, this time to Tärnaby. Coincidentally we escape the worst heatwave in years.
We manage a reasonably early start on Sunday morning and drive up along the west side of lake Vänern, turn north just before Karlstad and arrive in Orsa in Dalarna late in the afternoon. In Orsa we stay at the railway station bed and breakfast. It’s a warm evening and we take a wander around town and eat dinner at a Greek pizza bar.
Monday’s goal is Stora Blåsjön, close to the Norwegian border, on Vildmarksvägen. It’s a beautiful drive. We stop for lunch on a side road, boil some eggs and drink coffee. We’ve rented a cabin down by the water. We read about the heatwave hitting Europe. It’s 12 degrees and light rain outside.
Tuesday morning is cold but it has stopped raining. Vildmarksvägen goes over the tree line up over the real mountains. We encounter reindeer grazing by the road, or aimlessly wandering on the road. Cooper barks at them but they don’t take any notice. We stop at Stekenjokk, the site of an old mine, along with hundreds of mobile homes and caravans, and people stopping to try their luck at catching a mountain char or two. The scenery is magnificent.
We arrive in at Marita and Mattias in Tärnaby early in the afternoon.
Wednesday we take the cablecar from Hemavan upp the mountain to the Kungsleden hiking track. 5 adults and 4 dogs. We worried about the weather, if it was going to rain, but it turned out to be a perfect day for hiking; not too cold and not too hot, and it didn’t rain. Mattias cooks up some Goulash on the Primus storm kitchen and we eat and enjoy the sprawling views while Cooper tries to catch mosquitoes.
Dinner is freshly smoked whitefish (sik) and we watch Germany beat Austria in the women’s football on TV together with Sigge, Marita’s 90 year old father.
Marita’s cousins drop in for a barbeque on Thursday afternoon. Hamburgers, potato sallad, cooked coffee, and Stenmark stories make for a very pleasant afternoon. The weather could have been better but at least it wasn’t raining.
The weather clears a bit later in the day and we decide to drive up to Ruttjebäcken and its spectacular waterfall in the evening. The rain and the melting snow means there is plenty of water in the falls. The track is really wet and difficult to traverse. The mosquitoes are ravenous. They haven’t bothered me up until now but this is torture. I go to take some long exposure shots of the falls and it feels like they will eat me alive. It’s a stunning place and well worth the torture.
Friday we start the trip back home to Göteborg. We book a cabin in Tänndalen and drive over the mountain tops again, being careful not to hit any reindeer. We watch the Swedish girls beat the Belgians, get a good nights sleep, and drive to Göteborg after a hearty hotel breakfast.
That, in a nutshell, was the summer roadtrip this year.
