Canoe trip, day 2, worth every penny

It's not often that there's something worth rising at 2AM for. But Eric and I hit the jackpot on the morning of July 13.




The place we had camped was on an island between two relatively narrow water flows (one of which was listed as a rapid in the route description, but wasn't really anything to write home about), with a smallish lake below. We basically circuited the island and the lake, taking in the twilight (it was too light for stars to show) and the mist-covered still lake. We probably spent 30-45 minutes on the water. After that we returned to camp, had breakfast and broke camp in time for some sunrise pictures.


The rest of the day's canoeing was somewhat anticlimactic -- we spent a fair amount of time on relatively large lakes that had a fairly stiff breeze kicking up some choppy conditions.

We spent the night on the grounds of the Old Luomen School (sorry no English page for that that I could find), a property managed by the town of Jämsänkoski. At our landing we were greeted by a friendly gentleman as a group of children played in the swimming area off the small dock. He explained that they were using the facilities for a short (3-4 day) bible camp, under the auspices of a local Presbyterian minister. The land however was available for camping, as were use of the bathrooms and sauna. So I had my first sauna. My first reaction was "interesting...". Eric's been doing them for a while, and seems to quite like them.

After eating our dinner (politely refusing the offer of leftover sausage soup from the kind folks), we observed the campers play some somewhat silly games, and then apparently get a preaching-to by a young woman. (It was hard to tell, even with our guide giving some translation assistance...) The silliest game involved 4 campers being spirited away, and a special table prepared, with three upside-down buckets on it. Bucket #1 contained pine cones (a plentiful object in Finland). Bucket #2 contained pencils. One by one the four campers were brought in to turn over the buckets in order and count the objects therein, with the apparent objective that the one doing it the fastest would win.

Some of you will note I haven't said what was under bucket #3. Well, imagine yourself going through this exercise of furiously counting things, and then turning over a bucket to find it containing the head of another camper! Like I said, the table was quite special, with room for one of the smaller boys to hide under.