March 28: Bugøynes to Inari

The next day, we had to get all the way back to Rovaniemi in time to catch the evening train back to Helsinki.

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Another lovely morning.

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I went up on the rocks again.

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Good morning Vadsø.

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The house from the rocks.

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Sledding tracks? Looks exceedingly dangerous if so.

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From the laundry room downstairs.

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We were supposed to leave at 8:30 to make sure we had a good time buffer. Here we are exiting the driveway.

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Instead of going back to Inari exactly the way we came, we drove west along the coast and then more or less directly south, through Utsjoki.

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The whole coastal route was wildly scenic.

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Mountains.

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The same fishing pens as we saw when we first saw the ocean.

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OH NOES WE ARE GOING TO CRASH INTO MOUNTAINS

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...that is, if the mountains don't fall on us first.

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Tundra.

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Those Finnmarkers sure do seem to like sticks in the ground.

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Yeah, you're right, I totally Photochopped this. No way this actually exists.

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A hamlet. I wonder what the buildings with long lines of windows toward the right are.

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"Large elk hazard." At this point we had turned back inland.

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Things quickly got treeder.

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The Tana Bru (bridge over the Tana River). — Edit 4/8/2023: this bridge has been replaced by a new one!

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Not sure what that big net is all about, unless it has to do with aliens, in which case it makes complete sense. — Edit 5/23/2019: somewhere around this stretch is Nuorgam, the northernmost point in Finland.

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For a while the Tana forms the boundary between Norway and Finland, and the highway was on the Norwegian side.

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Finally we crossed over back into Finland, immediately arriving at the town of Utsjoki.

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This quite large supermarket was nearly the only obvious evidence of settlement.

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Utsjoki has this old church, from the mid-19th century, which is well known, and it was visible from the highway for a few fleeting moments, during which time I was able to snap it.

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The clouds gathered for a while, but luckily they didn't bring any snow.

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Waves of land.

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Yup, sure is vast.