Reitti 2000 vs. Kona Jake 10.22.2016 (Day 2)

  Obviously we survived the night, and didn't get murdered by the other dudes that camped there. In the morning we made some hot oatmeal and coffee to fight off the chill. We also got a good fire going. The pot on the fire in the photo has pond water and eggs boiling in it, which belonged to the three other guys. The water was brown and dyed their eggs brown as well. 

    We had decided in the evening that we would only be camping one night for this trip, so we weren't in a huge hurry in the morning. We got out of there around 9:00 to see how much rough trail we had left. Our camp mates told us it was only a few kilometers to a more groomed trail, but they were eating food cooked in pond water, so I wasn't sure if they were trustworthy or not.

    Before the trail smoothed out it began to feel like we were travelling over a small mountain range. As it turned out, the hikers were right and this only lasted a couple kilometers.

    The weather was much colder, so we stopped in Salmi to have a coffee and some snacks. This place offered a nice lunch buffet, but we stuck with a sandwich and some karjalan pies. When we went inside we were talking in english, and I'm sure the girl was annoyed to have to use english with us, but I think we confused her when we both ordered in finnish. The food was a bit over priced, but it was nice to sit in a warm place with a warm drink.

    These blue and white markers are used to mark the trail throughout, and they can be quite hard to find at times. As you can see in the second photo it was a tiny ball of ribbon, and often they would be 1/2 of a mile apart or more. It got quite difficult when were were deep in the forest and the trail would break off in 3 or 4 directions.

    Somewhere between these two photos we got closer to the sea and it got extremely windy. It was all I could do just to keep moving forward. Even though we were quite drained, we still had to take an end of the ride photo. Like I said before I would recommend riding this route to anyone. I ended up putting on just over 76 miles (122 km) for the trip. 

Reitti 2000 vs. Kona Jake 10.21.2016 (Day 1)

    There is a saying, "different horses for different courses", and I can agree with that... but I prefer the mindset that the best bike is the one you already have. You can read all you want about whether or not a cyclocross bike is "capable"of taking the trail, but you never truly know until you try.

    So after learning quite a lot during our trip in Turku we decided to take a route which goes north of Helsinki  and is called  Reitti(Route) 2000. I'd been reading about it after our last trip and I thought it looked like an awesome route.
 
Here is the Reitti 2000 trail map. We made some changes and called our version Reitti 3000.

    The trip started on Thursday afternoon with me catching the train from Vaasa to Helsinki. Now before I even start I need to say, I DID NOT FORGET ANYTHING this time. I know it is a bit of a miracle, but it happened. Anyway I arrived in Helsinki around 7:30 p.m., and we made a trip over to the local XXL sport in order to grab a few things before heading to Olli's place. When we arrived his girlfriend was more than kind enough to have a big meal waiting on us.

    That evening was spent making sure our bikes were all packed properly, and that there was nothing missing. We got up around 7 to eat a big breakfast and prepare ourselves for the trip.

    You can tell it's obviously not very warm in Finland anymore.

      If you ever have the chance to bike Reitti 2000 I recommend it. Much of the trail runs through suburbs of Helsinki, but once you get out into the forest it's really a beautiful place. This was the first time I noticed the needles on many of the trees here turn yellow and fall all over the place. I actually thought it was saw dust at first.

      Laavus are some of the weirdest and best things that a bikepacker or hiker could come across. This one was just meant for having a picnic so it had no floor inside, but the walls provided us with a nice wind break so we could cook some noodles for lunch. This was somewhere between 5 and 6 on the map, and we were discussing that we were looking forward to number 8 on the map, because it was suppose to be a place called Rinnekoti which should have a coffee shop and a store. We were going to stop and get a coffee and bun, as well as, stop in the store to take some stuff extra stuff for the evening. Bread and a couple beers would be nice to have.

     In the mean time with the idea of a store and some coffee ahead of us we kept trekking through the Finnish forest. It was a bit of a grey day, which takes away a lot of the beauty, but there were still some really nice views.

    As well as some really nice trails

      I was pretty excited about all the colors and when I came across this little pond with the red and yellow ground I really wanted to get some sort of photo. What you can't tell is that the red and yellow are moss and I'm basically standing in a swamp..... I was really glad to be wearing goretex shoes at that point.

     So eventually we made it to Rinnekoti. As it turns out it was good that we had pretty much carried enough food with us, because the coffee shop and the store ended up being the same place. Which was a disappointment, but at least we got some hot coffee and some buns to eat, as well as, taking some tea and tuna for later. They didn't have much else to offer except soda and chips. Luckily the lady was quite nice as well, and refilled our water bottles from the sink instead of making us buy bottled water.

    After Rinnekoti the trail follows a road leading out of town, and then all of a sudden it just turns off into the forest and gets a lot more difficult. It was hard to find markers at some points in here and we just had to follow our instincts. It didn't hurt that we were walking most of the time and had the confidence that even if we got off path we wouldn't get far.

    I felt a little bad for Olli, because he had to walk his bike through many parts that he could have ridden easily. He has a 29er and it was only because of my cyclocross bike that we had to walk through these rooted rough areas. There were however a few spots that we could ride in between having to walk them.

    And as always, Finland gave up many really nice views. This whole area was filled with many small lakes and ponds. I'm quite sure hiking our bikes in the forest would have been much more frustrating if we couldn't stop for a view every once and a while.

    Walking the bikes was taking up a lot more time than we thought, and it was getting fairly late. There were two laavus in this area of the trail and we originally planned to stay at the second one, but when we got to the first laavu we weren't sure how long it would take to get to the second one. We didn't know if the trail smoothed out or if we would be walking a bunch more, so we just decided to stay at laavu 1. It happened to be a pretty nice place.

    This laavu was quite large, and we were the only people there. So we got the fire going to make tea and some food. We ended up eating a mix of carrots, tuna, and ramen noodles mixed with coconut milk. A sort of camp padtai. After dinner we were enjoying the peace of the camp fire, when three other dudes joined us.
 

 

    I was disappointed that we would have to share the laavu, but they are for the general public, so you have to share them if others come along. It was a little annoying when they started unpacking their stuff and pulled out many packs of steaks and bell peppers. Our meal had a lack of red meat, because Olli was practicing a meat free October. Which would have normally been no big deal, but watching these guys cook their steaks in butter on a cast iron skillet while discussing which of the three ground pepper choices they wanted to use really sucked. Oddly enough they cooked their bell peppers in brown pond water, to each their own.

    Later in the evening two more people showed up, but thankfully they were just out for an evening hike and only stopped to make some coffee and eat some marshmallows. It would have been a really tight fit if they decided to stay. Although it might have been warmer for us, since we brought our summer sleeping bags that are rated for an extreme of 0* celsius.

    Needless to say we had several layers of clothes to wear plus the sleeping bag. It wasn't exactly the warmest night, but it was enough to make it through. It was 0* during the night, so we were right at the limit.

Turku archipelago September 2nd-4th 2016

       For a backpacking trip it seemed like a good idea to stick to a well-travelled path just in case I was unprepared in some way. Turku archipelago offers a really nice trail as well as an island hopping experience. I made the plan with my friend Olli about a month prior to departure and we ironed out a few small details, such as making some custom bags for our bikes.

    Here is a fun map of the two routes available through the Turku archipelago. We opted to ride the blue route which is quite a lot shorter. We were dealing with a short weekend and didn't want to over stretch our capabilities. As it turned out it was the perfect length route for the time we had, which was around 110 miles (177 km). We ended up taking a few liberties with the route(Olli planned out some nice sites for us), so we didn't follow this exact route, but its close enough.

    I took the train to Turku from Vaasa, because its simply the easiest and fasted way to travel with a bike. About 10 minutes into the first train ride I realized that I had forgot something. Now this isn't the first time, and as a matter of fact I almost always forget something, but this time I forgot my wallet. I shouldn't have been surprised given the last mountain biking trip we took I forgot my casual pants and I ended needing to borrow some. Luckily Olli didn't forget his wallet and I was able to borrow some money.  

 


    I arrived in Turku around 5:00 p.m. which gave me about a 1.5 hour wait for Olli to arrive, so the first thing to do is break the rules (The basic gist of the sign is that the spot is not for bikes). Of course there was nowhere to sit near the bike so I ended up moving it near a bench where I TRIED to read a book, but the guy talking to himself worried me a little so I spent more time watching what he was doing than reading.

    After Olli arrived we biked about 20 km to stay the night at Olli's friends place near Naantali. They were kind enough to feed us, warm up the sauna, and offer us the spare room. It didn't hurt that they had a couple of super cute dogs.

    Luckily they had an extra roll out mattress so we didn't have to try and share the single bed.(I was already prepared to sleep in my sleeping bag on the floor, so this was a nice surprise) We woke up the next morning at around 6:00 a.m., and again we were treated with a nice meal and coffee. We were then able to rearrange our stuff in the bags and get on our way at about 7:00 a.m..

    There weren't really any monuments to speak of until we came upon this old church and what appeared to be an old silo (although I'm not exactly sure it was a silo) in Rymättylä.

    It was a nice short break checking out the old buildings, as you can tell by the excitement on Ollis face. One of the neat things about this route is that we would get to take several ferry rides jumping from island to island. The first one was quite short and went from Airismaa to Aasaluoto.

 

    After a short ride across Aasaluoto we got to have a short break and wait for the longer ferry to Nauvo. I made the mistake here of opening a beer thinking I would have time to sit and drink it on the ferry, but it turned out there was a bar on the ferry and I couldn't drink it.

   
    So after our ferry ride to Nauvo we stopped in at the local K supermarket and picked up a few things for lunch as well as a couple drinks for the evening. We rode out of town looking for a place to eat, and as it turned out the rain began just about the time we were searching for a lunch spot so we found a nice tree to sit under for a little while, as the heavier stuff passed us by. Olli seemed to have lost his excitement from the church though.

   
    After lunch we took the small ferry from Nauvo island to Korppoo island where they have the ferries to Åland, and we had a bit of a coffee and map reading break. Again it was sort of mist raining so it was a good time for a break.

   Well..... this is Finland so you have to ride in the rain at some point. So we got our rain jackets on and went to check out Vattkast island. It looked like there might be some good stuff here on the map, but as it turned out we just biked to someones summer cottage and had to turn around and come back.

    On our way to our camp site we came across this self service shop in the middle of nowhere on our way to camp back on Nauvo...... I had high, high hopes that there would be candy in this shop.....

    But no.....

    Thanks to the cloud cover when we got to our camp the view was pretty grey, but it was still nice to find a place to make a fire and start cooking dinner.

    They have these things called laavu here, which translates as lean-to, and they usually have a fire pit. If you are lucky the shelter will have precut firewood as well as tools to cut more, but ours was the most basic. We had to gather wood for the fire from the surrounding area, but luckily someone had left not long before we got there and we were able to get the fire going from the left over coals.

What sort of Finnish adventure doesn't include grilling sausages?

    Laugh if you will, but there were the best noodles EVER. It's amazing what a warm meal will do for you on a dreary wet day.

        The little can stove worked wonderfully, and boiled the noodles and water in no time. We used it again to make coffee and cook breakfast. I carried 160ml of ethanol, which was more than enough for our needs.

    Somehow we got a belly full of food and the rain seemed to stop for a bit, so we took advantage and put up our tents. We hadn't really accounted for the fact that this area was basically a giant boulder, and any dirt was sitting on top of rock. Finding a place for the tent stakes turned out to be a lot harder than it originally seemed, but we got it done just in time for more rain to come along.

   So we spent the rest of the evening enjoying our couple beers and a little bit of Jameson under the laavu while trying to keep the fire from going out due to the rain. With the rain it had become a little chilly, so I had a plan to put on my wool socks and a couple layers when I went to bed, but the Jameson had me feeling extra warm. Needless to say I woke up before the sun with freezing toes, and I had to find my socks in the dark. It rained most of the night, but we survived and got up with the sun. The sun flooding our campground was both amazing to see and very welcomed.

    Breakfast..... Well it was warm anyway. Couscous, the food so nice they named it twice, is easy to carry and makes for a filling meal, but it isn't very exciting.

    Wool socks. I wouldn't recommend leaving home without a pair. I don't care where you are going, if you are in Finland take the wool socks. Bus, train, friends house, or to the forest, they are always a savior.

    After the morning I neglected to get many photos, but we stopped at the local Sale, and got a few liters of water to refill our bottles and got on our way again. At this ferry crossing I enjoyed a glorious bar of Fazer dark chocolate and watched as the clouds built back up. 

    After our ferry ride we found some nice bike path that was more like gravel single track that followed the road, which was fun until I started to feel myself running out of power. I also started talking about burgers somewhere around this time, and the hunger began. After consulting the map we were quite sure there must be food in Parainen, so we continued with the hope of burgers soon. Parainen didn't disappoint and we found the smallest Hesburger placed right on the canal. We were even given this high quality cardboard number so they could bring us the burgers and nuggets. I don't know if I was just hungry, or if this really was the best Hesburger I've ever had, but either way it was really, really good.

    After fueling up we had about 25-30 km to get into Turku, where we had a couple trains to meet.

    When you live in Vaasa you get used to the fact that sometimes the public transportation systems don't care as much about you. So I had to take a pendolino train home, which is great, except they don't allow bikes on them. Well lucky for me I was prepared with the old hockey bag which I've used to transport the bike by plane before. We reached the train station just as the rain started, so we took everything inside and packed up the bike right there in the waiting area next to the lockers.

It's a little blurry, but only because I was working so furiously.

    And ready to head back to Vaasa where I had a nice warm shower and clean clothes waiting for me.  On the train I could really smell myself, and I feel bad for the other passengers.