Day 47: Inari to Ivalo

August 17, 2024

Beautiful Ride on a Noisy Road

“We could stop and make a pot of tea,” Rachel says when Patrick says take it slow today. Check-in to our reserved cabin is at 3pm and Patrick doesn’t want to get there too early. This is different from how he usually approaches the day by getting to the destination early. Rachel is referring to how when solo cycling in NZ and the day meeting Patrick outside Nelson, “What are doing?” Patrick asked after we reached the summit. “Fixing tea,” she said. He quickly recognized this might take a while and got his cook stove out and made the tea.

Sometime during the night the rain stopped and this morning the rainfly is dry. Last night the music festival didn’t interfere with our sleep. We set out thinking we might even have a tailwind today. The road is not hilly but not flat either. But it is noisy today. Lots of lots of motorcyclists going north today constantly passing one by one in groups or solo, all must be heading toward the rally we were told about.

This guy is trying to cross the road. I wonder how it survives winter up here.

“I can’t believe how lucky we are,” Patrick says when we stop in the woods for a food break. Then continues: “no bugs!” Other than a few days ago when there were small gnats that hung around our faces going slowly uphill.

We follow a long flat stretch along the river and then we see a sign for a café. Our first thought is that it’s too early and they won’t be open. But it is! We stop for coffee and a pastry, Patrick again checks out the puukko knives, still pondering on which one to buy before we leave Finland.

There’s a bike path that takes us into Ivalo, we pass a junction with a road sign to Murmansk Russia at 303 km. All border crossings between Finland and Russia are closed though, so no sense going that way.

We stop at the supermarket for supplies. There is a buffet lunch place next door and we decide to eat lunch here. While sitting there eating, hundreds of motorcyclists parade through town, then circle back once again. There is a man with a sign holding back pedestrians and other traffic. The buffet is pretty nice, mostly having the assortment of salad, salmon, fruits and sweets. All capped off by coffee.

Imagine the noise of hundreds and hundreds of motorcycles all at once

We shop at the grocery store and wait for the motorcycle parade to pass, then we continue on the bikepath a two more kilometers to the Arctic River Camp. We found a good deal for a small cabin here and decided to take a restday. There is a nice restaurant where we have our dinner.

According to our app there is a good chance to see the aurora here tonight so Patrick sets an alarm to check it out around midnight before clouds are supposed to roll in. When he pokes his head out of the cabin there is still too much light in the sky from the setting sun, so even though there might be northern lights they would not be very visible here. Funny that right now you need to be further south to get some night time and see the northern lights.

Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 2,377 km (1,476 miles)

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