Day 2 of my adventure is started. After about 10Km I’m passing the boarder to Finland today. I’m aware of the long distance between places where you can buy food, so I have planned ahead for this. It’s been a long day with some boring roads and a BIG surprise.

Bad weather reports
I sleep until 10am today, which is planned, since the weather report says that the rain should stop around 12. I don’t know why I trust the weather report, since the only time they are right is when they report rain and bad weather.

It’s just to put on the rain clothes and start cycling. There are still people in the river fishing for salmon and a group of people is standing on the bridge watching.

Hello Finland
After about 10-15 Km, I’m passing the boarder to Finland. The roads is much more flat than yesterday. I stop at the boarder supermarket and realize that I haven’t opened my visa card for Finland yet…. BUMMER. Luckily for me, I have enough food for today and 1 more day.

The roads are quite boring, just forrest and mail boxes. Not much for me to take pictures of, which suites me well, since it’s raining too much to take the camera up from the bag.

Inari is today’s goal, quite far, but doable
My unofficial plan for today is Inari, which is 157Km from Neiden. There is only 1 reason that I aim this high, there is basically nothing in between, not a shop, gas station or cafe. This is a long distance to go in this weather, but I’m able to hold a good speed today.

After around 70Km, I’m getting close to emptying my bottles of water, so I start looking for houses close to the road with people outside. This is not easy here, most of the houses are far away from the road, and the only thing you see is their mailbox.

Finally a house with people not hiding from me
Suddenly I hear a dog barking, I turn around and I see a guy walking around in his garden. I turn my bicycle around and cycle to his house and asks him if I could fill up my bottles of water. He replies yes and also invites me in for coffee and some food. He should just know how much this means to me!

I continue towards Inari, the roads, the mailboxes, the forrest are the same, everything is the same. When I see a car passing with 1 tree on his trailer, I’m thinking… Couldn’t you just cut one down where you needed it, there is more than enough around here!

Reindeers are normal, but WAIT… whats this?
I’ve seen a lot of reindeers today, walking on the road and on the sides. This is one of the reasons that the truck drivers call this road the longest 100Km in the world, normally they can keep a good speed, but here they need to watch out.

Suddenly I hear some trees breaking on the side of me, I quickly turn around and are shocked… Is that really what I think it is? WOW, it is a bear turning his back towards me and running up in the forrest. It took a few seconds until I realised what I just witnessed.

Finally I reach today’s goal, shorter stage tomorrow
I’m getting close to Inari and are ready for some food and relaxation. It’s been a long day in the rain, but well worth it, now I’m back in civilisation.

Tomorrow’s trip will most likely be close to 70Km, so I’m not gonna be this late then. Because of the weather, it’s not that many pictures today.

GPS Data from today’s distance: