August 15 - Our Airbnb host gave us a ride to the Kiruna bus station and we took the 90 minute bus to Abisko on the skinniest of pages roads. We noticed that the terrain looked very much like Northern Minnesota in the iron range.

At the starting location, we took a detour to explore a demo Sami village - interesting sod houses and food storage. Then, we started hiking South on the Kungsleden (King's Trail) at 10:30.

As luck would have it, our first day of hiking south was also the final day for an event having 1,700 people hiking north. We got plenty of practice with the Swedish version of saying 'Hi' as we past others on the trail. It's 'Hej' which sounds just like 'Hi', but sometimes they say it twice.

We were planning to hike 9 miles so that we would clear the border of a national Park which had no camping. Once or on public land, you can set up your tent pretty much anywhere.

Just outside the national park boundary, a group of event support staff was serving swedish pancakes for their hikers but they had a ton left. So, we got to have a pancake with blueberries and whipped cream for a very unexpected snack. Since it was still early, we decided to hike farther.

We are camped out on the barren tundra with no one around. We set up our new tent and got water and had shepherd's pie for dinner. At 9:00, we were all cleaned up and settled into our tent and it was still light out. Since we are in the land of the midnight sun above the Arctic circle, it never gets completely dark at night.

Some things that were interesting - only a few birds and no animals, miles of boardwalk on the trail, diversity of hikers we've met. South Carolina, Germany, Sweden, Poland.

Check out my current location on the map.

(My tracking app that was supposed to be dropping notes to this blog isn't working. So, we're actually at the end of our 4th day of hiking and have a little coverage. The tracking map link shows our progress)