The final leg of my Retirement Travel Trifecta will commence when my family and I land in Helsinki on May 27, 2026, and board a plane for Rovaniemi, Finland, the capital of Scandinavian Lapland.
From there I will photograph a speck of the vast Lapland wilderness on the waterfall-laced Auttiköngäs Nature Trail. Lapland spreads across the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and a portion of Russia, where reindeer outnumber humans.
From the falls, we navigate through Finnish finger lake country to Pellow, Sweden, and follow a scenic northern route along the Torne River that borders the two countries to the Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park, on our way to Kautokeino, Norway, capital of the Sami, Europe’s only indigenous people.
Ultimate destination: Alta, Norway, the northernmost city in the world with 15,000 inhabitants, and the surrounding Altafjord and Alta Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that features 7,000 year-old rock art, with 20 hours of the Midnight Sun to work with.
Blogs
- The Southern Indiana-Northern Finland Connection: The Sami and Native Americans
- To the Scandinavian Arctic in the Midnight Sun, via Europe and the Upper Amazon River
Photo Archives
- Coming May 27
