We’ve been in Sweden for almost two weeks now, and I like it better every day. Dad told you about our mountain biking adventures, but the next day we all piled into the rental car and went out to explore Sweden.

True to form, mom pointed out a gravel road not half an hour into our trip and off the freeway we went. It was an old logging road that ended in a round about that was suprisingly clean. An area like this at home would be full of beer cans.

The Swedish forest is really cool. All the trees are very young and thinned out because of all the logging. They also are stripped of their bark halfway up!

We were also surprised to see that the ground cover reminded us of Scotland, even though we’re farther north.

A lot of the roads are reddish, but we couldn’t figure out why until we saw the rocks out in the ‘wilderness’- they all have some mineral in them that makes them red!

Combined with the lichen, it makes for very pretty rocks.

But despite looking our hardest and even honking our horn to try and startle them, we didn’t see any moose. A fox ran across the road at one point, but the only wildlife we got close to were the bugs (Sweden has horseflies too, it turns out. Ouch).

A couple hours drive brought us to the tiny town of Nusnäs (population 729) where they make those colorful wooden horses.

We spent a couple hours there watching the carving and painting process before raiding the souvenir shops. I stupidly bought a blanket that I’ll probably regret buying until the second we get home. Speaking of souvenirs, we’re at the point where we’ll probably have to get a little suitcase just to get them home. Our carry-ons are too small. Whoops.

On our way home, we stopped beside a gorgeous lake to stretch our legs. Mom and I waded a little bit. It was suprisingly warm!

Tomorrow we’re leisurely driving back to Stockholm before catching our plane to London the next day. It’s been a beautiful and relaxing week up here in the mountains. Time to plunge back into a massive city and start touring again!

We’ve started our vacation from touring! It is really nice not to have any bus reservations, or museums we have to see.

Plus it’s is really beautiful up here. It feels and looks like the Mt. Hood/Mt. Raineer area until you look closer and see the trees aren’t really what ours look like, the buildings are constructed a little different and painted black or red. Not our normal barn red a beautiful deep burgundy red and many of the roofs are “living roofs”. I would like to know what kind of barrier they use under all that moss etc to keep the spring thaw from dripping inside the house.

About 10 days into the trip Maggie got quite homesick but that only lasted a day. Michael seems fine, dramatic sighs from time to time but overall he is engaged and I think enjoying himself. The Viking stuff interests him the most. I was glad to see the British Museum has lots of Viking history too.

Maggie didn’t think the thatched roofs worked well but I thought those buildings were dry and would quite cozy with a fire burning. I didn’t see chimneys though so I expect the Vikings lived with a lot of smoke in the winters. The king had a huge lodge and the rest had smaller huts. I’ve been impressed with the use of stones and wood to prevent mud in main streets clear back to the 900s up to the 1790s. I wonder why that didn’t get brought to America’s wild Wild West or even the early days back east. How much of the original towns used cobble stones? Guess I need to explore the east coast too. Better figure out some way to retire eventually.

For my fellow water snobs – tap water everywhere has been just fine for drinking.

It really does feel a bit like home to be sitting in a timeshare resort with lots of families walking past. The tone of voices (adults and kids) is the same but then I realize I don’t understand what they are saying and there is a bit of an accent of course 😉 The other reason I know we aren’t at home is I can’t understand the washing machine. It’s suppose to be drying the clothes now but instead it’s washing them again. Time for Google translate again – there isn’t much english up here.

Like Maggie noted earlier – we must look Swedish because all of a sudden I have to ask cashiers to talk to me in English.

The ride up hear was beautiful lots of rivers, lakes and Lupine. Unlike at home the wild Lupine hear blooms in pink, white and even variegated colors. I’ll look for some seeds to bring home 🙂

My chronic pain issues haven’t been too bad and pain meds are keeping them very manageable. Best of all is remembering to do my Physical Therapy though.

It’s fun to be on vacation where the locals vacation! We went to the grocery store and bought some stuff we’re not sure about. Wayne googled one thing we didn’t take – turns out to be reindeer summer sausage – we’ll have to go back for that!

Sorry this is all such a random brain dump. We’re using the iPad with a key board which is ok but too much effort with out a mouse to move paragraphs around and make this more cohesive.

Feel free to ask questions!

The weather was fantastic today. Lower 70’s and perfectly blue skies. So what a better way to spend the day than in a museum?
We went to the Swedish History museum and it was amazing. They had a Viking exhibit full of artifacts from Birka and all over Scandinavia. They even had a skeleton of a young girl and a reconstructed model of her face!

After the museum, we split up. Dad and Michael hit up the local amusement park-

While me and mom tried to go shopping. I say tried because we got on a ferry that took us only halfway to where we wanted to go before turning around, so we had to take a tram, and then the subway to into the center of Stockholm. By the time we got there around 6:30, most of the little stores had closed up. So we headed for a relaxing evening at home. Tomorrow we’ll go back downtown. It’s our last day in Stockholm tomorrow too.

Happy Fourth of July!