Arctic Circle Norway to Arctic Circle Sweden

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Took a photo at 2am of a bright blue sky with lovely pink clouds.
At 3.30am was woken up by rain pounding on the roof so when we got up everything was damp and engulfed in heavy low cloud.
Very little traffic on the road as we left quite early and on a Sunday.
Drove out of Norway, over a small mountain (little pimple compared to some we have crossed !) and we were suddenly, without formality, in Sweden. Not much difference at first. Plenty of lakes and water and mountains but not clearly seen as the cloud was still very low.
We spotted a glimpse of a dramatically tumbling waterfall but couldn’t see it properly for the trees, then followed it for miles as it got bigger and wider until it broke out into a pretty lake with snows on its banks where we stopped for photos.
We had to go south first as some mountains in our way and we did this for about 100 miles. The very flat lakes we passed were pretty at first but some become all of a muchness as it were. No buildings and don’t think we saw any living thing for about 2 hours.
We did pass along one terrible stretch of road near Laisdalen. Passed a little roadworks sign and suddenly we found ourselves driving for miles and miles (about 10 I think) along a completely unsurfaced road, just big nasty grit. Awful and such a relief to come back to tarmac.
Eventually got to a small town (Arvidsjaur) where we turned north. From this point all we saw were trees, and trees, and trees…….. . We started a game of I-Spy but it got boring with only the letter T as an option. As well as tree, T also stands for Tarmac and there was a lot of that as well !
Then great excitement and we changed to the letter R when we spotted our first reindeer. It was just hanging about on the edge of the road and seemed more than happy to have its photo taken.
The drive was much more fun after that as we looked out for more reindeer and we had a count of 7 by the time we got to the Swedish Arctic Circle. Not much of a landmark in Sweden, not like the Norwegian one. We climbed some steps to the café and shop but soon left and drove to our campsite, a few miles up the road, at Jokkmokk.
Surprised by how warm it is, considering how far we are North. Lots of children on the campsite and mainly Swedish. Not seen a GB vehicle anywhere. Was considering a swim in the most inviting looking pool when we had a 30 minute thunder storm with torrential rain. One hour later I paddled my way through the grass to the pool and had a lovely swim in brilliant sunshine !

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Photos

Pretty Swedish lake
just over the border from Norway

Terrible road
unsurfaced for miles en route for Jokkmokk

Campsite lake
Pity about the mossies