Traveling with the Stanfords 2025

After we said our goodbyes to Lennart and the Sampi Nature Camp we headed west to Abisko a small mountain town close to the Norwegian border. It was a beautiful location, on the edge of a lake surrounded by  mountains. We woke to a cloudy snowy day, with a forecast for more of the same all day. Hard to take landscape photos in a white out, so we spent the day relaxing and working on photos. Sara went for a short walk on the lake - it was beautifully quiet in the snow. Saturday 12th of March we started the 400km drive to our next location - Lofoten Islands, Norway. It was a beautiful day, and the drive was full of stunning views. We stopped for a picnic lunch to eat the sandwiches we'd picked up at the grocery store in Sweden, right before driving into Norway. We had been advised to get groceries there because it was cheaper than Norway.  This was a common theme, apparently Norwegians who are close to the border drove to stores in both Sweden and Finland to take advantage of lo...

Saturday 5th of March was our travel day to Sweden. Europcar luckily had the car ready for us by 3pm. Originally we were told 7pm, and we really didn't want to drive 270km in the dark and snowy conditions. We picked up our little VW Polo and managed to stuff all our bags into the back and set off. The roads were covered in hard packed snow most of the way, but it was surprisingly easy driving. We arrived at the Reindeer Lodge in Jukkasjärvi, near Karuna  just after dark.  We were staying in one of five idyllic cottage with a wood stove to keep warm, and access to a log cabin for food preparation and separate buildings for showers and bathrooms. The facilities are run by Nutti Sámi Siida, a family run Sami company who organize experiences based on Sámi culture. They offer this special lodging close to reindeer so there are opportunities to interact with these lovely animals. We fell asleep to the crackling of the wood fire, just delightful.  The ne...

We headed north on Monday Feb 28th, taking a short flight from Helsinki to Ivalo where we were met by our guide from Aurora Service Tours. Canice (from Ireland), picked up the other guests and we stopped at the grocery store to get food for the next four days. After a 2 1/2 hr drive mostly on hard packed snow roads we arrived in Utsjoki, right on the Norwegian border. We settled into our very comfortable cottages - complete with wood stoves and personal saunas! Later when it was dark w e climbed up the viewing tower  hoping to see the aurora, but it was too cloudy so we called it an early night. The next three nights we met every evening at 8pm in the Kota - a round wooden hut with a very large fire in the middle. We discussed the nights plans with Canice and the other guests, Heather from Wales, and Lena and Noveta from Indonesia. The weather at camp was cloudy every night, but Canice knew locations typically within an hour drive that potentially had clear weather. We found t...

We are really excited to set out on a five week expedition to the far north of Finland, Sweden and Norway, plus some time in England and Portugal!  The primary goal is to explore Lapland as the north of the Scandinavian countries is called, and view the Aurora - Northern lights.  We left Dallas on Wednesday 23rd Feb, a day early as our flight to New York for Thursday was canceled, seemed getting out and spending a night in NY was better than missing our flight to Helsinki. I'll spare you the details of waiting endlessly for a plane in Dallas that was stuck in a maintenance hanger, or waiting for the JFK Finnair counter to open so we could check our four very large bags. Needless to say we were very happy to reach our hotel in Helsinki Friday afternoon. Saturday we met a friend of Sara's for lunch and had a tour of the area. Tavi used to work in Dallas with Sara and it was great to see him and get updated on his new life in Finland. We spent the afternoon wa...