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As I mentioned in my previous post, we road tripped it to Höga Kusten on the third weekend in October. Interesting fact: The high coast is a UNSECO World Heritage site. This trip was much more relaxed than the Isalvsleden Trail. We met out front of ICA (as usual) around 8 in the morning and thus began the fun task of fitting everyone, and everyone’s shit into 3 cars and a “van”. I think by van they mean something about the size of a PT cruiser (maybe even a little smaller) with a sliding door on the side.. If you read the other post and are curious about my math, one of our friends had a car too.

Once everyone, and everything was situated we were off like a herd of turtles! Along the way we had to stop for food and booze-the two essentials in any road trip/camping weekend, because for some reason that I can’t remember, we decided not to do that a head of time. Eventually we made it to Skuleskogen National Park.

Now, even though this weekend was less relaxing in terms of distance, other issues arise when you have a large group – like communication. So I was under the impression we would park, then maybe hike 1 km, drop our stuff, set up the tents, etc. then explore. However, that wasn’t the deal at all (when I realize this I’m glad I went with wine and not beer). So as we are starting our hike they say, no we are hiking 4 km to the spot it’s really nice, blah blah blah… so whatever, 4 km, no big deal we did 60 the last weekend. So we start going, and we come to an intersection. From previous conversations we were under the impression the camp site was to the right. So we turn right and keep walking. The trail was beautiful and went right along the coast. We stopped for a bit and enjoyed the little beach there, took some pictures, blah blah blah..  Then, someone ended up getting a call from Tom or someone, I don’t know. But essentially when we turned right, the others turned left. ooops. So they ended up turning around and joining us. We continue on, and most people were going at their own pace so the group stretched out. At one point there was a side path to another beach, and I stopped and enjoyed it while most everyone else just walked by. It was a beautiful beach and it was nice just to sit and enjoy it alone. I even tried to be artsy and took a bunch of random photos like this one (right).

Eventually, we made our way to the camp spot, only to decide we weren’t camping there, thus we walked another km and a half further to a better spot. It actually was much better. It had a nice campfire pit, on the water and had a cabin for those who didn’t want to sleep in a tent which was a bonus. I should mention, that even though it was October, it is Northern Sweden, and it was cold! The big joke on both of our trips was my massive sleeping bag that I bought. However, I got the last laughing when everyone else was cold and I was toasty warm! Mwahahaha! I was so warm that I didn’t even wear socks to bed, and had just a thin base layer on!

We set up the tents, cooked food over the fire, sang some songs, etc. Good times! The next day we had a leisurely morning, then continued on our hiking adventure. Our way back to the car we took a different trail back to the cars (remember where they turned left, and we turned right, yeah so we came back on the left trail).

It was spectacular! We hiked up this mountain to a beautiful look out, and a lake! The lake was just starting to freeze, and it looked super cool! Then we climbed up further and went through this narrow path between two rock faces, then up on top of them. From there you could see the lake, and the sea below at the same time.

We then began our decent from the mountain. as we were walking across this barren mountain following the others, Nat asks “have you seen any trail markers lately?” and I say no… Immediately we look around and see the trail markers about 50 m away from where we were, and about 100 m from everyone else ahead, and going in the complete opposite direction. We had a good laugh over that, then continued down the right path.

About 3/4 of the way back Nat, Mitch and I realize we have more than enough time before we have to be back to the cars, so we stopped by this pile of rocks to have a break. As we were sitting there, Nat started reading the brochure and as it turns out, this pile of rocks are actually an interesting geological formation and are described as Stone fields below:

Nat reading about the Stone Fields in the background

“After the retreat of the ice sheet, Slåttdalsberget was just long, shallow bay. The till from the hill was washed away and sorted by the waves. Stones were polished and accumulated along the hillsides into stone fields. The park´s largest stone field is found east of this hill. The stones provide a habitat for many types of beautiful lichens. In some stone fields you can find raised beaches created by ancient waves and powerful sea ice movements. Adders like to bask among the sunwarmed stones.”– Skuleskogen website

The most amazing part about that, is we just happen to decide to sit there and have a break, other wise we would have missed out on enjoying that unique land feature.Soon after we made it back to the vehicles and drove back to Umeå.