I went North

[Hovmod_imp]

Day four: I can see Russia from my house!
Tana - Lakselv (542 km)

A fifteen minute ride along the river from the cabin you'll find Tana Bru, the main town in Tana. It means Tana Bridge. There's a bridge. If you want to go to Finland, you cross this bridge. If you want to go to Vadsø, the city my father watched the Germans destroy when he was thirteen, you cross this river. If you want to go to Russia, you cross this bridge. I didn't know what I wanted, and the heat almost made it hard to think. But I started to get an idea, and after a couple of confirming phone calls, it was a plan: I'm going to Kirkenes.
My girlfriend, who I've been with for nine years and plan to hold on to forever, also has a history in Finnmark. More than me in many ways, because her mother married and moved to Neiden, so she lived there for a few years as a child/teenager. My mother-in-law died many years ago, but this guy, my GF's step-dad, is a journalist in Kirkenes. I have never met him, and I took the road to Kirkenes. These are the first (or last?) 140 kms of E6, which runs all the way to Rome (as roads do), and it was *peak* motorcycling - long, sweeping curves through a changing, somewhat alien landscape. I have yet to scrape my foot pegs, but I must have been close here. Wow. What a road. If I lived up here, I would go out at night and paint red and white stripes on the inside of the curves, Joe Bar style, just to claim it for us. Picture 2 in the first post is from this stretch.

If you're like Pdedse and occasionally look at the map as you're reading, you have seen that I am now not only far north, I have also gone significantly eastward. As you may know, Norway borders Russia, and outside of Kirkenes you can take the road to Murmansk, Russia's northernmost city. It's right there, and unlike that notorious claim about Wasilla you may recall, you *can* actually see Russia from up here, it's right there across the Jacobselv river. Even now, with all the military restrictions caused by Putin's aggression and whatnot, Russian citizens have special rights to travel to Kirkenes and the surrounding area for trade and "brotherhood", and likewise for Norwegians in Russia.
I didn't mention the war, but this is exotic for me as well.



Stepdad-in-law welcomed me to his house and treated me to a couple of salmon sandwiches, we talked about the people we both are related to through falling in love with two amazing women, and I'm glad I did. Faces to names, and I'm off again. 282 kms for a bite of salmon and a coffee, but those roads! *sigh*

My next task is to get home, maximising time on coastal roads.

Everybody has heard of Ifjordfjellet (Ifjord Mountain), where they have made a road across from Varanger and eastern Finnmark to the north coast, a road that you all need to go ride. If this bit of twisting, winding, made for motorcycle riding asphalt hadn't been three days away, I would go here once a week.





(see where the road vanishes in the far away over there? Oh yes!)




After passing the highest point of the road, where the descent begins, I suddenly got consumed with a panicky sense of having to get out of my clothes, so I stopped and undressed like a maniac. If you saw a naked man swatting horseflies on Ifjordfjellet last week, it was probably me.

I slept here. Lakselv. I'll talk about Lakselv in the tale of day five, later.