Before the hiatus of this blog around the summer of 2021 and summer 2025, I did these “laavu hunting” trips where I browsed some maps and searched for not so popular and not so well known laavus around Jyväskylä area.

Last evening I decided to do that again. What I didn’t realise was that the place that I found was quite popular and well kept. Lucky me I’d say in some aspects…

I found the laavu from a city map service at: https://kartta.jkl.fi/ – select from the top left “information shown on the map” and then from “freetime and sport” select “outdoor recreation map” to see laavus and other locations around city area.

The place was quite easy to find in the darkness of the night. I scouted the area a bit by foot and decided to drive all the way to the location. Something I would not dare to try with a average family car, but I had my decent 4×4 with me and yes reduction gears were needed on my way into there.

Did I say that it was dark in there?

Even tho my cell phone camera struggled to take any decent pic, even with the help of my headlight on wide setting, it wasn’t really that dark for the naked eye. As the super moon was still up there it was quite easy to see around without any light source. But yes, the headlight helped to do some things of course.

Unpacked my stuff in the darkness and started to prepare some late night supper.

Grill veggies with honey seasoning, meat balls and some tomato sauce – what a delicious meal was awaiting for me. :3

Some stew ready to be consumed. Cooked about half of what I had with me and saved the other half for the next day.

After eating I wandered around a bit and was able to find some firewood laying around. The firewood shack, that I checked when I arrived, was empty, as there has been some problems with the usage of the laavu and the grill hut. – In general there has been some issues of people stealing firewood from places like this, especially if they are accessible with ATVs or like this with a car (or by a snowmobile in winter). Don’t know if that’s the case with this place, but there were no firewood in the shack, only a notice that the local village association won’t be providing firewood to this place anymore because of the problems.

Just sitting and pondering the world around…

Laavu at the daylight…

Woke up at a nice and warm’ish morning…

Like I stated before: no firewood provided – need to bring your own.

Even tho the sign promises a water closet…

…it was a nice and clean outhouse with toilet paper and hand disinfection substance bottle provided.

The grill-hut-house-thing was nice and clean also.

Also some info about the nature path walking trail thing – there’s also a bird watching tower by the small lake (“lintutorni”).

And a ski track in the winter.

Nice and convenient overnight trip was had in here. The Moon did illuminate the place and surroundings nicely even from behind the thin clouds. Ambient super moonlight filtered through the clouds made the place kinda eerie, but still beautiful. – No beavers met tho. 😀

Food was had and sleep did happen at the outdoors. Was worth it. 🙂