EP 85 - One Bag Travel in Finland

[00:00:00] Joe: Welcome everyone to the Live Ultralight podcast, powered by Outdoor Vitals. This podcast is about inspiring you to get Outdoors. Showing you how to lighten your pack and build your competence. So you can start living your life full of Adventure. Speaking of Adventure we have on here today, two guests. From the outboard, from the Outdoor Vitals team. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves.

[00:00:00] Derek: Yeah, I'm Derek. I do marketing here

[00:00:28] Madi: and I am Maddie and I do some customer support

[00:00:31] Joe: and Maddie's getting more famous than Dairy Kitty more.

[00:00:31] Madi: Yeah, hit me up.

[00:00:38] Joe: She lives in the Facebook group anymore and always helping people out. So she's about a famous So, you guys went to Finland recently and it's kind of inspire our audience. I think we should talk about our trips that we, that we go on including this one. Tell us about the Finland. Trip what made you decide to go to Finland?

[00:00:38] Derek: Well, we were Maddie, and I like to go travel quite a bit.

[00:01:15] Derek: Actually, we're always looking for deals and just makes it easier to travel more often and then just whenever we get the chance, we kind of are going somewhere. So Maddie is actually probably the best person. I know to find a good flight deal. And so one day she texted me, hey, flights to Finland or like 250 round trip and normally they're like above 1000. So I'm like okay we're going and then

[00:01:43] Derek: we did we we scheduled the flights and about the tickets and and from there kind of just started getting ready.

[00:01:50] Madi: Yeah. Waiting up to it Derek. Because we've been talking about things that we want to see during our lifetime and stuff like that. And something that was on his list was the Northern Lights, neither of us have ever seen those. So that was one thing. That was like, okay Finland could check off that that bucket list item potentially. So when you pair that with a good deal, that's really hard for me to pass.

[00:02:15] Joe: How do you find these flight deals?

[00:02:18] Madi: There's like a few different social media pages that will post them or I have a problem stocking. Google flights. It's one of my favorite pastimes. Something people like hiking, I don't know

[00:02:34] Joe: like stop talking to Google Flights getting refresh every day.

[00:02:39] Madi: Usually like twice a week for sure. So yeah.

[00:02:43] Joe: Do you have like a list of things that you're just always like? All right, the flights change for this. This this

[00:02:48] Madi: we have a few places that we know. We want to go like we want to go to Thailand so I watch those ones. We watched China for a while. We actually had plans to go there before covid. We

[00:03:00] Derek: had Tickets flights. Right? In 2020 around March is when we were gonna go, but obviously that didn't work out

[00:03:09] Madi: and we also always watched South America. So so like Tyler and South America are ones that were always kind of watching

[00:03:17] Derek: So wanna go to China, though. At some point we want to go back backing on the great wall and do what they call the world's most dangerous hike, which is just basically your path is like a metal or wooden scaffolding basically bolted in the side of a you know 3000 foot

[00:03:35] Madi: cheered in the whole time. So there's a harness that

[00:03:38] Joe: clearly never I could Derek most dangerous hike in the world is just following Derek up a boulder. I just yeah he has no fear of heights and Trust every Rocky stands on and steps on. I swear Yeah, so that's

[00:03:56] Madi: gonna be like nothing to him.

[00:03:56] Joe: How long was the trip?

[00:03:56] Derek: So, flying to Finland, we had a layover in Chicago. So from Salt Lake to Chicago is about four hours and then, from Chicago to Helsinki was six. And so like, yeah,

[00:04:12] Derek: close on the way there. Yeah. It was roughly 10, ish 10 and a half on the way there, and then it's 11 and a half on the way back because of the earth rotation or Wind streams.

[00:04:23] Madi: Yeah and it was interesting too because you know they have the camera on The plane and like you always think like you go around like on a but they just go like right over the top. So, you know the Earth is round I guess.

[00:04:39] Joe: but, Another confirmation. Yeah. It is weird to watch that though. Ya know. How many days were you in once?

[00:04:39] Derek: So actually in Finland we're probably there five or six days, five five

[00:04:53] Derek: days.

[00:04:53] Joe: Okay. So, For sure, five full days. I think you guys, you guys blitzed it. I mean travel time. And then on time you guys like we're running.

[00:05:02] Madi: Yeah. We always. I mean, we both have jobs, I have another job on top of. Working here in Outdoor Vitals. So we try to sandwich it on a weekend as much as we can so we can get more in. But yeah I think we were there for five days and they were long days. We didn't really leave ourselves very much time to adjust to the time change because it's nine hours different

[00:05:28] Madi: so it's basically day and night but It's stay up on the plane right there. You're like you get a head start. So

[00:05:35] Derek: that's probably my biggest tip for if you're gonna have to Blitz a trip like that and fit a lot in is just stay up. The whole however many hours it takes until it's like a normal. Time to go to bed and whatever place your actually visiting. Like don't go to bed at like five. P.m. you know their time because it's, you know, 10 p.m. your time, make sure you stay up until

[00:05:55] Derek: it's a normal, time to go to bed in their location, wherever you're visiting. And then the next day you're going to go, you know, one night of sleep. You can reset. If you just

[00:06:03] Derek: Have a normal sleep schedule,

[00:06:04] Madi: you can mostly reset?

[00:06:05] Joe: Yeah. Did you finally get to drink a little caffeine on the flight to stay up or no. He's

[00:06:11] Madi: like, but I could take a three-hour nap any day of the week. So

[00:06:17] Derek: I drink coffee. Do you know? I mean I I don't really if I if I do it's just like a little bit because it works

[00:06:27] Madi: and if he's driving and if I am not driving, then He'll sometimes stop very rarely stop and get a Mountain Dew.

[00:06:38] Derek: Yeah. And that's really more than enough to keep me up because I don't ever drink it. So I don't just do. I don't do soda in general and that's You know,

[00:06:47] Joe: caffeine's bad for me. It does bad. Horrible things for me, but I love it. That's so hard, not to drink it, so I can't imagine. Yeah.

[00:06:55] Joe: Derek's just a very clean eater. He's always the guy that like we come off of a gnarly, backpacking trip. And everyone's like, yeah, it's good. Let's go to Wendy's, you know, and so everyone goes and buy like a double baconator and Derek's like a salad. Now, I just.

[00:07:10] Madi: Yeah. And then he married me. And I'm not really like that. So, he loves baking. So we do Canada like meal side, but then I just come into ruin it with a cheesecake or something, so

[00:07:27] Joe: very Okay, so what happened?

[00:07:27] Derek: So let's go through the days, let's say one like so we fly into Helsinki that's on the I mean most people probably know this but it's on the south end of Finland, most of where we were actually planning to spend our time on the North End of the Arctic Circle. And so we get into Finland and in Helsinki we just have a couple hours to kill. There's

[00:07:52] Derek: this train a Night Train like a sleeper that we had all so booked to Basically, hit two birds one stone get to sleep. It's, you know, the replacement for a hotel and you're also getting where you need to go the same time.

[00:08:07] Madi: And you didn't have to drive yourself or get on airplane, get off an airplane, all the switching things and there's like a full bed on there, while they're like bunks, but the way better than trying to sleep on the plane, or anything like that. Yeah,

[00:08:20] Derek: actually, surprisingly like very comfortable. I said really well on the sleeper train. I didn't Maddie sleep, we don't anywhere, I

[00:08:29] Derek: think I sleep on the stairs.

[00:08:31] Madi: I slept pretty good. I would say it was mostly just like the time difference that was more difficult on me, then the actual train. Yeah,

[00:08:43] Derek: so that worked out really well. But before we got to the sleeper train, we actually had a few small Adventures as well. So out of Helsinki, there's some fairies, they go out to some islands where they have old sea, forts that have been built, like, really thick old seaforce build out of big, thick, Stone and stuff. And so we went and toured one of those by ourselves. The fairies are just cutting

[00:09:06] Derek: through the frozen ocean, you know. It's just they have to keep him running until 2 a.m. and they start him up pretty early in the morning otherwise if they give the fairies a break any longer than that, it'll freeze over. And have to recover Through The Eyes. It's very true. So they're just running back and forth. Every 45 minutes you just jump on a ferry, it's pretty thick.

[00:09:06] Joe: How cold we talk

[00:09:28] Joe: in here.

[00:09:28] Derek: It's 12 degrees Fahrenheit or Fahrenheit? Yeah,

[00:09:36] Derek: I'm here in the day. So I mean it wasn't

[00:09:39] Madi: and there's that Ocean Breeze to that.

[00:09:42] Joe: That's what it is there. Humidity there. Do you know?

[00:09:42] Derek: I don't know. But

[00:09:46] Madi: I don't think that's

[00:09:48] Joe: There'd be more humidity here.

[00:09:50] Madi: Like you can feel your throat, like, freeze up a little bit. So I was like, I don't really know what the law is on masks right now, but it's keeping my breath warm. So

[00:10:05] Derek: was, you don't know if it's a requirement or not, but you when you're inside,

[00:10:09] Derek: we kind of tried just to be respectful and do what the locals were doing because, you know, we're in a big city helps. Thank you, everybody's walking around. Everybody was wearing a mask inside or outside. So, alright, well, let's keep him on. Yeah,

[00:10:22] Madi: I try to take mine off outside. I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna put that. Yeah, so cold. But

[00:10:29] Derek: the, the fort was cool, the ferry was awesome. Kind of cut through this. Ice is kind of cool to see and there's just big chunks of ice floating around and just the specific track that the ferry is would you know go across Between like big solid sheets of ice on either side. And then they had some, they had some ships that were just kind of on the docks. Like cruise ships

[00:10:52] Derek: just sitting there, but they're surrounded by Ice, they're not going anywhere. And I'm just gonna wait, wait for the saw. Yeah,

[00:10:58] Madi: yes. I don't know how they do it

[00:11:00] Derek: but that was cool. And we did that explored a little bit. And then we go back to the train station to make sure we could catch our sleeper train, right? At this point, we're we're needing to use a restroom and just could not find one. Anyway, that was probably our number one challenge.

[00:11:22] Madi: And no public restrooms we were

[00:11:26] Derek: yeah, we were just going around and you know, the US there's usually like those those signs that have you know,

[00:11:32] Madi: about the guy and a girl

[00:11:33] Derek: and she's the wrong restroom know, it's just like that well over there in that train station, at least the, there was one of those signs was like a guy and a girl with a box around it and then there was an arrow up and down. So that just means restroom is either up or down from the floor run because it's like you can go to the basement of the train station where

[00:11:52] Derek: you go up. So, Start going up. And now these elevators and looking around for this restroom and then come to find out. You know, that's actually just an elevator sign. Yeah,

[00:12:03] Madi: it's probably the same here. I'm just like we could not find anything that generally resembled. I was like me. Yes,

[00:12:11] Joe: so it is the same here. You know I've seen

[00:12:16] Madi: Milk. We're just we

[00:12:16] Derek: were just running off a no sleep for. Who knows? How many hours had to use the bathroom? Bathroom. So, not understand that for a while,

[00:12:24] Madi: we did learn that it's the WC, the like, the water closet bathroom. They just don't really or toilets. There's sometimes a sign for toilets,

[00:12:33] Joe: which was convenient that they were in English like that for us, but were you guys nervous about going into a country where he didn't speak the language? Did you have any tools you used

[00:12:44] Madi: to translate was really good for me you just like you can use the camera,

[00:12:49] Madi: use the camera and like that helped with menu and some signs but Overall it wasn't, most people spoke English. So if you had a question you could ask them. There's only a couple times where like we'd go up to order our food and they'd start talking and finish and we'd be like Okay, so and then they'd be like, okay, and then they'd start talking in English.

[00:13:11] Derek: Yeah, we weren't as obviously tourists in Finland, as we have been in other places we visited, just because I didn't wear your American flag that kind of just look the same as everyone else bundled up and you know but

[00:13:28] Joe: did you guys use like the conversation Duo? Like like where they can talk and finish and it translates to English? Then you talk in English.

[00:13:28] Derek: I had this stuff downloaded to be able to didn't need it just because they all they all speaking English.

[00:13:28] Joe: Yeah. What

[00:13:43] Joe: about for people that have never traveled internationally which like for those of you have traveled internationally, I feel like you just assumed a lot of people travel internationally after that. But some people in my own family that like, never left. The country, which blows my mind, I've never left the concerts. So this is pretty interesting though. I'm going to leave the country. I have tickets to Peru to Summer.

[00:13:43] Madi: Oh, that's awesome.

[00:14:02] Joe: So, talk to him about, do your phone's work or what did you have to do for that?

[00:14:02] Derek: Yeah, so it depends on the plan. You've got other provider with us. We're with T-Mobile and the specific Planet we're on. I think it's The planting is it?

[00:14:16] Madi: Yeah, so I think it depends on your plan. So we could text freely and we have, like, a certain amount of internet that we could use international like throttle them out. Yeah. Um, while we were there, and then we didn't make phone calls, but some other good apps that we've used like, in South America WhatsApp, is that the one that they use a lot down there. So that's just an app that

[00:14:40] Madi: you can make phone calls with text. With a lot of like the tour companies will have a phone number for the international people. So that and actually a lot of I think locals use it to because it's free that you can communicate off of Wi-Fi and so they're having to use that.

[00:14:58] Derek: You that's kind of like the two options if your phone plan. Like doesn't have where, you know, like Maddie and I could text as much as we want to anywhere around the world.

[00:15:11] Madi: and you can pay for it, it's like 25 cents a minute, or you can buy an international pass For like I think it's like twenty dollars a day. Yeah. To

[00:15:19] Madi: have like a limited but just call your like, I a while ago, I had just called my phone provider and just Figured out what I would and we get a text every time we leave the country that says, this is what you can do. Yeah. So

[00:15:34] Derek: yeah, I think it used to be, you have to go to like put in a new SIM card, buy a SIM card, put it in like a common thing, but anymore providers are so big and the world is just getting smaller and smaller. It's not a thing anymore. The other thing though is, if you had a Garmin enriched mini, you know, take that, that's true. Gonna plug this the membership. Here you

[00:15:54] Joe: can't. You absolutely can. So there are links by the way to outdoor. Vitals, awesome gear in the description below and to our membership where you can get discounts on on certain items that we retail here. So I suggest if you want to let Jason know that you listened to the podcast, You used to description links here. The podcast next time you want to buy something for Outdoor Vitals, but sorry, you're good.

[00:16:18] Derek: So I think the some big barriers though, those the language and phone and stuff like that, people get really paranoid about Joe. Is there any other things? Like your thing when you're thinking to leave the country that you're just like, oh I don't know about this. I mean, well, you're up is interesting because English is such a lingua Franco over there. In other areas, it would be the language I would be

[00:16:40] Joe: especially if you were in like 80 or something like that. So, I don't know,

[00:16:47] Madi: I think that Google translate tool is awesome for that. I've never been over to Asia, but I've used it in South America, I don't speak a lot of Spanish. Luckily Derek is fluent. So he handles most the conversations. But I can still get by using that Google Translate app. So

[00:17:05] Joe: same Z's. Okay. So you get to the Water closet. Find one on the show.

[00:17:12] Madi: Yeah, we have like the bathroom shower. Whatever. Like in our room, get a shower. It's like so. It's very cool.

[00:17:21] Madi: It's like a two by two. If

[00:17:23] Joe: it gets smaller, it's cooler

[00:17:24] Madi: room where it's like the showers, like a swinging door. So, you open the door to get in. There is the toilet and then you can pull the wall around and the shower is coming.

[00:17:40] Derek: So, finally right here on the toilet, right? There's the wall in my right, that has a sink in it. A little tiny mini one, and this wall of the sink is on is the one that she's talking about the swings and He's swinging it basically covers. The thing goes over the toilet, and it covers it up and now it's just like a shower head. The other side. I never.

[00:17:58] Joe: So you can have to go out of the bathroom, swing it into a shower mode and then you go back in. But that was in your room like your private?

[00:17:58] Madi: Yeah,

[00:18:06] Madi: there were like, yeah, we got the room with her own bathroom so that's

[00:18:10] Joe: pretty cool.

[00:18:10] Derek: Yeah. So now we just kind of did that hung out. Slept and got up to the North End of Finland and that's where we really started doing the stuff that we wanted to do there. All right, we'll take us through what you guys do. So we're on day two of Finland. Yes, this is gonna be the first full day of Finland because we've got their kind of middle of the

[00:18:31] Derek: day to have sinky by the first full day. We get there, what was it seven in the morning and we woke up got off the train and we we ended up renting a car up there for not too much. It wasn't too bad. And that allowed us to kind of go and explore wherever we want. And so we do that. Go find this little breakfast place. And honestly, the breakfast is one

[00:18:54] Derek: of my favorite things about the food there.

[00:18:55] Madi: The funny thing is, though with the breakfast is that they don't have Like, we asked the rental car guy. I'm, I am always asking for recommendations. Like, where do you recommend going to breakfast? He's like, we don't, I have never been to breakfast. Like, I've never been out to breakfast. And so, I like, Googled it. And there was a hostile, there was like, two cafes in town and like one of them

[00:19:20] Madi: was like a hostel, and I was like, I guess we'll just go there because it had the best reviews and anyways, all you.

[00:19:27] Derek: Yeah. So we we get there and I think this is like the breakfast anywhere we went with, like, later on, we had the hotel, I had the same kind of food there. It was there's And that's another weird thing that when Maddie was asking the car rental guy, what do you recommend for breakfast? He's like, well, I've heard there's this place that has good salads and I started thinking, hey, you guys

[00:19:45] Derek: have salads for breakfast? Yeah,

[00:19:47] Derek: well anyways, I ended up loving it because they do have salad for breakfast. They have like basically, A charcuterie board across this whole, you know, breakfast bar thing. Where it's just slices of meat cheese, you got lettuce, tomatoes, Fresh, Slice, really fresh

[00:20:01] Madi: kinds of fresh berries.

[00:20:02] Derek: One thing that is cool about Finland is they still forage. They still go out and go pick berries on the wild. Basically that's very common for a lot of people there. So fresh berries all the time and fresh Berry like drinks were just very juice. So they heat up cuz it's cold outside and it's literally just juice the top but it's good. And you drink that just leave it.

[00:20:30] Derek: Yeah, one more tart. Yeah, yeah, but it's still like really good and then yogurt and boiled eggs. And that's pretty much what you had for breakfast. Really fresh and didn't really feel like the sugary fatty heavy, slow you down make you sleepy breakfast here we have maple syrup. Yeah

[00:20:48] Madi: so he's actually kind of transitioned to that. Like when I got home we went grocery shopping and I was like what do you want Derek? And he was like, I just want finish breakfast for all the time.

[00:21:00] Derek: Breakfast is an interesting idea. Like I don't really feel that good. Yeah, it feels amazing. And it's not like just the sound you can still have you. Like, I like a little bit of sweet. So like the berries and stuff and a little bit

[00:21:12] Madi: cookies too. Like Biscuits, Like Biscuits and tea kind of a deal. Like

[00:21:17] Joe: the butter biscuits that are like way. Delicious know. They're like cookies like

[00:21:25] Madi: Oh, and I would make like a breakfast sandwich out of it. So like, I don't know, that's what they do, but they would always have like the fresh bread that you could fly and then you just like go down the line. Anyways, we like talking

[00:21:35] Joe: breakfast. This sucks. is, but that was our first bit of food that we had in the North End of Finland and this is a Little town is the biggest town in the North End, by the way, but it's not big heavy. There's 60,000. Wait, I think it's this town, probably near me.

[00:21:56] Madi: And there are 60,000 people there based on Google because I Googled it. So that's about what you see right there. Yeah,

[00:22:01] Joe: it's about double our city size. Yeah

[00:22:04] Madi: I thought that we have

[00:22:06] Joe: I think we're 30. Yeah this is a tiny with the college kids. We get up to we break 40

[00:22:12] Madi: and with Enoch though,

[00:22:13] Joe: I think that's what including oh wow.

[00:22:15] Derek: It's pretty small though. And it feels small too because it's kind of sprayed out and I think, okay, Finland is 80% forest. And so you've got a lot of forests between a lot of stuff.

[00:22:27] Madi: There are some like four stories. There's a lot of four story apartments but like, the actual city was very small and then just kind of like some houses out.

[00:22:35] Madi: It felt very similar.

[00:22:36] Joe: So are you going farther north from Helsinki or?

[00:22:36] Derek: Yeah. So this is where Finland is

[00:22:43] Madi: Well everyone, I talked to things that the island so now everyone knows where Russia is, its to the north west of Russia.

[00:22:57] Joe: It shares a little bit of a border with Russia. Yes. It's out there by Sweden.

[00:23:00] Madi: Yeah. Right by Sweden.

[00:23:01] Joe: Sweden, Norway close by. It's probably that you're almost of the Scandinavian countries. Yeah. You're even more north than like Norway at a brother who lives there for a couple years. Yeah, that's

[00:23:12] Derek: So, Roman yemi is actually the gateway to the Arctic Circle. The Arctic Circle goes like basically right through town Cuts, right? Yeah. I saw you.

[00:23:21] Derek: Yeah. It's way more tastes looking at a map for anybody. Yeah, yeah. So that's very north helsinki's of the South and this is right at the, basically, the gateway to the arc Circle and in, from there, we after breakfast Drive, even further north and crossed into the Arctic Circle, a little deeper and this Sunset happening at that was sunrise that was probably the blur. Yeah,

[00:23:45] Madi: he's a big city. There's not like a ton of nature then being in the city with that and so just like leaving the city, it was just like all forest, all these beautiful flocked trees with snow and this pink purple Sunrise that just like carried over all the clouds, And Derek's like driving and I was feeling bad because I was just like, this is so cool. Just looking at everything. And so

[00:24:17] Madi: like even for like That whole first day I was like, you know, it's really hard to compete with that Sunrise. That was this morning. It was just so peaceful.

[00:24:26] Derek: It was, it was pretty incredible. I still got to see them. I was driving, which let me back up for a second. We've talked about a few transitions we've made off of planes and trains and cars and whatnot, but it was actually very easy to do that because we've talked about this before and other trips, but Maddie, and I just kind of went back travel. So we wouldn't like lugging around a

[00:24:45] Derek: lot of luggage. It's just our backpacks. Which we have our Cody. Well, so which sure Jill throw a link

[00:24:51] Derek: is in the description for the Cody. Well, presale. So we we have some of the samples obviously because you know, they're gonna start shipping later on this year, but we've been able to test them for a while. And that was at everything in there and including our winter boots. We have snow pants. We had, you know, gloves insulating layers plus clothes or whatever. We needed for the trip in general. And so

[00:25:18] Derek: that fit all just fine in this very well.

[00:25:20] Madi: It was, that was my biggest hurdle, and I've never traveled anywhere. One bag travel in the winter, so that was, like, my biggest thing that I was nervous about kind of, like, we were talking earlier, but I fit all of my clothes into the packing, Cube, the Outdoor Vitals packing Cube, and my boots fit in there. And then my, that was, besides my snow gear, my snow here. Just kind of shoved in

[00:25:48] Derek: the dry bag. Like compression bags. I did. Yeah, I put everything as far as clothes go in there and compressed real nice.

[00:25:55] Madi: We only have one of those between the two of us right now. So

[00:25:58] Derek: yeah. But really we used our. We used our winter boots. Those are the bulkiest thing in our packs and really, we only had on the flights and then when we were actually in pretty much wanted those things on because it's so cold outside,

[00:26:12] Madi: Was told I should wear them and I did not want to because I knew that it would look silly. And so I like where my ticket over

[00:26:21] Madi: there. Yeah. But I was like if I can just sit them in this bag. I'll be like 100% more comfortable even though it's like more heavy in my pack, I just did not want to look so Tourist,

[00:26:32] Derek: which the votes have got our Sorrel, their really nice, warm boots. But they are a little bulky and they take up some space in your pack but yeah, that even with some in our packs for the flights like I neither one of us really wanted to wear them on a plane. And we were okay. But I'm actually surprised that with

[00:26:54] Derek: boots and clothes and that 45

[00:26:57] Madi: our snow gear mostly. Well, we have like our ski stuff and then we had we both got two nobody or Nova pros. And I actually brought both of my dentist's. I think Derek brought one of his and that was more than enough to keep us warm the entire trip. And so those are all very packable items that just made it doable. Otherwise, I don't think we could have done it. He didn't

[00:27:25] Madi: have packable down jackets.

[00:27:26] Derek: Yeah. So that's snowboard pants or puffy pants or snowboard pants. So those are bulky as well, but they work really well for what we were using for. And and once I threw my stove, boarding pants in like the compression bag, they actually compressed pretty well. But you know, that's where, you know, we were using it, we started to use it when we were, you know, first got to Rob and Amy, when

[00:27:51] Derek: we got off that train, we had kind of started bundled up a lot more than even in

[00:27:55] Madi: Helsinki, that's negative two. This day.

[00:27:57] Derek: Yeah, so our first time

[00:27:59] Madi: Fahrenheit, that's just what the temperature that I saw.

[00:28:02] Derek: It was the middle of the day. So very well, could have been tonight. Yeah. Negative two Fahrenheit.

[00:28:06] Madi: So, as we were getting to the cottage that we went dog, sledding,

[00:28:13] Derek: that's where we were driving. We were driving out to this little Fuzzy Farm basically there's a family out there and they raise huskies and they train them. They have some people, they hired to help him do it, but they have about 90. And so, we kind of drove up to this little cabin this little cottage where they kind of run their operations and stuff and it lived nearby and So they do

[00:28:40] Joe: it strictly for tourist, or they use it for anything else,

[00:28:43] Madi: she races. So it's the it's a husband, wife team, and she will do dog shows and races, and it's just like, one of her Hobbies that's like, she says, I do the dogs and he does the, they had like a campground, they had like little tiny Homes that you could rent?

[00:29:04] Derek: Yeah, and they run in a campground right next to it all year, because in the summer, There's a nice Lake. It's frozen over when there's just snow and ice, but

[00:29:04] Joe: That's way. Cool. So the campground, the dog kennels and doing other things. So you guys win dogs sledding?

[00:29:04] Derek: Yeah. So

[00:29:18] Madi: on the same slide so we got to switch. Yeah. One of them. When

[00:29:22] Joe: you rise, what are you riding up?

[00:29:23] Madi: And then one of us, drove Derek started driving. And I was like, I don't know. You guys we

[00:29:33] Madi: had seven. It depends on like how much you weigh so. Oh for us

[00:29:38] Derek: some we it was us. And there was another couple as well on another sled. They had eight and then the wife Maddie mentioned that is kind of like running this whole thing. She was up front with her own team. I think she also had eight.

[00:29:51] Madi: Yeah, I think it's pretty standard.

[00:29:52] Derek: Yeah, Balto you need like three. These dogs are super trained. Love running. They were just, they just could not wait to get going. And so they basically had him the team all lined up and harnessed in and kind of an anchor on the steak and then some of the higher people ever helping with all the dogs and all the training and whatnot running this. The kennel and whatnot with all their dogs,

[00:30:18] Derek: they came up and right, you ready? And then they'd pull this rope and it would release the little anchor and they were ready to go.

[00:30:27] Madi: They were already running in place before the tanker was Like so at least

[00:30:33] Derek: so that was fast and it was already negative two and we're trying to figure out a drive this sled and that was really fun. And we take off through the woods and We go pretty far actually.

[00:30:33] Joe: And how fast do you think you're traveling? Start a curiosity,

[00:30:33] Derek: easily 15 miles an hour? Yeah, 15 20.

[00:30:54] Derek: Yeah. And so there's a windshield with that, right? It's already negative two and we took some pictures about the way but while we were just standing around for 10-15 minutes. there was already Frost growing on every bit of exposed hair or fabric particle or anything. So, I took some pictures of Maddie's eyelashes,

[00:31:18] Madi: like, I like I've had it come off in water but not like cold like my my mascara just like froze off my face.

[00:31:27] Derek: They got such thick bits of frost all over her ashes and mine just Time came off eventually but eyebrows, I have like twice as much eyebrow in the frost pictures that, you know,

[00:31:42] Madi: crosses off his like, his swoopy hair, like every single, like

[00:31:45] Joe: I never noticed, but you don't have much for eyebrows. I was wondering if they froze off, I have run. I have had some bonfire experience. Non-care, careful thing.

[00:31:57] Derek: Okay. But yeah everything is frozen and then when we take off on the docks, it's even colder. And so the point where you know I was driving every bit of our skin is covered except for my eyes we should but we had yeah. But your eyes are just so Frozen and they start cheering up and freeze. And so a point to be like, my, I would freeze shut because the ice on

[00:32:24] Derek: my eyelashes are just. Yeah, like fight to open up and drive this sled and Figure out what we're going. You're not Maddie this she thinks you're totally. She's not but that was fun. And we learned quite a few different techniques on how to drive it and slow it down, or stop the sled and whatnot. And that was, that was a lot of fun. We switched off later so that, you know, Maddie

[00:32:53] Derek: could drive as well. We kept going, you know, pretty far.

[00:32:56] Madi: I was really good at drifting. He was like that. He was

[00:32:59] Madi: like, we're gonna drift around this corner so hard. It was like

[00:33:06] Madi: the dogs are gonna run away. We're gonna be stuck in the middle. There's Woods here in totally lost or something,

[00:33:13] Madi: but it was more fun, right?

[00:33:14] Derek: It was fun. I feel like I'm a pretty bad like backseat driver. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be an interesting story where you're in the front seat. Yeah. It was

[00:33:28] Madi: like, watch their reaction too

[00:33:31] Derek: with a slide. So, they're, they're like this traditional looking, like, wood thing, you know. That's, it's not like, It looks like the same style that must have been

[00:33:41] Madi: tied together. There's a lot of flexibility in it.

[00:33:44] Derek: I think it's on purpose because you have to lean quite a bit and you could feel A little sled kind of contorting as you kind of put your weight on one side. So the sled itself actually flexed a lot and that helped with a lot of driving and

[00:33:57] Madi: it wasn't on purpose. I don't even like doing donuts in the snow but yeah. Again a car

[00:34:07] Joe: Lot of fun. I'm jealous. Yeah, it was.

[00:34:09] Derek: So that was a blast. We managed to get back to the kennel eventually

[00:34:14] Madi: and it was like a really cool. like, Like watching the things around you. Like you go over frozen lakes or like fruit trees, or like there was just a lot of cool like past the reindeer. See wildlife.

[00:34:31] Madi: We didn't see a while guys know. But so all the reindeer and Finland are owned by the families. Like every reindeer is like they ear tag them, they cut. A tag in their ears,

[00:34:44] Derek: they've been doing that. Like the most the oldest native people in Europe are the sami's which are from northern Finland, right? And they've been doing reindeer husbandry for a long time and they would just For years and years and years way back into history. They've been doing that with Matthew saying like cut their beard, they kind of count them. They hang out with them. But

[00:35:05] Madi: yeah, they bring him in like twice a year to control the population and to tag the babies basically. And so the government kind of controls how many you can Use for food and like we let back out and

[00:35:26] Joe: they like fairly domestically, you say, bring them in. I'm thinking like

[00:35:30] Madi: yeah, they have like

[00:35:31] Derek: after a while. They have dogs that they have dogs surveys, heard a neighborhood around and why are the one day like maybe once or twice a year and then the rest of the time, they're just roaming Free Ranger and

[00:35:42] Madi: they were talking that they like to hunt. So I don't know if like they can go hunt them out and then bring the rest in like within a lot of amount or how that really works. But

[00:35:52] Derek: They have like an apex predator, they're like a wolf or bears. There's wolves and bears. Yeah. But they hunt the reindeer, too, like this family in particular, I don't think every family doesn't the same, but this family, they do hunt the reindeer, the husband of this lady that was, you know, doing the dogs, letting that races or not. He did more of like the hunting and cooking and, and other stuff will

[00:36:15] Derek: his wife's out driving dogs, which was actually really nice because after we drove docs, as we went back to that little wood Log Cabin Cottage and he cooked us some reindeer soup. And that was probably our favorite,

[00:36:27] Madi: my favorite and we like, Sought out. Good food on this trip.

[00:36:33] Derek: Yeah, that's awesome. And so he, you know, they hunt the reindeer and they go out and they hunted and He cooked it up really well in the soup and

[00:36:43] Madi: then globe globe. Yeah, he said it, it's a, it's one of their like Berry drinks that normally they drink like around Christmas. It's like apple cider but with their, like, wild berries. Like so the juice is like a berry juice. Yeah, it can be alcoholic. Too. I think it's more commonly alcoholic. Yeah. But

[00:37:05] Derek: he brought that out as well and that was delicious. It's kind of like wassel if you've had the you know that around. Because there's like this, all kinds of like Christmasy spices right in this very drinking that was really good too. so, we had that after dogs, letting and then We also got to meet all the dogs in the kennel, some of the workers there. They one of them was actually from

[00:37:28] Derek: the UK and she's been living in Finland and she went and let us meet all the dogs and told us all their names and that was a lot of fun and

[00:37:37] Madi: The babies were so cute, little puppies.

[00:37:39] Joe: All right. I don't want to take too much time here but you guys literally reminded me of as a kid. I had a dog. So I never got dogs with sound. Fun.

[00:37:50] Joe: But I had a dog named scooter. a funny enough later in life started to help me by pulling my scooter in. So, all my friends literally had like, electric scooters, and I would like, I didn't have one. And so, I had to push scooter, and then I have this dog, it was like my dog, and he was a little Jack Russell Terrier, right? And I got a harness for him, but my

[00:38:13] Joe: scooter was just playing around and he loved it. So then he would start to drag the harness to me like during the day and I would take him and he would pull me to my friend's house, I just tie up to a tree to hang out there and then like he pulled me back home, and people thought I was like cruel. But like, I've got this little tiny dog, like a Jekyll

[00:38:34] Joe: Terry's, not a big dog, and he would pull me all over my little, you know, tidy town, but it crazy. He loved it so much. You'd always dragging his leash and after while he's like, beefed up, and he was like a Jack Russell Terrier. It was it was funny. It was way funny, that's awesome. But I gotta try dogs foot. Yeah, the dogs loved it. They could not get enough of the

[00:38:56] Derek: running as soon as he got back. Even though he got pretty far they're like wanting to go again and kind of jumping at the bit.

[00:39:02] Madi: They did. Yeah, they rotate the dogs but they the same group that took us took the next people.

[00:39:09] Derek: Nice. Yeah, and that was, that was fun. And so from there we hit the road again and again, it's beautiful. There's Matty kind of mentioned. All the trees are just completely white. You see like the white Christmas trees, the fake ones at Walmart, you know, they actually look like that up there

[00:39:23] Madi: all the time and it's not like an hour. It's just like you.

[00:39:27] Madi: Every time I look at the window,

[00:39:28] Joe: you've got a lot of nighttime, this time of year up there, right?

[00:39:28] Derek: Yeah.

[00:39:28] Joe: So, how much hours of day

[00:39:33] Madi: actually didn't get dark? And like, all the way darker like 4:30,

[00:39:38] Joe: okay. So you dogs, let it during the daytime.

[00:39:41] Madi: Yeah, so we got there at 9 and we were done leaving from lunch, like two? Yeah.

[00:39:48] Derek: okay, yeah, and and then we go further north to this place called the wellstone and That's just kind of a big part of Lapland, you know, if you ever heard about the Lapland that's where like Sami people been for a long time and you see all like the, a lot of traditional Finnish stuff where they have, you know, the cool hats and pointy little shoes kind of that area. But

[00:40:14] Madi: yeah, not as much as we would have seen. If it was even further north, this is just like, Getting

[00:40:21] Madi: the very beginning of it.

[00:40:22] Joe: Yeah. Still a hundred kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. Yeah like when I crossed the Arctic Circle in Alaska, there's nothing. So it's crazy. There's this many people living.

[00:40:33] Madi: Yeah, they're still about five hours north of like communities that you can find from where we went like driving

[00:40:40] Derek: at this point. Everything's kind of villages. And so when we say well, so like as far as the town named there's like I saw like four little cabin things, And then there's like a, there's no. Yeah,

[00:40:51] Derek: but like every every little town north of the Arts circle now is kind of Pretty small village is what they they call him just Villages

[00:41:01] Madi: like everyone just owned so much land or it was just like public places.

[00:41:07] Derek: And then we, we actually stayed, we get to this National Park up there called, I always put to the pronunciation. Was like, who hire or something like that. And so, we stayed in this Hotel called puha tune which is like right on a snow resort where you can go snowboarding, what not. So I end up doing that at night. I go snowboarding and I

[00:41:31] Madi: hit my wall, she was not doing that. went outside

[00:41:37] Madi: like a seat mountain and I'm not that great like I snowboard But like, only for the last two years and not very much and I was just like, yeah,

[00:41:45] Derek: so fun. We already had all our snow gear. I just rented, a snowboard and away. I went. But I was blown away, actually, almost literally at the top of the they have the lift going, right? And how many people are at this Resort? You're saying the towns are like four houses. I mean, how do you

[00:42:01] Madi: so? So a little bit further and this is more of a tourist area and there was a lot of vacation,

[00:42:08] Joe: okay, specifically, I guess?

[00:42:10] Madi: Yeah. Just like, if you look on Airbnb, you'll see like it's very populated, there's lots of options, but

[00:42:17] Derek: you go leave that area and there's nothing again, okay? But right on this mountain rare, the ski resort, is there some like cabinets and things like a hotel? Like we stayed in its a national. It's a national Park public. I get to the top of the snow resort, right? Ride the lift up and the wind. This wild Arctic wind is just literally blowing me over. I Stand up. Snowboard, and I'm getting

[00:42:44] Derek: blown sideways across the slope because my body is catching the air. And so I had to like turn my snowboard into the wood to go straight, kind of the thing at the top and it was that was, that was some really cold wind, but it was fun.

[00:42:44] Joe: So, how long did you last snowboarding?

[00:42:44] Derek: Just a couple hours? It is a night boarding because like I said, it was dark and okay like

[00:43:07] Derek: two or three hours and then I was

[00:43:09] Madi: all right, goes back by

[00:43:10] Derek: 8:30 to 9 8. Yeah. That's crazy. And then we're in the right place. The next morning we again, we had one of these amazing breakfast at the hotel with all the salad and meat cheese and stuff. But then we had planned to go ice climbing. and neither one of us than that, for

[00:43:32] Madi: I'm not even good at like rock climbing. I

[00:43:34] Joe: think he's pretty well. Thanks. But

[00:43:36] Derek: Iceland was brand new for both of us and so we meet up with a guide and they take us kind of tricking out across the mountain and we go to this waterfall area called taiwan's and it's just huge just wall of ice basically. I don't know, just say 50 to 70 feet tall. Yeah.

[00:44:05] Derek: and we go climbing up that thing and they give us some taxes, they give us some crampons, like the real kinds with the big huge spikes on them and The way we go, a little ice axes are cool. They're not like the same kind of, a lot of people use backpacking in the winter. They actually have a little Like a loop underneath your hand so that you can actually put your weight

[00:44:27] Derek: and kind of hang on it. Once your ex has ice Act in the wall. And we start climbing, ice is hard. To see it's

[00:44:38] Derek: got a swing hard.

[00:44:39] Madi: It was like actually it was easier to do the axes for me and then it was the feet because like especially when there'd be like a bump that comes out of the wall. Like if you think about kicking, you have to like kick hard to get your Spike into the wall and like you have to kick with more of like a straight leg or you get bruises all over your knee like

[00:45:01] Madi: me because I would like hit my knee and then my foot. I'm definitely I was an experience and I learned a lot but it was fairly easy to pick up and like you had to like learn to trust that the single Spike on your boot was gonna hold you in the ice and you could just like step

[00:45:27] Joe: the trust factors, gotta be Yeah,

[00:45:30] Madi: we were believed we were safe. I would have died if we weren't because I my arms like when you when it's freezing and this is the day that it was negative 2,

[00:45:39] Joe: notice the next day. So

[00:45:42] Madi: Says oh it was like it was 15 years or so.

[00:45:47] Madi: Yeah, it was like 15 degrees

[00:45:48] Joe: with all the people, all the finished. This is so cool.

[00:45:51] Madi: We actually did like all the way. We were only wearing our dentist at this point because it was like the high go out there was like warm enough and then The physical activity but like having your arms above your head, for like that long while you're trying to climb was just like, was there you

[00:46:07] Madi: hit it like feel if it was in or like, yeah, cuz your hands were like, basically numb. Yeah.

[00:46:14] Madi: Doing nothing for you. So

[00:46:15] Derek: it was, it was fun though. I actually thoroughly enjoyed. It was a little different from rock climbing, because of like, Maddie said, with the, with the boots and the crampons, you can't. You can't like put your foot on an angle to try to like stand on a ledge or something. You really just want to kick your toe straight into the wall because the spikes on the front is what you're putting all

[00:46:34] Derek: your weight on. Yeah. And you really not using your boots to stand on anything, you're just putting your weight on the Spike's. Second wall. And so it's a little different because you're not actually standing on anything. You're just stabbing stuff into the wall to go up it. So did you have to like route plan at all? Or do you just basically go straight up? You, you could route plan, you could go

[00:46:56] Derek: straight up anywhere pretty much as long as like, you know, you could get over a feature because sometimes there's a big, you know, bump or curved or something. That was kind of an obstacle based on how the water Frozen and

[00:47:07] Madi: they would call out there. These places to

[00:47:12] Madi: yeah. Like if you could get your I learned this. If you could get your accent someone else's like home that they already hit a lot easier

[00:47:20] Joe: you guys like fall or have a slip or yeah. So many times.

[00:47:27] Derek: Yeah, I did a few times one of the things for me though, I got climbing and I was pretty far up a wall and I swung my ice accident. And got it. Stick really well. I was climbing up and then, you know, I get to where I'm going to go, you know. Put it in again and keep climbing up and it was stuck and I just could not yank this thing out

[00:47:46] Derek: of the wall. I, you know, I still have both feet, stabbed pretty securely into the wall and my other eye, sacks is there. And I'm just sitting there trying to And basically, I ended up having to let go and you kind of come up from the bottom with your glove to like hit it up. Let's try to dislodge it and that worked. But unfortunately, I dropped the whole thing and so my

[00:48:07] Derek: eyes acts Falls all the way down. And I'm just up here, like Maddie said, fortunately, fortunately, we were, you know, we were being bullied like, you know many, I was saying, responsible and responsible climbers. So I just kind of Start over, get off the wall and get Blade down and grab my Axe and try again. But I was wondering that I watched that that the necklace documentary called The Alchemist. That that's

[00:48:33] Joe: exactly what I'm thinking right now. But I was wondering like he's got his access and he's million miles up this wall. It's like they're not like tied to his wrist or anything. Right. So it's like what if you drop one of your exes? Like that guy would be dead. You know? It was crazy.

[00:48:33] Derek: Some access do have like the wrist attachment thing.

[00:48:33] Joe: Yeah. Just that's crazy. But

[00:48:54] Derek: I was fun. We had a campfire, going up the bottom kind of these waterfalls and we were chatting heated up some food over that and had some hot berry juice. The

[00:49:06] Madi: best vegan thing I've ever had. Yeah,

[00:49:09] Madi: we didn't like choir, they just like brought it

[00:49:11] Derek: brought food. Let's eat up on the fire. Like okay, you know. Um, but they brought these Kooks as which are these like, these little cups with this little handle thing, which are really traditional from the Sami people as well. And we got to learn a little bit more about the culture around those everybody drinks. Out of coop, says all the time. But I learned that you can't actually buy yourself. At least

[00:49:39] Derek: it's not finished culture to buy yourself a Kousa even though everybody has them and uses them all the time. You should either be given one, or you make one for yourself, but never buy one for yourself.

[00:49:49] Madi: They are like, made out of the. This is what we were told. There may not like a root ball on a tree that you cut off and then you carve out the inside and smooth it all out, and then occasionally, they'll have like a reindeer antler, like, handle, or just carved out of wood.

[00:50:08] Derek: Yeah. Like the hard, the hard, not where, you know, a branches into the trunk of a tree or like so the root ball and really hard but really lightweight, and they're just kind of the traditional thing kind of fun, but Yeah, I mean, it was a success. We learned a lot and had a lot of fun and nobody know what died, so Skit. like Maddie said, the Ventus is though I was

[00:50:32] Derek: really glad for my event is though because with that much exertion like even with the temperatures being as low as they were, That was perfect Comfort level for me with the, the breathability of it, I could be active and he was cold wind. Yeah, yeah. So

[00:50:47] Madi: it wasn't as windy that day either, but

[00:50:49] Derek: yeah, I just had my Ventures on my top half and that was awesome.

[00:50:49] Joe: Sweet. Well, what else? I've been kind of quickly take us through the rest of it. We are turning around at a time.

[00:51:00] Madi: We're good storytellers. If you got a lot more. Well, well, finish out day, whatever it is. And that's how old we were there, too. That

[00:51:15] Madi: night, we had scheduled to go on a Northern Lights, cross country ski tour, but it was cloudy. So, we were going to see the lights.

[00:51:23] Derek: We just went Crossing in the dark and I was actually really fun.

[00:51:26] Madi: It's really cool and beautiful.

[00:51:29] Derek: We just got to go out kind of the back country a little bit and be just right in the trees. Again kind of like we were docs letting but Much slower and write hilly. There is Hills, but they're not huge. So it's gonna be wavy, and bumpy and hilly, but not, okay. Anything. Very big And like, are you pretty low elevation you think? Or is it like yeah,

[00:51:55] Joe: yeah, okay, yeah. The highest elevation we're at was at that that National Park where we were snowboarding and Ice climbing and stuff, okay.

[00:52:02] Madi: I know what it was but it wasn't very

[00:52:05] Derek: high, wasn't that it was not but the, the cross country skiing, we had a guide that kind of took us out and and, Supply the skis for us and we kind of went out and enjoyed just kind of slowing down and being in nature a little bit and I thought that was really fun.

[00:52:20] Madi: He was nice. And then the next morning, We tried to go to church, but it was closed and we went to a bunch of museums that day and also sent to the Village. So that was more of our like tourist. I guess it's all tourists but definitely more of the tourist day doing like some shopping. And we went to the article which is a really cool cultural and science museum. It's very popular.

[00:52:50] Derek: A lot of cool information about the Arctic Circle and Life in the North in general, whether it be like, Wildlife, or the people or the zombie people, we got to learn a lot about that. So

[00:53:01] Madi: and with the Santa's Village I guess I'm saying like that's like a normal thing. It's like probably the most popular thing for people who go to rovaniemi to do. It's claimed as like the real Santa like in the North Pole like that, where he lives. That's where his villages and. So, it's open year round. You can go on mail postcards to like, from Santa to care wherever you want.

[00:53:27] Joe: I better begin one. Yeah.

[00:53:28] Madi: Except for the US

[00:53:30] Derek: they were gonna have some to our nieces and nephews and then,

[00:53:34] Madi: yeah, they didn't have an option for the US is like, just

[00:53:37] Joe: mostly expensive. I don't know.

[00:53:39] Madi: Yeah. And so we were looking for some souvenirs, some things that we collect and

[00:53:47] Derek: it's cool, they have in the middle of this Village, the Santa's Village Thing this line of pillars that go through the middle of like the square, I guess in front of some of these buildings and that's just like the Arctic Circle, it cuts right through the middle of Santa's Village and so you could you know jump through on either side and cross. But we found this little cabin off the side of

[00:54:10] Derek: the village kind of and they were so bunch of souvenirs as well but they were all. I can meet reindeer things they made out of Ranger. There's and so they would custom engrave it before you. And so we had a custom engraved reindeer antler. Cheese slicer thing, nice stuff will actually use not just look at okay, well we don't have a cheese slicer. And slice some cheese really get cheese. Slicer on a plane.

[00:54:38] Madi: Yeah. I Googled it.

[00:54:39] Joe: Wow. Okay. All right. There you go.

[00:54:41] Madi: You take like a regular

[00:54:43] Derek: race. So we got that custom gray on an antler handles because you're doing carry on too. So yeah, because we just had our Cody. Well, so

[00:54:50] Madi: yeah, that night we got to go to the, you want to search the rush through the rest. Yeah, so

[00:54:55] Madi: that night we went to a snow hotel is all made out of snow that has like really cool carvings inside. They had like professional Carvers come in and carve like an ice princess or a bear or like really interesting,

[00:55:10] Madi: like, very intricately. It was very cool and we in the restaurant that was all made of ice the tables and the benches. And the desert plate was a shaped like a snowflake and made out of ice. So

[00:55:21] Derek: if you can picture, this is like a network of tunnels in this. I go either between rooms or the restaurants. and I go in there and they open up into the bigger rooms that they made and everything anywhere you're at is just like carp, really, intricately and beautifully and we're sit down on the restaurant. The tables made up of ice the benches were sitting on our made out of ice. and even

[00:55:45] Derek: some of the plates when we ate were made out of ice and They had like, reindeer fur on the benches, which is the first hollow inside and so it's really good insulator. And so that was totally warm to sit on but Now, we had some delicious salmon swim event. This is so warm. It's a hollow fiber. Yeah. so that was a really good meal as well, and It's really cool. There's no,

[00:56:09] Derek: there's no infrastructure in this hotel either. It's just ice and snow that they've put electrical wiring through for lights and that's it. No worries. No, there was curtains.

[00:56:20] Joe: So you want to your room and you pull a curtain?

[00:56:20] Madi: Yeah and I have

[00:56:24] Madi: like a little pathway more private. Okay. So yeah and there's like an ice bar and an ice restaurant and it was on this really pretty land. We got to Pet and Feed some reindeers. They had an albino.

[00:56:39] Joe: This is hard to visualize, you know, We did, we did take

[00:56:46] Derek: some photos and try to film some video stuff we were doing. Yeah,

[00:56:50] Derek: just slow down the hill and go away out on like, lose out there. Yeah.

[00:56:59] Madi: It's fun. And then the next day or actually that night, we got back on the train to go back to Helsinki and our plan was to do more museums and stuff. And then we learned Why because originally we were gonna do that on like the first day that we got there and like we don't feel like doing that. Let's just switch the days and I remember why I had it planned it

[00:57:19] Madi: was because all the museums were closed on Monday. But

[00:57:22] Derek: so we just kind of wandered around the streets

[00:57:24] Madi: like a food tour and got like a bunch of different. Like it was mostly just like the baked goods.

[00:57:34] Joe: We've got a little cafes and little shops off the streets and say What's the best was the most traditional and they

[00:57:39] Joe: tell us whatever name?

[00:57:39] Madi: It was that I can't remember. They just cinnamon croissant. That's probably just very young. That was just like so good. They like buttery and like the sauce was just very good.

[00:57:53] Derek: And that was it. We from there after walking around the streets got back on a

[00:57:57] Madi: Target. There was not nice like a

[00:58:01] Madi: What like yeah, it's not like the Target too. Not the target's nice, but it was like the basement of the mall with like exposed wiring ceiling and it just left like this looked like a total bargain store.

[00:58:14] Joe: Huh? I finished singing is like franchises in the US aren't necessarily the same franchise as overseas seems like so like McDonald's and a lot of countries is like a premium restaurant. Yeah, right. Yeah

[00:58:27] Derek: like Target here is like more premium than say Walmart, but there's It's yeah you can't always rely on franchise, you know, your opinion of them here. Yep. So that was kind of the last thing we did back in Helsinki and so then we got to the airport and flew out of there and that was it. We

[00:58:46] Madi: better really good bus

[00:58:48] Derek: going back to The Northern Lights like that. Originally, we had kind of wanted to see when we booked the flights. We didn't get a salmon in Finland because it was kind of snowy and cloudy the whole time. But on the way there, I don't know if we mentioned this on the way there, we actually looked at the plane window. It was night time. We were over Greenland or something and they were

[00:59:08] Derek: really, really bright outside the plane window. It was almost like you're flying right by him. So we did see him gotta check that off the bucket list to see the Northern Lights. But We actually flying, right? Right. It was kind of a different cool perspective. Now,

[00:59:24] Madi: we were expecting for sure.

[00:59:25] Joe: That's cool way. Cool. I hope this inspires are audience to get out there. Take their coat of us, well that they will have purchased through the link when that shifts out later this year and and go travel one bag. Travel, there you go, one back traveling in Finland with the with the Cody UL, that's how we can wrap it up with our with our outdoor vital stuff. Do you have any travel

[00:59:51] Joe: like General travel advice when it comes to that kind of thing? The one back travel

[00:59:56] Madi: I think and I said this before, if you're nervous about something that you don't have room for, but you've like done the research, and you're pretty convinced that you won't need it. But you're nervous about it just leave without it. And if you find yourself in a position where you're like, wow, I really wish I had this then it's usually available or like in Derek's case he ran out of the odorant

[01:00:17] Madi: and we just got more so like just, Make sure you have like the most necessities and and kind of weed out and you'll get better every trip that you take knowing what you need and what you don't and kind of go make a checklist and start from there.

[01:00:32] Joe: You can't one bag travel very easily if you're for your packing. Yeah. You can

[01:00:37] Joe: just doesn't work because you can't fit everything that you're free of into a pack. So here packing or packing your fears?

[01:00:37] Madi: Yeah,

[01:00:44] Madi: and I I usually choose one or two items that are fear, like,

[01:00:49] Joe: Mercury, I just like me. It's like I get my base weight down the 10 pounds and then I pack like one or two luxury items to get to like 12 pounds. And that's, that's how I that's your first time

[01:01:01] Joe: doing. Yeah. So I don't think that's bad at all. Like that's kind of the whole point of being able to be super light. In some ways is then you get to have maybe buffer room too. Yeah,

[01:01:10] Derek: I think another tip is just like the type of stuff that you You do bring is also important. You can one bag travel with pretty much any gear clothing that you have, but it is a lot harder if you don't have Lightweight packable clothing, for example, everybody's gonna have to take clothes on any trip or for our kids can bring clothes and insulating layers, right? Which we could have done either way.

[01:01:37] Derek: But it was a lot easier having things that packed down really nicely like our Nova ul's or Nova Pros or you know, just stuff like compresses. I had some Merino wool shirts or the shirts that I brought rather than like a more bulky cotton shirt that, you know, then you know that was stink after one use the wool. I actually I wore a wool shirt every single day and I didn't even

[01:01:59] Derek: switch it out. I wore Dragon will hoodie and for the five days, pretty much wore that. And because it's Jack was nobody. I mean, I mean mad. He's like, hey if you looked the same every day, something she'll complain. I brought it visually but you married an ultra-light Backpacker woman but like I didn't have to worry about that problem because I was wearing layers over that. But also I didn't have to

[01:02:25] Derek: With the Merino wool. It didn't it didn't really smell but I never had to even rinse it now. No, I just wore that. And that's awesome. Then you can now

[01:02:33] Madi: we weren't sweating. So

[01:02:34] Derek: I did have a couple other wool shirts as well. Marina wool they're really lightweight. There's somewhere we're actually about to release actually. They might be released by the time we put out this podcast,

[01:02:43] Derek: know the turn, the turn, Merino wool hoodies. I had as well. And I wore that at least one or two days and it just doesn't hardly weigh anything. So that was really easy pack.

[01:02:54] Joe: So like I think we could talk about gear tan and that's a lot of really good tips, but I think that the idea behind the gear and its quality and all of that is like, just, Does it feel empowering to you guys to have some of that gear like having the Cota or like having packable like here? Does it like I mean to me it's like the benefit or the my purpose

[01:03:18] Joe: I guess I'm doing a lot of the stuff that we do here is to like help Empower people to get out there. So like do you like that? Is a factor for you guys?

[01:03:18] Madi: Yeah,

[01:03:25] Madi: for sure. I feel like so I have gone. On International trips where I am bringing a giant two giant suitcases and like I feel comfortable about everything that's in there but I didn't use half of the stuff and so but I also had to worry about like oh I'm leaving this. Here. Like, is it gonna be safe? Is it gonna be

[01:03:46] Joe: like on like the last day of your guys's trip? You didn't have a car at that point rented. Nope,

[01:03:50] Joe: you're just walking around the streets all day.

[01:03:52] Madi: Yeah, we wouldn't have been able to go as far or do as much if we had to be like lugging cigarettes, I would have been like I was tired, I just would have been like, no, we're just gonna sit right here until our bus comes but it was it's empowering to go and do more even when you only have, you know, that four-hour Gap or that three-hour Gap to just well, we

[01:04:15] Madi: can carry it all. It's just fit it in.

[01:04:19] Derek: Yeah. Definitely. Maybe Beyond just having one pack and be able to go anywhere with just that one backpack. The fact that we were able to bring our insulating layers as well, the fact that they were light enough compressible enough that we could bring all of her in Waiting layers, that just opened up a lot of opportunities for us to do whatever we want to do. Like, we didn't really plan for me

[01:04:43] Derek: to go snowboarding, but I already had all my stuff and didn't cost me any more to go. Try to hunt down a coat and some Snow pants or something somewhere? I had it. I could just do whatever I wanted because I had the gear. To be able to do what I wanted. And it wasn't slowing me down or hindering me. Because it was, you know, ultralight, so I think that's the other

[01:05:02] Derek: side of it is, if you have the right gear, it gives you that The mind in the sense that if you find something you want to do, you are enabled and empowered to do it. Even if it wasn't necessarily seen or in the plans before

[01:05:16] Madi: and also knowing that we use the items and we like slowly got the items like piece by piece is empowering. It wasn't like oh, we have to go to Finn and we have to spend, you know, an extra thousand dollars on like getting suited up for it, it was just kind of It's empowering to know. Like I already have good gear. I'm ready for this thing and you know, maybe supplement with

[01:05:42] Madi: the one new thing or whenever we got specific to the trip.

[01:05:46] Derek: The one thing I think we there's two new things that we got before the trip but we wanted him. Anyways, we just How to reasonably the two. Things were the boots. We wanted warmer winter boots. So we got some warm water boots and then we got another Nova Pro. We already had a Nova Pro, each of us. Yeah, but we figured, you know, what? Like there's another color that we really like

[01:06:08] Derek: and we wanted it anyways. And now if we knew if we're gonna be a negative, two is a high on some of the days. Two Nova Pros would probably be helpful and now we have wood used but I mean I don't want to drag us on longer but like what a Nova Pro and Anova UL would have with that, have been nearly as effective, see a different piece of duplicates. Or do

[01:06:31] Joe: you think like you needed all of the two knows?

[01:06:33] Madi: I think I could have done a ul and a pro

[01:06:36] Joe: that's bearing in mind. We did all set just on, right? A lot of mid-layer. Yeah.

[01:06:41] Madi: So I think the reason we went with the pro and this case is that we know that we'll use them more here. So wasn't just gonna be like, a UL is would have been good for that, but will use the pro by itself more in the weather that we have. Here around so

[01:07:01] Joe: cool. All right. Well thank you guys for the audience at home. Please feel free to send us your comments. Questions about backpacking or travel cool outdoor stories or ideas for future episode topics. We will read it on the show if we think it'll bring value to the episode and you can do that by commenting on our brand, new Live Ultralight podcast, YouTube channel, or you can send us a comment. That live

[01:07:27] Joe: ultralight podcast@gmail.com. And if you put any positive, iTunes, reviews, by the way, we will read those on the show as well. So please be sure to subscribe on iTunes Spotify YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Thank you guys. We'll see out there on the trail. It was the song.