Posts From Sweden

Not much to report for today, as it was pretty much just drive to cover some miles. We spent a pleasant few hours parked in the little town of Enontekio while we got some groceries and did some online business and then into Sweden through the small Swedish border town of Karesuando.

Our route this morning took us through Vittangi and Svappavarra on our way to Kiruna and the nearby village of Jukkasjaavi, which are famous for the worlds largest underground iron ore mine and the Ice Hotel respectively.

We are now on a bit of a mission to get to Stockholm. There are a number of reasons for this not the least including that it seems like a good place to do some preparation for our upcoming trip to Africa (without the truck). So today we set off from our camping spot with the plan of getting to and crossing the "border". There was a noticeable change in scenery as we passed by Oslo (on the southern side). Up until then Norway had been characterized by very steep, mountainous, rocky terrain and consequently with roads that wound between the terrain. Not far east of Oslo we were suddenly in flatter more open country and by the time we got to the Swedish border the country was flat and either forested or farmed. What a difference.

Had I known what the day was going to bring I may have stayed in bed, but I guess thats not how things work. This morning it was raining, a really wild storm with heavy driving rain, which was (as it turned out) the perfect weather to expose a leak in our trucks roof-top air conditioning system. Only a few miles down the road we noticed a wet patch on the ceiling of the truck's head liner. As we drove the wet patch expanded until almost the entire drivers side ceiling was wet. A few miles later and it was now raining inside the truck. Fortunately we found a convenient truck parking area and stopped. However the rain did not stop and neither did the the water leaking into the truck. Eventually I got out a tarp and covered the roof of the truck. That eventually worked but by then the entire head liner was soaked and we had containers catching water all over the inside of the truck cab.

As you can see from the dates we have spent quite a long time in Stockholm, 6 nights in fact, a long stay by our normal standards. It has proven to be a good base for some Africa prep, a bit of sight seeing and some vehicle work/repairs.

This morning I discovered that during yesterdays removal of the hot water tank I committed a rather embarrassing oversight. After packing up and doing all the other "leaving-camp" chores this morning I decided that I would start the truck and warm up the engine while Nina went and paid the bill. So I was sitting in the cab letting the engine idle when suddenly the truck computer started making it's unmistakeable something is wrong noise, a high pitched siren; to be helpful the computer also displayed a sign on the instrument panel that indicated low coolant. Shutting down the engine I rushed to the side of the truck to check the valves that close off coolant flow to the (now removed) hot water tank only to discover that those valves were open and that coolant had been pumping into the space under the kitchen sink where the hot water tank resides. That commenced a good hour or so of soaking up red coolant with paper toweling and topping up the cooling system with water. What a stupid mistake, but fortunately with no significant consequences.