I'd like to introduce you all to Tavelsjö. Tavelsjö is a quiet small town with not much happening except cold weather and frost, snow and occasional auroras. We've had -20'C temps here for four days in a row now with 5 days of clear skies, I'm ****ing sick of it, but it makes for some impressive frost buildup (and also sunrises, but due to technical limitations I couldn't post those on this forum).
Since this is a Saturday and I'm not working, I figured I'd use the time to actually be able to go outside while it's still bright (actually it was because I have a stupid dog that needs to go outside even when it's frigid ****ing -22'C). This was the first stop on the journey. A birch forest can be seen. The only good thing about birches is that their white bark and thin crow's-nesty twigs that look ****ing terrible in the green season, at least looks pretty nice when they're covered with frost.
Then I went out onto the titular Tavelsjö (Painting lake). Does it look like a painting lake should? I don't know. It's really nice because a family that lives here, completely on their own without any promise of anything in return, singlehandedly plow the ice to make a huge dozen mile long ice skating road every winter out of charity. Last winter Umeå municipality even started sending free buses from the city to the town to let people skate on the lake bringing a lot of "tourism". There were a bunch of people going about today too. I wouldn't want to though since it was 22 ****ing degrees below the freezing point of sh
it. I saw a guy whose hair was completely white from frost, with large pulps of ice hanging from his white eye lashes. Brrrr. Sadly couldn't take a picture of him.
Then I got bored of walking on the ice and started slowly making my way to the church. Here's a snow mobile highway through the cold grove.
If this isn't impressive amounts of frost then I don't know what is.
Somewhere underneath all that snow (which is abut 70cm), there's supposed to be a creek.
And then I stopped to take another picture of the sun. This was at one o'clock. You could actually see the sun through the wispy clouds.
Slowly making my way to the church indeed. I've moved 10 meters from the last picture and in total 70 meters from the grove picture.
No picture of the church. Just a picture of some white trees, especially that birch. Looking pretty neat.
Maples aren't as impressive, at least not to the naked eye, but they did come out rather nicely on camera.
I almost forgot to take a picture of the "view" from the church hill too. Had to run up the hill again. This is the eastern side of the town.
I thought this birch looked pretty neat too.
And Cambium. I think your rhododendron are fine. These have to withstand the -40'C temps Tavelsjö is capable of managing.
And what do you know. While writing this I looked out the window and saw the sun was setting and the clouds, which can be seen in the distance in the "view" from the church, rolling in.
Full resolution images:
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And at least you're getting cold again in a couple days.
