30-Dec-2006 -- This winter is definitely strange. I drove up from Motala to visit my parents in Luleå for christmas. I did not see a single snowflake for 1000 km of driving, and this was on the 18th of December! A snow free December is something extraordenary around latitude N65.

To many peoples' relief it started to snow on the 23rd of December. There was going to be a White Christmas this year as well. Luckily for my plans to visit a confluence, it came only around 20 cm of snow. I did not bring along my skiing equipment but the lack of snow made it possible to walk everywhere.

I started very early from Luleå to pick up Mattias in Kalix. The temperature was around -14 centigrade and when I was around halfway to Kalix it started to RAIN!! Of course the rain immediately turned into ice when it landed on the road and on my windscreen making the tour a quite "interesting" experience. After picking up Mattias we drove to the small village Kamlunge. To get the final guidance on all the small roads in the area I consulted MS autoroute as usual. It is really amazing that the database covers mudroads in the middle of nowhere.

It was an easy 600m walk from were we parked to the confluence. The area was quite wet with a lot of marshes so I was happy with the fact that it had finally become winter and everything was frozen.