Sun10Jul16: Lokuta - Camp Joulumae (114.0km, 659.1km YTD)

Crawled into the tent about 10:30pm last night, heard soft snoring from the tents around me, put the eye shades on and woke up at 5:25am, dozed until 6am, had a great sleep.  No wind or rain during the night, but a heavy morning fog has covered every surface with moisture, so we're packing up wet.  Each morning the coffee routine is getting more efficient and the coffee is even tasting better.  Porridge with bananas this time, but I defer on the granola and sandwiches that some other riders prefer.

Heading out at 7:30am, fog is clearing, breeze is beginning to pick up, sun is shining through, and a nice 16C temperature.  We start out on a minor highway, and there are several hard-pack gravel sections where it passes through pine forests or small farm fields.  Cranes perched high up on their post-top nests, a great blue heron in the ditch alongside the road, a hawk glides over the fields looking for his/her breakfast, another Moose Crossing sign but we've yet to see the live animal.

Chris & Peter have reached the lunch stop at 53km before me, nice location because there are plenty of flowers, bees, and butterflies.  After lunch, the route emerges from the pine forest into the face of a 30-50kph south wind.  Nature is just being nasty:  last week when we were heading northwest from Russia to Tallinn, the west was northwest into our faces; now that we've turned south the wind has moved around and is from the south into our faces.  Thank goodness the terrain is fairly flat.

A long stretch of our route follows the E4 highway, heavy traffic and narrow shoulders, but my flashing red light should be visible.  Flagging suggests a turn off into the pine forest and ends up at Camp Loulumae, a 'jock friendly' place.
Bikes are to be parked in the 2-sheet curling rink building, there are youth sports teams here doing calisthetics and stretching exercises, a 100m track is off to the south,  cyclists and runners are continually coming and going, this time we fit right in.


Claim my duffle bag, erect the tent (which needs to dry out anyways), plug in the computer & Garmin & light to recharge their batteries, lovely shower, do my laundry and hang it up to dry, buy a Coke for the sugar fix, then settle into my backlog of blog and photo work.