Seeing Northern Lights leaves couple beaming
A bucket list. We’ve all got one, and seeing the Northern Lights was high up on ours. When you’re trying to find the best spot to hunt this elusive creature, Google is your friend.
My wife, Joanne, and I finally settled on Aurora Service Tours, which would set us up in a cottage near Utsjoki, Finland, well into the Arctic Circle and just a walk across a frozen river from Norway. We learned these tours are commonly booked a year in advance, so don’t put off scheduling it if you’re interested.
Getting there involved flying to Helsinki, then catching a flight to the northernmost airport in Finland, at Ivalo. After that it’s only a three-hour car ride to the cottage. The temperature was about -5 degrees when we arrived, but warmed up to almost 0 over the four days we spent there. We expected to see reindeer, and we did. We nearly hit one on the drive up. Very similar to dodging elk in Arizona.
On our first full day we traveled to what could best be described as a husky ranch and learned how to drive a dog sled, which mostly consisted of trying to get the dogs to slow down. The dogs are very well treated and enjoy getting out for a run.
We returned to our cottage just in time for a quick dinner, then joined the other six members of our party to watch for the lights, which involved sliding down an embankment onto the frozen river. The temperature quickly convinced us that it was best to rotate watchers, with the rest of the party trying to stay warm in a tepee with a fire pit.
I drew the first watch and, after 20 of the coldest minutes of my life, noticed a rippling motion of green light and sounded the alarm. That resulted in a traffic jam on the embankment as seven people slid down a three-person ramp.
A full moon somewhat reduced the dramatic effect of the display, but a meteor from the Geminid shower shot through the lights and was truly spectacular. At one point, it looked like a funnel cloud was dropping from the display, and then it made a right turn and shot out to the right.
That was the only night we saw the Northern Lights, but that one night more than justified the trip. Details: tours.aurora-service.eu. The writer lives in Sedona.