Day 3. Vetlanda to Horn.

Day 3 had some monster hills. Very diverse. Chicken salads. Read and see pictures.

I carefully extracted myself from my camping spot and cruised easy into Vetlanda, which is a pretty nice town. I went grocery shopping at a surprisingly upscale Willy’s and braved the birds hiding in the signage at Cecil’s Bakery.

I treated myself to my first kanelbulle in years. THAT MEANS CINAMMON ROLL. Here’s what I had to choose from.

I ate the crap out of that bulle, had some coffee and yogurt, and visited the tourist center to score some sweet free maps, now that I was almost clear through Jönköpings län and nearing Kalmar län. I refrained from buying 45kr baskets of fresh strawberries. That’s about $8 worth, for a little more than a handful. Christ!

UNAMERICAN SMASH NAZI! The picture doesn’t do a good job of showing that the Nazi symbol here is appropriately crossed out. Just go home, dumkopf Adolf!

Up to Ekekull, the road just went up and up and up for kilometers. I ate a lot of candy halfway through and being somehow determined and thusly fueled, totally destroyed the hell out of the hills. Here’s what was on the other side! A BARN. REWARD!

Somehow, my genius route planning landed me not only on the Småland cycle path, but also on the Astrid Lindgren path. Her Pippi Longstocking books are set in this area of Småland.I didn’t see Pippi Longstocking anywhere.

I stopped by Stora Bellen lake to eat more junk food and recline on some nice rotting furniture.

Logging is pretty big in this area of Sweden in general. Here’s a lumberyard. I saw a lot of these dusty yards on the way, but riding my bike past this one, a group of 4 or 5 surly-ass looking old dudes on a smoke break totally waved and shook their fist in a “fuck yeah!” type way at me as I passed, so I chose to immortalize their freshly planed wooden handywork.

I then rolled into Hjältevad (loosely translated, “HERO WHAT?!“), which was a small and stupid town. Ugly too! An old lady scowled at me. And then, the shoulder ended and any roads or paths off of highway 33 stopped. I had to bike for about 4 harrowing kilometers on a rediculous shoulder (luckily, traffic was light and there were not many trucks) until I reached INGATORP! They even made a sign welcoming me to “Highway 33’s pearl”. Yeesh.

I rode up a short but rediculously steep hill. As always, my point and shoot camera will not do the grade justice, but check out this ski slope, Valbacka, (at least a quadruple black diamond) with lifts and snow-makers. It’s basically vertical. In the late spring thaw, apparently, billy goats and horses come and feast on the preserved remains of unfortunate skiers. My theory, anyways.

Here’s some typical Småland rural residences at the top of the little mountain. When Småland was first settled, all the wide open spaces were dotted with thousands of rocks left embedded in the ground by ancient glaciers. To make the soil arable and provide grazing room, agriculturalists all over this area built stone embankments to clear out rocks and section off their property. Now you know!

I biked through some really desolate areas that totally reminded me of the High Sierra. Lots of pine trees, low brush and gravel-dirt.

And then after a rediculously fast descent where I lost almost all the elevation I had climbed all day, I was in Kalmar län. Feelin’ good.

Here’s a church in Rumskulla. There was a nice pond behind it, but we all know what they look like.

I found a birth-defect fawn. Mother: horse. Father: Dalmation. Unholy.

I made it to Södra Vi, and was totally feelin’ some Kebab action. Unfortunately, the town was totally shut down, so I had no choice but to soldier on. I rocked through this little hillside neighborhood with tacky folk-art mailboxes.

The road straightened out and all of a sudden, dramatic stone cliffs rose up from the road on either side of me and everything was dark and green and lonely and rad. Stone cliffs don’t really exist in Skåne or Småland, so I know I must be getting close to…

Right about the time that last picture was taken, I forgot about kebabs and had an uncontrollable urge for a gigantic freakin’ hamburger. I haven’t had a hamburger in Sweden, so how do they stack up, you know? It’s all I could think about for the next 20km into Horn. Where the only restaraunt in town was totally closed. DAMNIT! I made do with a surprisingly delicious chicken pasta salad from an ICA grocery store, took some pictures of the nice lake and then moved on to try to find a camp spot.

My camping spot was rad! It was on top of a hill, so I couldn’t be seen by any houses or cars on the road below. It was also the first “open” area that I got to set my tent up in, so I could see stars instead of trees through my tent.

If you’re totally interested in what my living sitch’ was looking like that week, here’s my domicile when all done up. Not too shabby.

There was also a slug.