Summer Night

My intention was to photograph at unusual locations at unusual times, which is what I did last night. The battery guy had advised me to use my wife's car in order to charge the battery and this was an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I arrived at Vääksy, the main population center of Asikkala, a small municipality about 25 km north of Lahti at about 11 pm. Just south of the Salpausselkä II esker approaching Vääksy, I saw this fog on the ground. The air had been somewhat moist and the day had been warm (about 27 C) in Lahti. But it turned out that water being sprayed on a nearby golf course was the reason the fog existed.

You're looking at Salpausselkä II. It's a 500 km chain eskers running parallel to Salpausselkä I running through Lahti. The northern one of the eskers you're looking at separates the 25 kilometer long Lake Vesijärvi from Lake Päijänne which is the second largest lake in the country. Päijänne extends about 120 km to the north almost to Jyväskylä, the capital of Central Finland. At least two Steemians live there. It takes about ten and a half hours for the lake cruise ship to reach Lahti from Jyväskylä. It has to navigate through a channel in Vääksy.

The highway

I drove further up from Vääksy to Pulkkilanharju, an esker running about 7 km from the southwest to the northeast across the southern end of Lake Päijänne. This is a view to the south towards Asikkala. The water is very clear and the southern part of Päijänne is a national park. About 1.4 million people in the capital region get their drinking water from this lake through a 130 km long tunnel the end of which is in the middle of that body of water you're looking at about 10 meters below the surface. The other end of the tunnel is in a reservoir in Vantaa from which it is led to treatment plants before delivery to the municipal water systems in the area.

A view to the northwest