The two images flanking the wildflowers in the top half of the collage below are of the rushing mountain stream running alongside the start of the trail. The yellow wildflower is Small Cow wheat (Melampyrum silvaticum, the dark purple flower is Bartsia alpina L.; its common name in Sweden is Svarthö which translates to Bartsia! The image on the lower left is the first of five images that were used to make the panoramic image at the top of this post... even the ground was beautiful on our hike as seen in the gorgeous stones and greenery in the image in the lower right. In the middle is cousin Sture, carrying most of the provisions for our lunch and coffee making and brother-in-law Tom on top of the world in spite of the gloomy weather!
Below you have the gateway to the hiking trail and Sture preparing to make the all-important coffee to go with our picnic lunch after we had hiked up to the plateau. The hardest part of finding a lunch spot was finding a place that was sheltered enough from the wind to allow Sture to light the flame for making the coffee. We certainly didn't lack for beautiful scenery!
Images below include several from our hike along the plateau, brother Lukas and brother-in-law Tom (back to camera) hunkered down and enjoying lunch and Sture finally joining us in the meal after making sure we all had coffee. The image in the lower right is an HDR from 3 images taken of the stream that runs alongside the start of the trail. As we returned to the parking lot at the end of our hike, the sky had become quite dark except for the light patch in the distance and light rain was falling.
I debated about including the collage below... the church looks crooked to me in BOTH of the images. SIGH... must do a better job of post processing when making collages which tend to exaggerate any "off kilter" bits! This is the church in Tärnaby (Tarna kyrka) and is the church where Inger's parents were married.
Interior views of the church in Tärnaby include the high pulpit, a view of the painting over the altar and one of the stairwells leading up to the choir balcony where the organ, last image, is located. This church was beautiful in its simplicity and not nearly as elaborately decorated in the interior as many we saw.
After our stop in Tärnaby on the way home from our hike, we made a couple more stops along the way to have a look at some family homes formerly belonging to Inger's family. The house on the top left below was the home of Inger's grandparents until they became quite elderly at which point it was given to one of the sons as is the custom in Sweden in the old days (and still seems to be fairly common to this day). The home in the lower right is where Inger's grandparents lived in their "old age" and is on the same property as their other house. The thermometer measuring the temperature at nearly 9 PM was on the outside of Sture and Inger's home and the interior door is in their house. That door came from the old house that they bought to provide building materials for portions of their home. Sture was in the process of stripping all the old paint when Inger suggested that he should leave it as you see it now because it was beautiful that way. I quite agree!
The last collage has an image of the home in which Inger lived until age 4 when her family moved from Tärnaby to Lycksele, a lovely little wildflower, Moneses uniflora (known as Ögonljus in Sweden), and a pleasant scene near the family property.
