Day trip to Kuutsalo

Kuutsalo is island in Kotka archipelago.

In winter the Gulf of Finland is covered in ice. Because ice the ferry "Tekla I" can't access dock Mullinlahti, but have to leave the cargo onto the ice.
There people walk, ski, drive snowmobile or ATV to their cottages. This ferry goes regularly to Kuutsalo few times a week, whole year round.

We have to walk about 2km to get to our house. There is nice road through forest, its easy to walk. Luckily the weather was quite pleasant today, only few degrees frost, almost sunny and wind didn't hit us in the forest.

Last time anyone of my family visited in our Summer house was October, before we took boats up from sea for winter. So it was exciting to see what conditions there waited us. We knew we wont put heating on, or nothing like that, only spent nice outdoor day there. We had backpacks full of food and water to have decent pick nic during our 7 hour trip at Kuutsalo.

First thing we did when we got to house, was digging doors free from snow piles. Then we made small fire in sauna to have warm place to eat pic nic. We made coffee and had first of many pic nic's. After it we walked around place and checked all was ok. There were one tree got down close the house, but luckily smoothly. No harm was done.
After this short walk we needed to make fire for grill some sausages and eat second pic nic...Then little more walk on ice. It made us hungry again, so we decided to make some more coffee and have third pic nic in sauna.... :D

Soon it was time to lock all up again and walk back to Mullinlahti dock. The boat trip back to mainland was beautiful, the sun peeked trough clouds to smile to our marvelous day trip to Kuutsalo.

In photo is Tekla I in Mullinlahti. We are heading towards to it on sea ice, where lots of other people are already waiting it. Furthest left is My Darling with my Dad and our dog Bambi.
In horizon is Kotka- city.