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Lahemaa National Park

August 2018

While in Tallinn, we took a great day trip with Travelers Tours to Lahemaa National Park on Estonia’s northern coast. It’s an area of small bays strewn with boulders, peaceful pine forests and bogs, quiet seaside villages, and old manor houses built during Tsarist days. Along the way, we visited one of flat Estonia’s mighty waterfalls (25 feet high), tried out a traditional village swing, and saw storks nesting on rooftops (they flew too high for us to get a picture).

A scene from one of the many bays in Lahemaa National Park

A traditional thatched rural cottage in the park

Our day-long tour in the park included pretty walks by the sea

This type of plant was blowing white fuzz all over the place in early August

Large swings like this were traditional recreation spots in Estonian villages. Modern ones can swing 360 degrees around!

One in three trees in Estonia is a Scots pine

Wooden boardwalk through a peat bog in the national park

Because of the poor soil, trees are shorter in the bog than in the surrounding forest

Chris bringing up the rear

Ponds form in the bog when rainwater pools on the surface above the peat

The mighty 25-foot-high Jagala waterfall

A stork nest on a chimney (the storks in it flew away before we could get a picture)

The national park is dotted with 18th- and 19th-century manor houses. This one is now an event center and hotel.

Some people are reclaiming their families' former manors. But after 50 years of neglect during the Soviet period, the houses need a lot of work.