we decided to stay another night at the fell centre kiilopää, so we can do another hike today. this time we wanted to try a looped trail hike, taking us from kiilopää to laanila and back again. the 24km long trail[01-85] started - like the trail we took yesterday - at the fell centre centre kiilopää [01-85]. it was a pretty hot day today with 30°C, but still we wanted to make the hike. we followed the snowmobile trails, that were used by hikers and mountain bikers in summer. but besides a few bikers we did not see any people at all. and also no reindeer so far, because either they are inside or outside the gate[01-02,​85]. after a while we decided it is time to have a short break, drink some water, and eat some snacks. we came to a public camping site, but no people were here, except a family right at a fireplace. we took pictures at the lake where the fireplace was, and once we were done we noticed the family had left. so we went to the fireplace, as there were benches to sit. strange thing is, they must have put on a few new logs, so the fire will burn on. we were a little confused. the ground was dry, it seemed it had not rained for quite a while, and still they put a new log in the fire and just leave? they did not inform us, nor did they care if we would go to the fireplace to watch it. so we assumed this must be common behaviour to keep the fire burning, no matter how dry the surrounding is. flying sparks? who gives a damn. well, for the time being we were watching the fire. we started to unpack our sandwiches, when suddenly we noticed a few birds[11-32] flying from the other side of the lake to our fireplace. it was obvious they were attracted by our food and were used to humans. so at first we threw them some crumbs and they happily picked them. then we dared them to get closer and closer. it took him a while, but in the end one of the siberian jays even picked the crumbs from my hand - aaaaw, so brave, so cute. unfortunately the pictures of these moments were too blurry. i had my tele lens on, so they were too close - too bad. and for the record: before we left, we put out the fire; it just did not seem right to us to leave it behind still burning. while hiking we saw loads of ant hills. there are a lot of them, and some got a little extra protection[03] from humans, like a stone roof for better rain protection. near the streams we spotted several toads[74] and a mouse too. and we also saw some reindeer[44-46,​64,​67] again. as always, they were very cautious and shy, so we could not get near them. today it was really very hot, all sunny and no clouds in the sky. so it felt amazing to take off our hiking shoes, and cool down our feet[57] in the cold water of another brook. this helped a little and was really refreshing, as the water was quite cool. with our feet dangling in the water we had another sandwich and some more water to replenish. near the end of our trip we noticed that it got always steeper - there was a hill[75-84] at the end of the trip. at first we hoped the trail would lead us around, but it went right up to the top. uffz, we were already pretty exhausted, and not very happy with the ascend. furthermore this meant that the little shadow we had so far from the trees along the trail were now disappearing again. just like yesterday. but eventually we also made the last piece of the trail and finally arrived back at the suomen latu kiilopää hotel again. today's trail was listed with a length of 24km, but my gps tracker said it was only 22km. so it seems we balanced the 2km difference from yesterday's hike. track for day 09 hike.