About the sauna
Try Me Spa Moose sits on roughly eleven acres of second-growth birch, pine, and alder, tucked into a cove on the east shore of Piikki Lake. There's no road noise. There's one long gravel drive that the map apps don't believe in. Power comes from the grid but most of what matters runs on wood: the two sauna stoves, the outdoor shower heater in summer, the cooking hearth in the guest kitchen.
We've intentionally kept the footprint small. Two sauna cabins — the original Big Moose and the smaller Calf — a shared changing house we call the Vestibule, a covered rinsing porch, a cedar-plank deck that steps down to the dock, and a woodshed that holds about three cords of split birch at any given moment. That's the whole operation.
Annika Lehto-Virtanen keeps the fires, splits most of the wood, and handles bookings. She grew up in the cove two over and has been tending saunas since she was twelve, when her grandfather handed her a bundle of vihta birch whisks and told her they'd better be soaked by sundown.
Teo built the cabins — the Calf twice, because the first time the roof pitch was two degrees too shallow and shed snow into the stovepipe. He spends most days in the workshop making cedar ladles, sauna-stone tongs, and the occasional boat repair for neighbors who drop by with a thermos of coffee.
Bix is a large and deeply unserious Karelian-ish dog who will meet you at the parking spur. He is allowed everywhere except the sauna itself. He has a particular routine involving a found stick and your left shoe; it's best to go along with it.
We get asked about her more than anything else. She's a full-grown cow, possibly twelve or thirteen years old — we first noticed her in the autumn of 2018 — and she treats our compost heap as a personal salad bar during late summer. We've never named her. It felt presumptuous, and also: naming a moose is how you start thinking you own one. The business is, obviously, named for her. If you see her, give her a wide berth and the afternoon is yours to brag about. The Moose Log has more, if you're that kind of curious.
Sauna culture, done right, is unfussy and communal. It's also deeply private — you're often sitting quietly with people you've just met, in a small room, for a long time. We run the place the way we'd want a place like this run for us: clean, warm, uncrowded, and free of sales pitches. There are no tiered packages. There are no “experiences.” There is a fire, a room, a lake, and a towel.
We borrow freely from Finnish and Estonian sauna habits — the löyly throw, the whisk, the long cool-down — without pretending to be an authority. Annika's grandmother would roll her eyes at anyone who pretended to be an authority.
We're open year-round, though the character of a visit shifts with the calendar.
We don't do massage, facials, or bodywork. We don't sell robes or candles. We don't host bachelorette parties, corporate offsites, or anything involving a slide-deck. We aren't a wellness brand. We're a sauna house, and we are committed to continuing to be only that.