Driving to Uzgorod

We safely arrived in Uzgorod for the mission conference, at 12:30 on Wednesday, just a little late for lunch. We had arrived at Marina’s friend’s home around 5:30 on Tuesday after 13 hours of driving, and were treated to a delicious supper. We took a walk to see a castle ruin and after a shower we were ready for bed. With a good night’s sleep and a little breakfast we set out at 7 am to drive the rest of the way here with Marina. Today Garry drove along the river, through the mountains, and mostly in town after village, so it was slower driving than yesterday (we did about 900 km yesterday and 315 today) The GPS worked well, we found where we were going, and only had to turn around a couple times when she would announce she was “recalculating route” (Garry has chosen a very British sounding lady voice to tell him where to go) as sometimes “turning right” or “bearing left” is actually straight. It also says “prepare to turn left in 800 meters- 300 meters” before the turn. We were puzzled when it said to “prepare to go straight in 800 meters” until we spotted the stop sign well to the side of the road just as we got to the intersection. Fortunately he stopped in time and now we know what “prepare to go straight” means! The only other problems were finding places to pass slow moving trucks and a delay at the bridge under construction in one town. There was only one lane but no North American style traffic signal for taking turns so Garry had to back up as something was coming from the other way--- and then wait until traffic cleared- about a dozen cars and a couple big trucks came across before we could go!
It was very interesting to check out the crops as we came across to western Ukraine- we saw combines heading south, the crops here are not as mature as those closer to Zaporosia, where the winter wheat is golden. We saw many different people making hay, mostly cutting by hand (like the photo of Mike cutting grass when the Steinbach team was here) and carrying home forked into a truck, or wagon (many pulled by a horse or two) or motorcycle (they stuff it in bags). I saw a couple older men heading out on bicycles with scythes in hand. It was only 20 C on Tuesday as we drove so those guys were wearing jackets. We were thankful for the cooler weather as we headed west, since we are unable to get air-conditioning for the Lada. It even clouded up so Garry did not have to squint. Luckily it did not rain much as the windshield wiper malfunctioned on the driver’s side and decided to curl around the side window. We may need some parts.
I will put photos up from our drive in a later post. One thing I missed getting a picture of was the cranes nesting on top of the light poles in the villages as we drove through western Ukraine, we even saw a one or two standing along the road.