Driving back to the village ...again

rye field

Well it is much greener than it was when I returned from NJ at the beginning of April! The roads are still pretty rough, more patches than holes though, starting about 70 km from Kiev and then the car really does some rocking as it goes down the highway once you get 100 km from Kiev. As you might guess with Garry driving, we checked out many farmers' fields between Kiev and the village. As you can see the rye and wheat fields are coming into head, in fact we saw some fields that had been chopped off and turned into silage for dairy cows

Exciting new snack - Strong is the translation for spicy it seems- in Russian the word (oss-tree) is the same one used to describe a sharp knife, this bag was chili flavor, Garry had tried the hotter wasabi flavored ones before

Sunflowers are up in many fields, some are even bigger than in this one

It was cloudy when we left the hotel by the airport (the Old Port Hotel is nicer than it looks, if you are arriving in Kiev=Borispol airport someday) I had slept in to 8 am, but I will admit that I had slept only a couple hours the night before I left Manitoba and about the same on the the planes. No problems catching my planes with there being 5-7 hours scheduled between flights, but I never sleep in the airports, wouldn't want to miss my flight since I am alone! We ended up driving through a number of showers, thunderstorms and one really hard downpour which made some big puddles on the road ahead for a while.

There are many villages between here and Kiev!

There were ladies selling fresh strawberries in this village

They were sweet but a little smooshed

Always exciting when Garry comes up behind of of the many slow-moving trucks

The traffic circle with a police post in the middle-they had stopped the tour bus
It wasn't raining, we stopped at the gas station, they even cleanrd the window

 Many villages have little displays of what they are selling at a house, a bucket of potatoes was the most common sight. One village has the little brooms for sale, all year long. Garry noticed one lady had strawberries in jars, and he was going to turn around when we found the second one. Some had fresh radishes, so at first we thought that was the red we saw. They were in little glass jars, by the time they went into a plastic store bag from the car, some were a little smashed up.

A village herd out grazing

We saw three storks, one walking beside the road, one walking in a field, and this one up in a nest. We pulled off the road to take the photos, but  it had it's head down poking in the nest until Garry decided to get out of the car so I could take the photos of him standing in someone's wheat field. The stork had it's head back in the nest right away, maybe there are babies already, or eggs anyway.

Up a telephone pole

Garry in a wheat field

A little shower

Garry was interested to see several no-till fields

The rain had more than one tractor heading home

One of the highlights of any trip to Kiev is the city where we drive right by Mc Donald's- well, unless I'm on a bus, we never drive past without stopping! It is where we get to take one of the few bridges over the Dniper River, and only 160 km from home, if I remember right. Garry told me on the way to get me, he had noted how many km between here and one other landmark on the way- perhaps where the police post circle was, because we often fill up on gas there, once we even stayed in a hotel there with the boys when we drove back from Uzgorod. 

The outskirts of the city had several people selling garden plants

Passing the Kamaz truck plant in the city- looks like they make dump trucks

Inside McDonalds- he had the Big Mac Menu (meal)
and I had the Royal Cheeseburger (think 1/4 pounder) one

This girl cut in line in front of Garry while
 he was waiting to order ice cream  to go

Going over the bridge

beach looks empty

Clouds are building up again

Only two narrow lanes  (notice the wind-shield is dirty again!)

Almost took my own picture!

We found two good downpours around the Dnepropetroeska region border, and Garry was wondering if it had rained in the village by this time, since it had been so hot and dry his corn was curling (the leaves from lack of water.) The second one was right at the village Victor grew up in, where his mother lives and his sister is mayor, where we saw a huge lightning strike close to the village. 

Raining cats and dogs or washing the potatoes out of the ground
as some people say here!

The rain starting at "Victor's Village"

This lady had a load on her bicycle 

A traditional Ukrainian house with straw roof - you see a few of them as you take that drive

After the downpour....

and when we got back to the village, there were a few puddles, it had rained twice in the two days, and has rained a couple times since, nothing like it did on the way home from Kiev, but the corn is much happier!