Snowy ride/drive in Ukraine

We made it back to the village as we hoped on Saturday morning, the highway was open, although it still needed some work. Many of the semi-trucks that had been storm stayed and parked along the road were still there, trying to get them restarted since -20 C is not normal for Ukraine, they are not made to start in this weather. One truck was sheathed in ice from having hot water poured on it.

Victor's street- one car at a time!

Zaporosia chassay (main road into the city)

airport parking (in front of the terminal)

Victor drove out of the city and we stopped at the airport and jammed the suitcases in the back with everything else, they didn't even have to get cleared through customs, so it was pretty fast.
They were still digging out, days after the storm, it looked like some people must have parked their cars and flown away before the storm (maybe to Egypt) and not returned yet!

snow fence

almost to Bratski

The highway to Bratski (a sort of a suburb of the city) was good, even the diversion, where they put in a detour around the overpass they have been building for more than a year now. It looked like they had made a snow fence around there this year, with sticks and in one place sliced tires!




We made a quick stop in Bratski at the Ah-Ta-bey (ATb- it's one of a small grocery store chain) Max had asked Victor to get some plastic snap on lids for the glass half liter jars of sleevki (cream) to sell. The guys had made cream because of all the milk they could not sell when the buyers could not come in the snow.


 The highway was pretty good until we reached the intersection of the new highway that goes to the Dnepropetroesk/Dnepropajisk/Kiroy Rog highway.

opps! Anyone got a shovel?

Back in the cars, let's go!

There we had a slight delay, a semi had gotten stuck trying to turn around, blocking both sides of the road. As you can see in the photos, guys with shovels in their cars jumped out to clear some of the snow, and soon everyone was driving again...






even the police car which we followed all the way to Novy Swet.
The next section of the highway was not so good, in fact, large sections of the oncoming highway was not plowed, so they were on our side of the divided highway! I have some video I may try to put up later (back in the village so the internet is s..sl..oo..ww.)

Careful when passing! Oncoming traffic!

We even found the guys working on clearing the snow from the highway in Novy Swet  (New City- where the police checkpoint is) with some big equipment, hopefully they will soon have both sides of the highway open...

Is that a snow blower? There were two working here.

First one we've seen here 

There were still a few cars left behind in the road

From that village to ours the road was cleared on both sides, well except for the occasional car, at least one lane, anyway.

Different oblast (province) better clearing?

We're here... 2.2 km to go...

Road to the village is one car wide

.......and we made it home by eleven am, so I got to cook dinner while Garry checked out the goings on in the barn. The guys were happy to see us, and Maxim Boradim and Andrey were even happier to fill up on pizza that night after "two months- no pizza."

Finally here