Road trip to Rene, Ukraine (from which you can see Moldova and Romania) part one

We had an interesting drive to Rene, where we picked up a new student for the trade school Sasha, if you click on the birds you can read more about him. Agneta, his Swedish foster mother, who we met there, calls it the forgotten corner of Ukraine. We took three days and two nights to drive there (a little vacation away from everyone for the two of us) but returned in less than 12 hours of driving. No photos on the way home, but took lots on the way there and in Rene before the camera battery needed recharging, so here you go... another Ukrainian road trip.

The Lenin in Zaporosia is wearing a Ukrainian flag now

Of course, many things are the same everywhere we go in Ukraine and we find a few things that are different in some areas. We left home Friday after Garry had finished with a load of cement they were pouring at the barn, after one, because the cement arrived an hour late, and dropped a couple of guys off in Zaporosia before he drove to Kherson (which is pronounced like it has no K) a place Garry has been to a number of times because he bought the original tent barn from a company there.

we drove near the biggest nuclear plant in Ukraine- on the Dniper River
like 3?or 5? Chernobyls,  it is the same design, but bigger! 

There were lots of checkpoints along our route, you either slow down
or stop and go, they are staffed by police and military

The famous bad road over one of the Dniper River dams

Garry always said it was a bad road, he always had more than one flat tire driving there that winter and spring, and he says that the road over the dam on the way to Kherson "is the worst piece of road in Ukraine." Main road anyway. It is interesting to watch the dance as cars dodge the holes and move around the traffic.  It goes on for a couple miles, so this short video is just a peek at what is is like to drive on it.

We did let the new GPS that Garry got while I was gone try to take us to a point of interest the first afternoon, it was supposed to be a sich (a Cossack fortress site) but we never found it. I'll show you where the GPS led us before Garry turned around 15 km later... and didn't go on any other scenic detours!

First road we turned on, not bad, huh?

Turned off in a village, road two,  still looks promising

Looking a little less...yeah, we drove another kilometer after this,
 but turned around when it looked like we were going into a gully in the sea!

Garry did not get yelled at when he jumped up there

 It was my first time to see Kherson (and the road to it), and we spent the night in a lovely hotel, with great wifi and a lovely breakfast, after visiting the Fabreeca mall for dinner, we tried a somewhat disappointing burger place at the food court.
However, there was a cool cosmonaut theme in the food court, a inline skating surface, and ice surface and bumper cars and a museum display about a Soviet era weaving plant in Kherson inside the mall.

Garry checking out the display

We were back on the road on Saturday morning about nine am, after a lovely hotel breakfast, so the road trip story will be continued!