Sunday drive

 As we were leaving to walk to the village church Sunday morning, Max stopped in to say that the people had called to say their other cow was in heat. The place where he and Garry had gone the night before. Garry said he'd go after church. 

He told me I could come along on a Sunday drive. Max drew him a map and gave him the people's phone number in case he couldn't find it. It was dark and raining the night before and they were following a car, and Max was driving. I tried to find it on the map today, to see where we went, but it was about a 45 minute drive. That's Garry driving, so an hour for most people!

We couldn't take the field road, since it rained the night before, so he had to take the other highway. It was repaved this summer (they are still working on fixing the overpass over the Dnepro-Zaporosia highway we drive most often) as far as the village we turned off to, one where Garry has bred many cows. 

Garry stopped for a bottle of ice tea at a store in that village, since we'd eaten lunch in the car, and we followed Max's map over good repaved roads and old roads with trees forming a tunnel over them, turning here and there, including around a pond, until we got to the village we were going to. 

Here are a few photos. The black spots on the windshield in the photos is specks of mud from Garry driving to the barn that morning, not flies.

When we got to the village, Garry tried to find the right street, but after two tries returned to main street and the hotel/bar he'd noticed the night before. Here's a few photos in a rather large village.

It turned out the road with the abandoned school was the right road to turn on, we found out as we followed the guy home. Still might not have found it, though. The paved street turned into a track through the field to some houses.

Max told Garry the night before that the tractors with the box on the front are called beggars. With the cow successfully bred, we could go home. The owner, a school teacher, had found Garry through a relative of Max's wife in a nearby village. He said they can't get anyone to come breed their cows, because the village is out of the way from most places. He had told Garry the night before to charge as much as he needed to want to come back for the next cow. 

So all we had to do was retrace our steps back home. Unfortunately, this sign was not as visible a landmark to turn at going the other direction, and we had to retrace a few miles and find it. There were trees hiding it from the other road. Garry told me the name of a head of wheat, but I've forgotten, Koo- something. We knew we were going the right way, after that, past the four cows, around the pond and back to familiar territory and home.