62. Day 54 – Heading east towards Kazakhstan

Thursday 5 July 2007

We spent the night in the Earthroamer parked in Dmitry’s front yard.

We headed out of Moscow following Dmitry in his red sports car, firstly heading north to the ring road and then around to the junction of the M7 which is the main highway to Siberia.

We said goodbye and thanks to Dmitry at a service station, where we filled both fuel tanks, on a beautiful sunny day 76 degrees F.

We were soon to be pleasantly surprised with the excellent condition of the road but once again noticed the extraordinary police presence.

We were pulled over twice today – one copper even had a radar gun and he claimed we had broken the speed limit.  This seemed impossible as we were the slowest vehicle on the road but after he realized that we couldn’t speak Russian he let us go with a smile.

We travelled past Vladimir to Nizhny Novgorod and stopped for the night close to the banks of the Volga River.  We found a very modern, large supermarket on the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod and bought fresh fruit and vegetables with fresh milk and bread.

We met a group of happy children skating round the car park on their skateboards.

We are now parked in the small village of Yeyehnho, beside some beautiful dachas (summer houses).

We met a very friendly lady who lived in one of the houses and when we showed her our translation sheet with the question, “Can we park here for tonight?” in Russian, she nodded with a smile.

We are now parked overlooking a boat basin dredged out of a side tributary of the Volga River – it has a group of rusting barges moored.

515 km for the day       18,960 km Total since Anchorage Alaska

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