Number of tie wraps: 23 (holding steady)
Countdown: 4668 miles down, 3917 to go
Quote of the Day: “Can I have your driver’s license, please?”
We arrived in Ishim about 4:30 this afternoon (after gaining another hour) to a surprise – WiFi!
Before we left Omsk, we took a short walking tour of the city center, where we saw the city’s Lenin Square and World War II Memorial with an eternal flame, along with the city’s oldest cathedral.
World War II Memorial in Omsk (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
Oldest cathedral in Omsk (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
We left the hotel about 11:15 to head to Ishim, but between a fuel stop and traffic, it took us quite a while to get out of the city. I saw the IKEA store below when we stopped for gas. I wanted to go shopping, but, alas, there was no time. Note the Cyrillic spelling of IKEA on the left had side of the photo.
IKEA in Omsk (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
As we left Omsk, the police waved Leo’s Envoy over at two checkpoints about five minutes apart. The Envoy attracts a lot of attention from the police over here because it has no front license plate (Leo is from Florida). However, in both cases, Ksenia handed over the necessary documents and we were on our way in just a few minutes. A few days ago, Ksenia translated all our driver’s licenses into Russian, and then “certified” the translations via an official-looking stamp from the Sport Hotel where we stayed in Tomsk.
The roads today weren’t as good as yesterday and construction delayed us in several places. But the springs on the Roadster are working great, and Luke reported that the Doctor Tire fix is holding steady at 120 pounds of air as well. Given that we went over some pretty rough roads today, it looks like the Roadster will now make it to Moscow with no further shock problems. Of course, that doesn’t mean there won’t be other problems, so stay tuned!
I’ll leave you with this billboard I saw as we were waiting at a construction site this afternoon just outside the town of Tyukalisnk. The billboard is about preventing forest fires and it has a picture of a cute bear cub. I thought the cub might be similar to our Smokey Bear in the U.S., but Ksenia says it doesn’t have a name.
Forest fire prevention sign outside Tyukalisnk during the drive to Ishim (Eileen Bjorkman photo)
Tomorrow we drive 307 km to Tyumen.
