I’ll leave you to guess what part of my body that was a picture of. Fortunately, we’ve been having fewer insect problems this past week or so. I think it is a combination of having less rain and also one or two chilly nights. Hard to believe, but I expect by later in August or September we’ll be done with insects and instead be thinking of frost on the tent. Right now our night-temperaturs are perhaps 50F and daytime in 80F.

In the cities, it is difficult to not have photos of women in short shorts, or high heels. Somehow the womens fashion here is much more with high heels and tight short clothes. We’ve seen this as well in the small cow towns (where they literally walk the cows down the main streets), though less.

We actually camp most of the time. For example, from the “K-town” you describe to here, we traveled about 1100 km in 11 days and stayed in a hotel one night and in tent the other ten nights. It is only in the larger cities when we take our rest days that we find a hotel. The prices vary some on hotels. In K-town, we paid $20/person but then had a shared room with others. Here in Irkutsk we have $50/person the first two nights and then $25/person in a hotel the next two nights. Russia is not a budget location, so the hotel rooms can add up some. Hence, it is nice to camp on those nights between.

On the pavement, we are typically “on the road” for about 8 hours between 7am and 2 or 3pm in the afternoon. That “on the road” includes all our stops for lunch or other cafe stops. It also includes time at the end to fetch water and find a campsite. We’ll need to see how much time and what pace we do on the gravel roads. If the gravel is good, I suspect the pace could be almost what we do now (since there won’t be many cafes to stop and distract us) but I think we’ll just need to see what is possible.

PS Robin is threatening everyone with a Fort Collins trivia ride next year so you got that to look forward to when you get back (Oh Boy!).