27 August ’04, Friday. Today was another day for the road. We got our usual 11am start out of the campgrounds and hit the road. Our destination was to be Klaipeda with a stop in Pajauga. As I’ve mentioned in earlier journals, “Bumble Bee” has been acting up a little. We have pretty much given the blame to water in the gas tank, but we can’t seem to alleviate the problem at all. We have tried just about everything but taking the gas tank off and scrubbing it clean. Well, today just about brought us to that…. It wasn’t a fun day after the first 2 plus hours on the road. Prior to that, she ran beautifully. Unfortunately, something like this can work different things with your minds….today as an example, we were getting closer to the Latvia / Lithuania border, when we came upon a large truck right in the middle of the road….blinkers going and a large arrow pointing to the right side as we approached it. Louise mentioned that this really was a different border crossing. She started digging out the passports and the papers for the van….well, a different border crossing it wasn’t….it was a painting machine that the truck had on the back and they were painting the lines on the road. Now this may sound really nut-cake, but you would have to understand the circumstances. The van’s acting up, we have been in three very different countries, the road repair crews do their work completely different than we are used too, and we did make that very different crossing on that single lane dirt road….hell, anything sounds like it could be a possibility to us. We did have a good laugh over it. As it was, we needed that laugh as things with “Bumble Bee” seemed to get even worse. On top of that, we couldn’t find a campground in Lithuania…. This is the 2nd time we couldn’t find a campground in this country and it’s only our 2nd time here. Now I must admit, we did find a couple, but I wouldn’t have stayed in them for love nor money. As we were running out of daylight, we made a decision….grab the ferry if we can, and get to Germany as soon as we can. I don’t know if you can hear the sound of the huge engines of this “ferry”, but they sound good to me…. Tonight Louise and I are spending the night in a stateroom and sleeping in a strange bed. We’re going to miss our own bed, but this is one of those sacrifices that has to be made. We left the dock at 9pm tonight and will arrive in Keil, Germany at 6pm tomorrow night, so…., Tomorrow….Keil