16, 17 August ’04. Upon pulling away from Gurdiziadz, our plan was to head North by Northwest heading for our second time to the Baltic. Well, we got about 50km away and I noticed that we were not running as we should. The van didn’t have the power and it was missing on the pull pretty bad. As we pulled into a small village to get gas, I asked if there was a place we could get our oil changed and have someone look at the motor for us. He directed us across the road to a mechanic, so I took the van and looked for advise there. He thought it might be as simple as sparkplugs so I had him change the oil and the sparkplugs. Well, as things would have it, he didn’t carry the plugs that we needed so we made an appointment for the next morning. Another small inconvenience came up then as there wasn’t a campground any closer than 30km. With no choice available, we drove up the road and stayed the night at a campground in Czluchow. This happened to be on a lake and we found a spot right on the shore for the night. One of the problems there, was that the bathroom was about 350 yards away and closed from 9pm to 7am each night. Well, we didn’t check this out very good, because we were not aware of the closing. Lucky for us the girl that closes the place was running late and we were there for our stop at just after 10. We wouldn’t have made morning…. The next morning (17th) we headed back for our appointment and had the plugs changed. Prior to leaving, we met two of our neighbors who both happened to be from Holland. One of the families had just gotten back from a trip to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. As it was, Louise and I had been talking about this trip, but had really put it aside until this morning. We made the decision that if we don’t do it now, we most likely never will get the chance again. Soooo, we back tracked about 80km and are now heading East across Poland and will cross into Lithuania tomorrow afternoon and head on through to Estonia. We would like to be in Estonia on the 20th of August as it is their Restoration of Independence Day. We think that could be quite interesting and fun. We have been traveling through the “Heart Land” of Poland today. The fields of wheat and barley are all being cut and off to market. The road systems are being worked on just about everywhere you go. As of April of this year they are a member of the European Union. One of the requirements of being accepted into the Union, was that the infrastructure be fixed and broadened to handle more traffic throughout Poland and the other countries new to the EU. The road signs at each end of the construction project shows the EU logo and lists all the countries that are participating in the costs of this new construction work. Some of the EU countries are not too happy with having to financially support this kind, or in many cases, any kind of project outside of their own country.
Tomorrow….continuing East and then a turn North
Tomorrow….continuing East and then a turn North