Southern colour with a Mexican bias in the city of El Paso, Texas.
Alla and Toshik are observing the residential subdivisions of a Mexican city Ciudad Juarez.
The symbiosis of two cultures: from American — an austere horizontal gravestones and a neat grass, from Mexican — scary looking faded artificial flowers and crooked crosses.
Tosha is acquainting himself with the expedition lifestyle in the wintery mountains of Colorado…
…discovering for himself new sceneries on Indian reservation of Apache tribe in New Mexico…
…and testing his abilities on a light off-road with a view of village Cuba and San Antonio Mountain on the way to the Mexico border.
We are sharing our first overnight car stay with Michael and Tanya, who joined our expedition for a couple of days. McCammon, Idaho.
Returned into our menu road sandwiches with ginger ale and mom’s homemade tomato juice.
Alla and Tanya in a three-leg down dog pose in Arches National Park, Utah.
Here we go again. Leaving a cozy house to get back on the road. After a lovely break in snowy Montana and relaxation in comfort (comfort is fridge, dishwasher, couch, shower and a wide bed).
Life in the car has its pros and cons. The biggest pro: you can sleep anytime anywhere (under the one condition that your windows are well tinted, otherwise you can have issues with the police). The biggest con: you can’t sleep anywhere anytime. A common denominator here is a bathroom. It’s a pretty serious challenge for an auto-tourist to find a comfortable spot to spend the night that includes a possibility to satisfy one’s physical needs.
We dedicated the 24th week to the Rhode Island and Connecticut states.
The second week of our recess is taking place in Montana in the town of Whitefish. Which is situated by the Whitefish River. In which the white fish are found. We are catching and eating eat, but the lake trout from the same river is a lot yummier.
Glacier National Park is about 20 miles northeast on Hwy 2. It is a definite must-see part of the program.
Floating on the Flathead River.
Rural rodeo. We came to this cowboy show for the first time, were very impressed, and want to see more. Will write a separate post about it.
This is how we live.
And this is how we fish.
Resting, while traveling.
The first part of our trip is over. We are resting and regrouping in a small town in southeast Washington. One month on the road has taught us some basics, specifically concerning unnecessary things. We serviced our car, did laundry, washed up well, got plenty of sleep and, of course, feasted to our heart’s content. Ain’t that what moms are for.
While mom is making piroshki, dad is relaxing to the accordionist’s clumsy passages.
There is a lot of beauty surrounding Walla Walla, as well as many different back roads that allow us to come close to this beauty.
You can watch the labor in the fields.
Enjoy some baby peas.
Drive up to secret places on some hard roads.
Stand still for a moment, giving way to memories from youth that rush through the mind.
And at sunset walk through the fields, running your hands over the tassels of wheat, like Gladiator.
Resting.
Dreams do come true. But not because they possess some sort of mystical powers that serve to bring them into being. Rather, it is because a dream is almost like an ordinary run-of-the-mill want, just on a much grander scale – a kind of nagging idea.
The important thing here is to want, or dream, correctly.
This means, first of all, that the dream needs to be fairly realistic and able to come true not just theoretically, but also in practice. And second, you not only need to ‘make the wish’, but also be sure not to let it slip into the back of your mind or allow it to be forgotten. On the contrary, let it constantly dangle and hang nearby, like a wind chime.
If we follow these two rules, then very possibly (and even somewhat unexpectedly for ourselves), we will see this dream come true. Because when we have a dream, we not only expect, but we also take certain actions in its direction, even if we don’t consciously acknowledge these as ‘The Steps to Fulfilling the Dream’.
Nearly since the very first day of my arrival in the USA, I have dreamed of a big trip across this country. In the 19 years since, I’ve driven all over the west coast and lived in the state of Hawaii for four years, but the rest of the country stayed foreign to me. That is, until the spring of 2014, when there was an objective set: to start preparing for a trip, the purpose of which would be to visit the remaining states and to see all the interest-sparking cities, sites, parks and National preserves of the country. Thus, starting on May 15th of the 2015, my long-time dream has begun turning into a reality.
Tour US 