Grand Finale Greetings!

OK, that’s a bit dramatic, especially since there’s not yet a date set for the grand finale, but I figure it must be coming and I want to be ready.

It’s a funny thing, traveling freely as I do, when I begin to get the feeling that I’m nearing the end of the travels. It’s not a thought, just a feeling, even without a plan of how or when that it might happen. That feeling has just appeared, so I’m at least as interested as anyone else to see how things unfold for me from here. Will it happen slowly, or all at once?

It was exactly 5 months ago when I left Oregon to begin this trip, with more than three of those months having been spent in Russia. This country is so big as to be impossible to comprehend just by looking at a map. It must be explored, by land, to even begin to understand. The whole of Europe could easily fit within the area of my travels on this trip, as could the entire USA, yet this is less than one-half of Russia!

This past Sunday night, I flew from Noyabrsk to St. Petersburg. Here in St. Petersburg, things are edging ever closer to springtime. It’s a different scene than when I was here a little over a month ago. The snow is now gone and most of the ice that was on the waterways has melted. The temperature is above freezing, which is new to me for this year.

This updated map shows my travel route since entering Russia in the beginning of December:

What happens next? I have an idea for the next few days, but am not sure how it will work out. We’ll see.

There’s something I must confess, that the last few photos of me were doctored. Below is a photo showing how I actually look now. These travels have been fairly rough on me and I seem to have aged quite a bit. On top of that, after my experience with the barber in Morocco, I’ve been shy about getting a haircut from a stranger who doesn’t speak the same language, so my hair has taken off and grown completely out of control. And my beard as well. My friends might not even recognize me now. The other day I discovered a cat was living in my beard; now we travel together.

There’s another new photo gallery, of some snowy winter days I spent in Moscow in February:

https://balloonbill.smugmug.com/Other/Moscow-2024

Apparently, the adventure continues. Enjoy!

Bill