Deer Park in the Ural Mountains

I was too worn out to make the hike to the internet cafe last night. It was a great day but very tiring. We left at 9am again not really knowing where we were headed. Before long we were at the Europe and Asia border and we all had to get our picture made and had fun making some group shots. We got on the bus for another 1 1/2 or so. Let me say now that I've truly enjoyed getting to know each and every one of the 13 people on this trip. We have had long bus rides and walks and I've had time to learn about everyone's passion and where all they have been. This is the most well traveled group. We have been to Japan, Africa, China, Mexico, Ireland, France, and Germany and of course now Russia and these are only school trips, I'm not even talking about places they have traveled on their own. You know I love people and that has been the best part of the trip, I've met lots of Russians and will be interested in keeping up with what they do next. Anyway we got to the Deer Natural Park, its a regional park located in the Urals. It was a 6km walk about 4 miles. It was raining at time which made for a muddy walk. Papa had told us over and over not to do anything dangerous, well this hike was. It amazed me the way the trail had no hand rails over long bridges that were over high valleys. It was interesting because we had a guide telling us all about it. Mom had to have a knee replacement done after she came to Russia and now I know why. My knees are killing me. There is so much uneven trerrain. No evelators and tons of stairs and miles and miles to walk. Anyway I enjoyed the mountains. They fixed a typical Russian meal for lunch for us. tomatoes and cucumbers cubed, bread, soup, barley with some pork on top, hot tea, and a bun with strawberry jelly in it. I fell asleep as soon as I got on the bus for the 2 hour ride home. One more thing about the bathrooms. There were lots of people standing around in hiking boots. So we go to the bathrooms and there are muddy boot prints on the toilet seats!!!!!! Our guide told us that they have to put signs for people to not stand on the toilets. They are so use to squating on the outhouses that they don't know what to do with Western toilets and they go ahead and stand on the seat and squat!!! Wow. Anyway I didn't move for three hours after we got home and we ordered out pizza. Another adventure--we weren't sure what we were going to end up with. It was good but had more of a cream cheese with dill on it. Oh the ways of Russia, just put dill on EVERYTHING<