Good day of touring.
This is the Kama River and as any river buff knows (and I did not by I am guessing my dad does) the Volga River, which is the largest in Europe, actually feeds into the Kama instead of the other way around. This is a very important matter of pride here, as would be the case in Pittsburgh if somebody tried to claim that the Allegheny fed the Monongahela. Kama is massive, and Perm stretches along the river for 45 miles.
Roadtrip to Kungur to see the ice caves, and exceptionally cool road because it is the Trans-Siberian highway of legend and lore, of great merchant trading and horrible prisoner walks. It was explained to me that it took prisoners (mostly really bad people, but then political prisoners, 2 years to walk from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk. Ouch. This is Sergei driving and my wonderful tour-guide Professor Ekaterina.
At Kungur in the Ice Caves. Pretty awesome, a Perm Krai, Russia version of Laurel Caverns with its own very unique twists, such at these ice crystal formations and very, very cold temperatures. These caves are at the foot of the Ural Mountains and some very cool malachite stuff.
No way around it, this photo is for Schultz and Michael. In addition, there is an experiment going on with that xmas tree. It is in its 3rd year of standing and has lost no needles because of the exact cold air and humidity combination. Other very cool features of this air for lungs and breathing and, according to legend, keeping people (women) from again, but there ya go Michael.
And what a very cool cave (17th largest in world) be without a cross commemorating a religious group who hid here during a stage of persecution -- in this case Russian Orthodox during some skirmish in that church in the 18th century.
The tried to translate this formation of crystals, with a red light illuminating, as an interpretation
of a meteor, but nobody is fooling me. This is the Perm Krai, Russia, Kungur Ice Cave rendition of the Comet. Hah!
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