These photos are from our journey from Adana to Sivas. The mountains north of Adana were spectacular since we had gone through several days of rain recently, which meant snow in the mountains this time of year. The following is the beginning of our "epic" journey:

Our Trabzon was long in distance but Bob will tell you that all the driving was worth it. We saw some amazing sites and met some wonderful people along the way.

It started out on the Otoban going north out of Adana. Citrus is in season on the south coast and there were at least 10 venders selling colorful bags of fruit along the Otoban. This would be the equivalent of setting up shop along I-10 in Texas. It’s just not something you see in the States. Only an hour out from our house, we hit beautiful, snow-covered mountains. Small towns nestled in the hillsides looked like Alpine villages and were still wearing their late fall colors.

Once we left the Otoban we reached a section that I have learned to dread through the town of Ponzati. Here, the highway narrows to four lanes and it’s a nightmare for 20 miles or so to get around the overcrowded, overloaded trucks going 20 to 30 miles an hour. Bob and I took a shortcut hoping the 1700-meter pass would be clear to escape the traffic early. We were comforted by the site of a few cars coming from the opposite direction and found we had nothing to worry about, there was no snow in site except for on distant mountain peaks.

We hit the rolling high-plain roads about the same time it started to get dark. We could just see the snow-topped moutains in the moonlight as we went through the Cappadokia area. We had open roads until we hit Kayseri, sitting at the bottom of Mt Erciyes. Mt Erciyes is an extinct volcano that rises up out of the plain like Mt Kilamanjaro, but it was shrouded in clouds and we couldn’t make it out. Kayseri was huge and it took us longer to get through than we expected. We went by what looked like newly-constructed, modern convention or concert facilities and a sleek sports center still under construction. We also passed almost every type of car dealer imaginable in modern, glass buildings. It’s not at all what you would expect of Turkey.

We finally left Kayseri behind and traveled the open roads to the town of Sivas. I had read about several good hotels there. There were also a few historical sites we hadn’t planned on visiting, but fate changed that. We took one wrong turn going into town, but then found our way back to the main boulevard. In Turkey, it’s usually easy to recognize the main thoroughfare, just look for Ataturk Bulvari. We ended up shooting past one of the hotels I was looking for and ended up on the large roundabout in the middle of town surrounded by stately government buildings. Bob took a wrong turn off the roundabout and we ended up in the middle of the historical buildings. We got back on the roundabout and found Ataturk and headed back to the hotel I had seen. I had Bob turn down the side street because there were at least three hotels to choose from.

My first choice had no available rooms, but the receptionist offered advice on other ones to try. The first one she mentioned was close by and we got a room there despite the sad reputation of the hotel. I believe in the 70s, Salaman Rushdie’s publisher (Satanic Verses) was killed there along with about 100 other people when protesters burned the original Otel Makimak down. The room was decent enough except for the dingy carpet, but the hotel made up for it by giving the guests disposable slippers.

Bob and I settled in and then went out to find our dinner. We were amazed at the number of restaurants, bakeries, and pudding shops that were open after 9:00 pm, but maybe it was because of the “futbol” game that was on. Turkey was in the finals against Boznia and occasionally we could hear people cheering for their team. We found a good restaurant and I had some very tender lamb with vegetables and rice while Bob had Iskender which is the lamb stew with tomato sauce on top. After eating dinner we started back towards our hotel, but we could hear drums and a double-reeded instrument playing at the roundabout along with people chanting. We wanted to see what was going on, and found about 20 men dancing in the street and cheering as cars going around the circle would honk at them. My only guess is that it was half-time of the futbol game and they were out celebrating Turkey’s 1-point lead. The group broke up as we watched and walked off towards a side street.

Bob and I went back to our hotel and watched the rest of the game, which Turkey one. We could hear the cheering as people poured out into the street and knew we weren’t going to be able to sleep for a while. We were suddenly whisked back 9 years ago when we were staying in Alanya and Turkey won the soccer World Cup. The town celebrated all night with cheering and honking car horns—we didn’t get much sleep that night. Well, this was just the finals, so after about an hour of celebration the excitement died down and we were able to get some sleep.