Yaroslavl Party

This weekend I decided to head back to Yaroslavl, because my buddy John was having a going away party for one of his friends from there who was going to study in Australia.

So anyway, this weekend I decided I would take a little time and check out Rostov Veliky (Rostov the Great) on the way to Yaroslavl. It is another of the "Golden Ring" cities and supposedly quite nice, although I had never stopped there, just ridden by (really around) it on the way to/from Yaro. Supposedly there a is nice kremlin there, so I thought I'd check it out. I got there and found a rather nice monastery, but no kremlin, here are some pix:
After leaving the monastery, I rode a little bit and found the kremlin, but decided to save that for another visit, and kept on going to Yaro.
I got to Yaro and got some rest before heading over to John's for the party. John knows some fun people in Yaro, there were about twenty at the party, it was pretty fun:

The next morning I got up pretty early and headed back to Moscow. but I decided to get off the main highway and check out some smaller roads. I rode to Rostov, then hung a right, came across this kremlin and church, pretty cool:
After this I kept running down a bunch of little roads, more or less relying on the GPS to keep me heading in the right direction...the only problem was it kept spazzing out, sending me down some road and then recalculating, sending me somewhere else. But it was OK, found some dirt roads and rode through some little villages, very fun overall.

Yaroslavl Bike Fest

Went up to Yaroslavl this weekend, but my buddy wasn't in town, so I had to hang out by myself. On the way out of Moscow I noticed lots of bikers heading out of town, and then I bumped into a guy on a 650 in a town along the Volga called Uglich who said that there was a "Black Bear" biker fest in Tutaev, a bit north of Yaroslavl (the Black Bears are the local bike gang in Yaroslavl). As I rode from Uglich to Yaroslavl, there were huge storm clouds all around, especially right over Yaroslavl. I seemed to be just a bit behind the storm, however, and while I encountered some trees it blew down laying in the road, it didn't start raining on me until I actually got to Yaroslavl, and even then only for a few minutes. I went to Cocktail Bar for dinner and then went home for a quick nap before going out...but then didn't wake up till morning...

Next morning I got up and headed to the bike fest, although I didn't know exactly where it was...I figured I would just follow all of the other bikes. Finding it was easy enough all right, and there must have been a couple thousand bikers there, a big stage, and...a rather nerdy sword-and-shield reenactment.

I wandered around for awhile, but I couldn't drink since I was riding, wasn't really into the "loudest bike" or other competitions, and didn't really feel like hanging out until evening when the music and other festivities would start. Plus I didn't bring my tent, so couldn't spend the night. Anyway, decided to leave and do more riding around.

First, I decided to head to the other side of the Volga, check out Uglich again. There is a ferry at Tutaev, so after looking for it for a bit, found some other bikers waiting for the ferry as well:
It was a nice ferry ride, and then off to Uglich. I poked around there a bit, saw the usual churches, etc., and then back to Yaroslavl. Here is an old church at an intersection I went through several times this weekend: