Total travel time: ~7* hours
Total travel distance: ~450* km (279.6 Mi)
Average speed: ~66 km/h* (41 Mph)
Starting Point: Novgorod oblast
Finishing point: shore of the lake Ladoga
GPS Track: [*]
* well, I actually lost GPS track for this day, sorry folks (and for the numbers I have to use the data for the back trip :P)

Second day was a continuation of a first day’s highway road, well up until Karelia republic itself. We rided on M-10 highway until the border of Leningrad oblast, then shortcut on A-115 highway through Kirishi and Volkhov towns and finally we are on M-18 highway, main transportation route of Karelia, running from St. Petersburg to Murmansk. Well, for what it worth it’s the best road in whole Republic of Karelia and, frankly, one of the few asphalt roads there.

There wasn’t something notable at those ride, so in a few hours we were safely inside the borders of Republic of Karelia, near Olonets town. And I knew just the right place to camp there. One hour of forest roads, some time spend searching for a better place to cump, a bit of offroad fun and finally we arrived at the shore of lake Ladoga, just 15km south from Olonets.

Well, that was really refreshing after those long hours in car and mosquitoes of Holova river - constant breeze from Ladoga and not a single mosquito around.

 

 

And Ladoga gave us the whole impression of a seashore, with it’s sound of waves, sea smells, sand beach and sun.

 

 

Well, the only thing reminded us we are not at the sea. That was the lack of salt when we went to take a swim.

 

 

And, well, the water was really cold, as should be for one of the great lakes of North.

 

 

Oh, and there was another sign of the North. White nights, that’s when sunsets are late and twilight lasts for all night.

 

 

We had to bear with those for all our time in Karelia.

 

 

As we travel in following days north towards Arctic Circle sunsets become more and more late and we had less and less darkness.

 

P.S. Few words about my GPS setup. I used Asus EEE Pc 900 strapped to Koshak's dashboard with a makeshift table. It was working with GS338 Bluetooth GPS receiver, oziExplorer software and raster maps, mostly scans of old General Staff military maps. Well, those maps could be well out-of-date, but still Karelia doesen't change much and those maps well more detailed than your general tourist maps.