In the 1970s, Karen and Ray Gilden and their 11-year-old daughter, Jennifer, spend several weeks driving through Russia in a Volkswagen van. Though their route and stop-over locations were strictly delineated by the USSR government, they travelled mostly without any guides or organized tours. This is a charming, human story about the people they met and the things they learned.

The book wasn't written until 2013 and I wish it had been written earlier where the author would have remembered more details and perhaps created an even better sense of life behind the iron curtain. But I still enjoyed following the family's travels. ( )

A sweet book about a family's adventures camping in a variety of locales in the Soviet Union. Full of humor, human moments, and a lesson that we are all fundamentally the same. No political agenda, just a story about people meeting people and discovering one another. ( )