We left South Dakota and headed back east. Per the title, this part of the country is clearly full of amber waves of grain!! We made our first stop in Lake McConaughy, NE for a few days. It was in a nice state park right on the lake. Who would have thunk that Nebraska had a beach to play in. It was a gorgeous lake and the weather was beautiful making a day at the beach awesome. We believe it was unseasonably warm hitting in the upper 90’s! We noticed that there were numerous campers set up right on the beach. We were in a campground as we didn’t realize it was legal to camp right on the beach. So one of the days we were there we had a beach day and drove the truck right onto the beach and hung out for a while. Codey especially loved it as he hung out in the water most of the time.
From Nebraska we headed to Iowa and stayed in a couple of places including Newton (near Des Moines) for one night and in Marion, Iowa at a nice county campground named Squaw Creek. We were able to take a long bike ride and do a good bit of hiking & geocaching which was nice. We also had our friend Tim Wilson come and have dinner with us before we left. As mentioned Jeanne has friends all over the country who work in the water business. It was great to see him and catch up. Jeanne cooked on the fire pit between being eaten alive by mosquitoes. OMG! We have never seen so many of those little buggers in one place. Thankfully we rode the bikes fast enough that they couldn’t catch up and the rest of the time we hung out in the RV!! Sorry no pictures from this stay as we couldn’t stay outside long enough without the mosquitoes forming a plan of attack. We believe they were hanging outside of the RV just waiting and planning how they were going to get us!!!
From Marion we headed to Chillicothe, Illinois and stayed a couple of days there as well. We were one of maybe 4 RV’s there that weren’t seasonal. In Chillicothe we found some great hiking trails, one in particular we liked was the Canyon Trail which was literally down into a canyon.
We made our way to East St. Louis where we had set up to stay 5 days but realized our next destination was over 300 miles away and pulling a trailer that far does not bode well on the butt and pulling a trailer makes it a longer drive. We did however spend three days in St. Louis and had a great time doing all the tourist things including a ride up in the Arch, a visit to the Cathedral Basilica and and a river boat cruise. We also had the opportunity to visit friends who live very close to St. Louis. Tye and Rhonda Beasley. Tye is Jane’s mother’s best friends son (Nina Beasley) (did you follow all that) and we felt that if we didn’t go visit them, Nina would have given us holy heck and she scares us!! LOL! They took us to an awesome Mexican restaurant! YUM!! Our campground was at the Casino Queen and honestly it was a parking lot just around the corner from the casino. NO, we didn’t go and gamble, we didn’t even go into the casino but it appeared that most of the folks in the campground did. They set up and most of the time their RV’s were sitting empty where we surmised that they were away gambling!!
After three days in St. Louis we headed to Grayville, IL (on the border of Indiana) and stayed for two nights. It was kinda creepy because we were the only campers in the campground the first night. The second night there was one other camper. We head to Elizabethtown, KY tomorrow for a week. We are attending a RV conference on Safety and other important things about being full-time RV’ers. One of the seminars is about driving to Alaska – we totally psyched about that one. Jeanne is excited about the electrical and maintenance stuff whereas Jane is going to the “how to organize your RV” and how to drive it (which she haven’t done yet). After that week we head back to Appomattox, VA (Jane’s mom’s house) to park the RV and head to visit friends (and doctors) back in Fairfax for a week. Mid-October we start our descent south with our first reservation in Naples, FL, November 1st!!
JBs Joyful Journey 