Taking It One Day at a Time

We begin this week’s Odessey in Ouabache Trails state park. Not completely full hook-ups, but 50 amp and water are more than enough for a one night stand. Crossed four states even though we were only in one state for three miles! We started in Tennessee, touched Georgia, returned to Tennessee, then Kentucky and finally Indiana. Took in some breath taking sights along the way and finally settled in around 1 or 2 depending on which device we used to measure time. We are apparently near the border of Central and Eastern times zones and we basically don’t know (and for that matter, really don’t care) what time it is.

Have a nice level pre assigned campsite which is always appreciated. We have a cute liver colored beagle puppy next door who is just a rambunctious little guy. Makes me reflect and miss my Rosie girl. The road getting into the park is directly through a residential area which made us a bit nervous as the road was just slightly wider than the coach. Thank goodness we didn’t meet up with any other vehicles. We’ll continue on our way up Indiana as we work our way toward Illinois and then to St Louis. Looking forward to meeting new folks and seeing new sights. Did I mention yet again? We are still loving this retirement gig!

Day 90

The siren call of the road once again entices us even further across our country as we are now in Amboy Illinois. We’ve added 2 more states we’ve slept in so we are now up to 33 states visited. Not many left in the lower 48, but we’ll keep moving. Discovered that Indiana and Illinois have one thing in common with Kansas, damn they’re flat. Makes for great gas mileage, but when the road is without hills and curves, it can get quite boring. This campground and the 1000 Trails we stayed in yesterday were a bit eerie as all of the other campers around us we the owner type and no one was occupying the sites. Actually kind of creepy. We did have a couple next to us, but they didn’t show themselves until the next morning when they packed up and left. We skedaddled right after them and didn’t look back!

We’re now at a converted Yogi Bear park that is now a thousand trails, but this ginormous park has us in its outskirts. Again, a bit concerned about the children of the corn, but will have a zombie stick close at hand at night. We were so close to having everything working, but we read of facebook how to update our streaming device. Followed the directions to the letter, so now we no longer have streaming television. Will be on the phone today and see if we can get it corrected. So close, the bed works, the generator is running smoothly, the slides are repaired, and now the TV goes out. At least we have some old school DVD’s for our evenings entertainment. Definitely a first world problem. Will look into some experiences in Chicago and see what we can see. We’re this close so why not! Did I mention, we’re still loving retirement!

Day 91

What a difference a day makes. We stayed close to the rig today as the weather was iffy and we were both recovering from the drives. The day started well with Fracos al a Fred on the flat-top. The sun was shining nicely although we have been seeing smoke from the wild fires in Canada. Send some white light and healing to the areas, people and nature that’s been effected by this climate change phenomenon. We then decided to plan some stuff in Chicago when we realized we needed sustenance for the long term. That meant going to a grocery store. Found an Aldi’s which is basically an East Coast Hippy Trader Joe’s. So cool with awesome prices. Cheaper than Walmart. One interesting aspect of Aldi’s is they’re shopping carts. You actually have to use a twenty five cent deposit. They have a locking mechanism on the cart that releases the cart with a quarter. You use the cart in shopping, check out and bag your groceries, then when you return the cart to they’re corral and lock it, you get you’re quarter back. At first I thought it was weird, but after using it several times it makes perfect sense. Not only do the carts get returned after use, but you don’t have carts scattered hither and yon. This saves hiring an extra person to go on cart rodeos. Well played Aldi’s, well played.

Just down the road was a Walmart, so what we didn’t find at Aldi’s we found at Wally World. Street names at times can be interesting here in the Midwest. Some townsfolk have gone the extra mile, while others lack any of imagination. When in Wisconsin the streets were lettered, and when they had 26 streets, they changed to numbers. Boring! The road to Aldi’s was Bloody Gulch Road. How cool is that!! Would love to know the back story on that.

Vicki then used her super powers, (along with texts from tech support) to fix the TV system. Then called the medical insurance company and got her lab corp bill squared away. While all I did was fix pork ribs while opening a can of corn as I watched slack jawed Vicki work her magic! Around two, just as we were finishing lunch, the rains came and of course, that’s when the girls decided this is the best time to pee. So between major downpours they got their sniffy walks in. Enjoyed a rib dinner and watched Super Mario Bros. Movie which was actually very entertaining albeit totally a Nintendo program geared towards showing all aspects of the new Mario Worlds. Just mindless entertainment to empty one’s brain.

Chicago is over 100 miles too far so will find something locally. We do have Ronald Reagon birthplace home, plus a mule pulled riverboat tour, so those could both be interesting. So many choices, so much time. Man do we love retirement.

Day 92

This day was filled with a bit of travel in southern Illinois. We went to Peru Illinois to the West Clock Museum. Such a unique piece of Americana. You would think that being in a clock museum would take at most 15 minutes to do a Clark Griswold at the Grand Canyon, but we spent almost 2 hours seeing ancient alarm clocks, wall clocks, and school clocks, all the while chatting with the 3 curators/ex-employees of WestClocks. All worked on assembling all the clocks by hand. Fascinating listening to the tales they reminisced about as well as seeing the building where the factory was. Now it’s been auctioned off and sold in parts with new businesses occupying the giant brick factory. As many as 6000 employees worked at the factory with a majority being women AND they paid the women and the men EQUALLY!!! What a concept!!!! We could definitely learn a lesson from West Clock!

We then came home for a bit of lunch and since we were so close to it, we went to the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan. Interestingly enough, on a Wednesday afternoon it was closed. We did get to walk about the grounds and yet another bit of Americana observed while we travel. Will send a picture to my cousins Robb and Marian Purdie knowing their love for the former president. LOL.

We then headed home for coffee cocktail hour and I prepared one of the best instapot suppers I’ve fixed in a long time. Simply pot roast, but man o man, I definitely took this one downtown!! Just hope I can remember the recipe to repeat it with the rest of the chuck roast remaining. Love our instapot.

Tomorrow, we’re going to take a mule drawn canal barge down one of the canals here locally. Hopefully get a history lesson before we head south to St Louis as we continue heading to Las Vegas. By the way, we’re still loving retirement.

Day 93

Another spectacular day in Illinois. After a nice brekkie of Oats, we jumped in the car after excessively walking the girls, and headed to LaSalle Illinois for our mule drawn barge ride. What a wonderful piece of Americana!! We arrived about 45 minutes before departure and enjoyed the best cup of coffee we’ve had in about 3 weeks. The ticket booth was also a specialized coffee shop and my goodness the coffee and pastries were delightful! We then drove across the canal to the pick up point and met the mule that would be pulling us. Moe was his name and was very friendly until he discovered we had no treats so then became very disinterested in us. The half a mile journey was very informative and we learned many things on the 1 hour tour about Chicago’s and Illinois’s history. One of the most interesting was that Wild Bill Hickock was a mule skinner on the Chicago Canals before he became a law man. We discovered that there were several monuments erected to the hometown hero.

Came back to the park, enjoyed a nice lunch and settled for the evening. Have a rather big drive tomorrow as we head west to St. Louis. As always, hope that this finds you well and keep those comments coming. Yet again, did I mention we’re still loving retirement.