On Monday 18 September, we got the rig detailed inside and outside. They did a pretty good job, but the exterior detail didn’t include any waxing which disappointed me. I think we will go back to the guy we used before next time. We left on Tuesday morning and spent the night at the Perryville Elks Lodge. It was a big parking lot that wasn’t very level, but we managed to get the rig in the best place possible and leveled with blocks. They had a 20 amp socket for electricity, but we didn’t need it, so we dry camped. I had planned on having a drink in the lodge, but it stunk of cigarette smoke so I gave up on that idea. Wednesday night we stayed at the Mississippi River RV Park in Canton, MO. It is run by the city. It was a great spot immediately below Lock and Dam 20. We got to see a few barges coming through, but the river is so low there wasn’t much traffic.
Little tug
We decided to put the rig at Big Woods Park again to get everything cleaned, emptied, and winterized. It was nice to be home again. The cats seemed to agree, and they were running around immediately. While we were home in the first week I had a doctor’s appointment, met with our financial advisor, went to church and later choir practice, and got my COVID shot. I didn’t do any sewing at all!
We went on a charity UTV ride on Saturday, 30 September. It was for the Waterville Fire and EMS, a volunteer group. It was HUGE! They had three different groups starting at different times along different routes for a total of almost 600 rigs. The vast majority were UTVs, but there were a few ATVs in the mix. It is mostly on private land open only to donation rides like this. There had been a LOT of rain in the last week – 6+” – and the trails were wet and the creeks full. We got that figured out when our first creek crossing got people stuck! In the picture below the one in the back was buried to his axles. The two in front of him on the left were pulling him out with tow straps, and the one with the red lights went around the stuck rig on the right like we did. The water did come inside the RZR, but it is designed for that, and we were fine.
Stuck!
This is about the separation of the rigs on the trail. As you can see, the trails were quite muddy. But the rain made for some lush vegetation.
Lush
There were pre-planned stops every hour or so. I liked the view at this spot a lot. It is absolutely a classic view of the northeastern Iowa a landscape.
Classic Iowa
The ride was billed as the “Fall Colors” tour, but we were at least a week away from significant color.
Only a bit of colorOne of our stops“And the woods were lovely, dark and deep”
It was a 5.5 hr trip going only 39 miles with long stops, but that is to be expected with a large group. We had to wait for at least one rig with tire problems. We went on this same ride last year when the RZR was brand new, so it was nice to how much more comfortable we are with it this year.
Another thing we got done was to replace out dying maple tree with a new honey locust tree. Frost Tree Farm is great to work with. He took out the maple for free, planted the locust, added mulch to it and the elm, plus even pruned my crabapple tree in the front! He is retiring soon though, so these trees better grow.
Skyline Locust
As always, the posts will be less frequent while I am at home, and we will be here until after Christmas. I will be doing some sewing though, and I will post that as I finish the quilt tops I have ready for quilting.
It was an amazingly relaxing time at home. Maybe I should use a more appropriate term – lazy time! After all the running around, it was nice to just relax. I didn’t sew a single thing! We did have three separate get togethers with the kids since they are all so busy a single one wouldn’t work! Lots of cooking, but nice.
We left home on Friday, 8 September. Our first night we spent at Bowling Green, MO Walmart. I like small town Walmarts. They are generally not too crowded, quiet, and safe. We have stayed here a number of times.
We had a bit of excitement the second day when we spotted a blimp descending south of Cape Girardeau, MO. The Subway blimp was on its way to Kansas City, but took a breather here. The pictures are awful because we were on a highway with no place to pull over. Kevin took them out of the window. The front is supposed to look like a sandwich and the back is like a wallpaper with the words “Subway” in different fonts and sizes. Why does Subway need a blimp? I sure don’t know!
Coming downDown
We spent Saturday night at the Elks Club campground in Cape Girardeau. Pretty, but I won’t stay again. They didn’t have the trees trimmed, and I had to go through overhanging branches that rubbed my roof. None of the were big, just little stuff, but they shouldn’t advertise they handle big rigs! Then the campsite itself took a lot of work to get level. Never again! We did have a pretty view when we finally got situated. The sky was overcast and gray, and the water was the same color with reflections. This is in the boot heel of Missouri, so the trees are only just thinking about changing colors.
Flat colors
We spent a lot of time getting the motorhome worked on. Monday we had a major motorhome service (oil, filters, transmission drain and replace, chassis maintenance, etc.) plus added a bunch of suspension upgrades. I haven’t had a lot of time with them yet, but it feels promising on the few roads we have had it on. The work basically reset the clock on all kinds of items so next year we are back to a Year 1 maintenance.
Tuesday we had a Shower Miser installed. This is a valve and plumbing where I close a valve in the shower, turn on the hot water, and the water flows from the water heater back to the fresh water tank until I open the valve. It saves quite a bit of water that would otherwise be wasted waiting for the shower to get hot. Obviously this isn’t an issue when we have hookups, but I am hoping it will save quite a bit of water when we dry camp and boondock. It works great! We also had a leaking Hepvo valve replaced (an alternative to a P-trap for RVs with limited space) and our black and gray tanks power flushed. We keep them in pretty good shape, but the gray tank is a bigger bother. Fats and food deposits accumulate on the sides of the tank, and we don’t have a good way to clean them out.
Wednesday Kevin installed a new rear view campers. Ours was just becoming intermittently bad. He checked all the wiring, so we just got a new one. So far it is MUCH sharper than the old one.
Thursday we got our old Schwintek slide mechanism in the big back slide (bedroom and bath) replaced with a Vroom system. This was the reason we really came down. Every time I opened or closed the slide, I had to pray it would work, and generally Kevin ahd to help it along from the outside. Turns out it was truly broken. We had it worked on two years ago, and I just wasn’t willing to do it again. So far so good! The mechanics of the slide are much more robust and the motor is more powerful too. I think the Schwintek was just not up to the job.
Friday we getting our lounge/bathroom wall slammed back into place and re-tied down. The wall was literally moving away from its position. Chris Berry had fixed it 3 years ago or so, but I think the Alcan Highway between Tok and Destruction Bay did it in. The screws Chris had put in were all either broken or gone completely, so this time he added backing boards, REALLY big screws, and even screwed through the tile grout to anchor the wall to the metal frame in the floor. You can see how far it moved away from the wall by looking at the ceiling dents. The soft fabric will eventually expand back. Oh, and on this trip Kevin had already slammed the wall back in place about 6 weeks ago.
Ceiling
Saturday we visited the Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center and the Shiloh National Military Park. What a sobering visit it was. We started at Corinth because that was where the major museum and interpretive center was, and it out the Battle of Shiloh and the Battle of Corinth in perspective. These were the battles that lead General Grant to control the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers plus the major rail lines of the Confederacy, splitting it in two and severing supply lines. After these battles he headed to victory in Vicksburg where visited last year.
Pittsburg Landing is where Grant landed his troops.
Start
And far, far, far too many never left the battlefield. Soldiers from both sides were originally buried in a multitude of mass trench graves. The Confederate soldiers are still there, marked by solitary large monuments. The Union soldiers were reburied at this national cemetery. Note the big monuments surrounded by smaller ones. The unit of the soldiers could be determined by their uniforms, but not their names. The vast majority were buried with their unit. The larger stones indicate the unit, and the smaller stones are individual graves.
End for too many
The battlefield ranged over a few miles, and the liens are very well identified by the NPS. This shows a sample of the location of a particular artillery battery at a particular time in the 2 day battle. These types of markers were numerous.
Battery location
The battle was named for this little Methodist Episcopal Church (a south), part of a pro-slavery split from the anti-slavery Methodist Episcopal Church. “Shiloh” means “place of peace” or “peaceful one.” The battle raged around the little church, and it was totally destroyed. However this faithful replica was hand built and completed in 2001 based on church records and other historical documents.
The reconstructed church
During the Civil War, the military units were mostly from a single geographical area. Many states whose units participated in the battle built monuments to their soldiers. This is the Iowa monument. According to the NOS records, 6664 Iowa soldiers were at the battle and 2409 were killed, wounded, or missing, the greatest loss of Iowans in any bottle of any war. This is one of the reasons I was always so furious with former US Representative Steve King who always kept a Confederate battle flag behind his desk, prominently displayed in any picture he took in his office.
Iowa monument
This is the Confederate monument. Only 25% of Confederate soldiers were from slave owning families, but the other 75% fought and died to keep human beings as property.
Confederate monument
The film shown at the Shiloh Visitor Center was one of the most sobering and heart-wrenching things I have ever seen. I cried. Such waste to support an unsupportable cause. We ended up eating at Cole’s Smokehouse with the most fabulous smoked chicken I have ever had. We come every time we visit Red Bay, and they never disappoint.
Sunday we took a trip to the Rattlesnake Saloon outside Tuscumbia, AL. It is in some type of natural cave with a huge opening, and it a fabulous place to visit. You park on top in a large lot, then they ferry you down a steep one lane road in a specially set up pickup to the cave. The food is just so so, but the atmosphere is what you go for. Well worth a trip if you are in the area. We even got some live local music this time.
Some live music for lunchNot too busy on a Sunday at noon
Tomorrow we get the motorhome detailed and(probably) buffed, the we leave on Tuesday. Whew, I really should post more often so they don’t get as long!
We left this morning for more southern climates. The weather has been truly awful for the last two weeks with even the highs below 0 and nasty winds. Kevin and I kept looking at each other saying “This is just too cold!” We always stay until after Christmas though, so we bided our time until we had two decent days. One we needed for packing and the other we needed for driving, and we finally got them. We even scored a FHU winterized site at the local KOA that let us get full de-winterized before taking off. I am towing the cargo trailer with the UTV on it, and Kevin is driving the Jeep separately. So far, so good, though he has to stop for fuel 3 times as often!
We were planning on staying at a campground in Bowling Green, MO, but they have their water turned off. We decided to save $60 and just spend the night in the local Walmart parking lot. With our batteries, solar, and generator, it is an easy thing to do even in cooler weather like we are having. At least it is dry.
We did have a fabulous Christmas though. All four kids, spouses, partners, and grandkids were able to get together for dinner and presents on the 23rd. We needed to work around my daughter’s work schedule as a nurse. And of course I forgot (again!) to take pictures!
I have been frantically trying to keep up with my Mystery Quilt Zoom class. i got the vast majority of it done, and I was pretty pleased with myself. Even though I posted the first two weeks, I am going to show all of them again to keep the pieces together.
Week 1 – 24”Week 2 block 1 – 18”Week 2 block 2 -18”Week 3 blocks – 12”Week 4 blocks – 10” I fixed the error on the last block on the left
I actually did week 5 which was a single block plus adding connector blocks, but I forgot to take a picture! I have decided to make this a king sized quilt so I need lots of borders. I saw some people made borders of the connector blocks on the sides of the basic quilt, so that is one of my winter projects. I need to make a few hundred little 4” blocks like those below plus some other ones I didn’t show. I will take all the pieces I have left of the original fabric plus I bought four more fat quarters in coordinating color#, so I should have enough fabric. Then I will add some standard borders too to make it the right size.
Some of the connector blocks
I also have a tradition of making something hand made for each family, something g practical. This year it was oven mitts. I made a total of 8, so each household could take their pick of two. Surprisingly people chose different ones, not coordinating.
Some of the Christmas presents
I was able to get my binding technique down to a fine science which will be handy on other projects too.
Expect more frequent posts since we are finally on the road again. We are heading to Red Bay, AL for some paint touch ups and some small miscellaneous fixes. Then we head off to Quartzsite, AZ.
We had the motorhome on the road Tuesday morning by 9:00 am. Yup, we were anxious to be traveling again! We had packed, vacuumed, and brought the slides in on Monday, so all we had to do was finish picking up the house a bit and packing toiletries. Oh, and there was a stop to pick up a McMuffin and a McGriddle. Luna responded ok to the traveling, finally coming out after a few hours on the road, but Minnie wasn’t seen until we parked.
We stayed two nights at Country Charm RV Park in Hamilton, MO. It is a pretty place but the interior roads were a bit tight with the Jeep hooked on. I did like the view though! We were on the outside loop, and summer is well underway here.
The view from my chair outside the motorhome
Hamilton is the home to Missouri Star Quilt Company, a sort of Mecca for quilters. They own a large number of shops in the small town, each one with a different style of fabric. For example, one shop was full of only batiks, while another was filled seasonal fabrics. I ended up buying some novelty fabric that will become a gift for someone when I get back.
The town also has a number of murals.
As you can see, it is also the boyhood home of J. C. Penny. We didn’t stop by the little museum that the house is now though. You can just barely see it through the trees.
Hidden by trees is the J. C. Penny home
It turns out that Sisters on the Fly, a women-only fishing group that has small vintage trailers, was having a gathering in town. They allow tours of their cute rigs occasionally, but we didn’t stay around for one. I am guessing they were the ones who planted a flock of flamingos on the grass nearby.
We also went to an Amish grocery in Jamesport, MO. They had all the wonderful bulk food items I usually get in Kalona, IA. We ate lunch at The Country Cupboard in Jamesport. Nice chicken friend steak! I think only southerners are really good at making this, and I certainly can’t fry anything well. We then came back to the campground, relaxed, and enjoyed the absolutely gorgeous weather – high of 75, puffy clouds, no wind, moderate humidity.
I also cooked some strawberry muffins using the bake setting on my Gourma brand Air Fryer. Tomorrow we head to northern Oklahoma. They were wonderful! I lowered the temperature 25 degrees and decreased the time by about 15% since the air fryer is basically just a small convection oven. I have an oven in the motorhome, but it takes a long time (and lots of power) to heat and cook. The air fryer should be very useful for baking when we aren’t connected to electricity.
Oh, and a bonus video of Minnie discovering another cat in the mirror. Watch the photobomb at the end.
We left Pulltite on Saturday instead of our planned Sunday departure. I did get quite a bit of sewing done, and all the sub-blocks are now complete. I don’t think I have posted a picture of my sewing set up so here is one of the table and machine.
I have plastic tubs with sewing supplies on the sofa to the right of the machine, and pressing is done on the dining table to the left of the machine. Works pretty well! I have started using a small hand held iron instead of a big one, and I really like how flat it gets my blocks.
We decided to move a bit closer to I-44 to make going to and from Iowa a bit easier. We parked the coach at Meramac Springs Country Store and RV Park, and it was a hard! The park was full, but they said they had room for a rig our size. Wrong! With the narrow roads, tight turns, and overhanging branches, it took 20 minutes to get us wiggled in the spot. Even then we couldn’t open the awning without hitting the guy next door. We were amazingly lucky that the park emptied out after the weekend since I don’t think we could have gotten out without backing out the same way we got in if there were other campers around. I ended up going through two other campsites to get out to the road. Ugh. We will mark that a solid “Never again.”
We did drive back to Iowa to get our voting done though. Black Hawk county made it a very quick and painless process. We also dropped my daughter’s birthday present off at her our – a gift certificate for a massage plus some Ozark candy. Then back to Missouri Monday night. We did some laundry (I absolutely love having a washer and dryer in the coach!), and we just relaxed. Tuesday we drove into Oklahoma and bought a PikePass to allow easier travel on the tollways Oklahoma specializes in. It will also work in Kansas, and we do use the Kansas Turnpike too. We needed two of the RFID sensors, one for the motorhome and one for the Jeep. We thought the Jeep one had messed something g up because all of a sudden these three LED lights started lighting up! We had never even seen them before, and Kevin was at a loss. The Jeep dealer assured us they were an aftermarket add-on, so Kevin finally traced it to the AirForce 1 auxiliary braking system we had installed for towing. A bit more debugging, and he fixed the problem. Weird.
We also ended up buying a Dyson battery powered vacuum cleaner at the Costco in Iowa City on the way back home. The cat tracks litter everywhere, and I need either the generator or shore electrical power to operate the central vacuum. Since the tile floors will eventually scratch if we close the slides with dirt on the floor, this seemed like a good idea. We got the “Animal” model, and it cleans very well. Not much battery life on “high”, but the motorhome is much smaller than a house so it works fine for us.
We spent Tuesday night at the Walmart in Vinita, OK, just off the I-44 Turnpike. Nice and quiet. Wednesday we moved to Twin Falls RV Park in Oklahoma City. Very nice place with concrete pads, patios, lots of trees, and lots of space. Price was reasonable at $50 or so. We spend tonight here too.
Yesterday we saw my niece, her husband, and their four month old baby boy. He was the most solemn thing! Bald as a billiard ball with a classic baby stare. He played with Kevin a bit, then I held him and immediately seemed to put him to sleep. I have that effect on adults sometimes too! We also had lunch today with my sister, the baby’s grandmother. Pretty uneventful, but she doesn’t pick the best places to eat. I definitely expected better BBQ in Oklahoma, but the sides were pretty good.
Tonight we are finishing up some laundry, the bikes are back on the Jeep, and we will pull out of here tomorrow between 8:30 and 9:00 to miss the early morning traffic. It will be probably 9 hours on the road followed by another 9 hour day afterwards so probably no posting. It should be smooth sailing on I-40 all the way though. As long as we don’t hit bad winds in the Oklahoma/Texas/New Mexico plains we will be fine.
I am sitting in a parking lot that actually has internet, so I can post some more about the Ozarks.
First, just the general beauty of the area. The trees went really turning colors yet, but you can see just the promise of future color.
Love the fog that shows in the valleys.
Then there are the “wild” horses that roam the area. They are wild in the sense they aren’t owned by anyone, but they definitely are habituated to people. We saw these three, two mares and a foal, at Echo Bluff State Park parking lot. The foal got about 3 foot from me, and one of the mares grazed about 5 foot away. Definitely used to people!
That is the front of the car hood showing red. They moved even closer after I took this.
Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous day, so I mostly just sat outside and read. It is the kind of day that makes me really, really regret I can’t get on the river, but I just don’t feel well enough. Today is a wet and cold day, so we are just hanging out at the state park campground using their WiFi. When I get back I intend on sewing for a while and then just generally cleaning up. With all the cloud cover we will definitely have to run the generator, and that means I can vacuum. After vacuuming, I will mop, and the floor is in desperate need of it!
We finally got all our warranty work done on Wednesday last week. We headed out fairly early on Thursday for Missouri. We had reservations at Echo Bluff State Park in the Ozarks, and we made it in good time. The campground at Echo Bluff, known as Timbuktu for some unknown reason, is just a big meadow with good interior roads, concrete patios, and lots of space between sites. They have planted trees and shrubs, but it will be another 10 years before the place looks good. Until then it is a very inexpensive and convenient place stop for a night or two – full hookups were $30. We got all the laundry done, and drove down in the car to Pulltite campground, the NPS campground we wanted to stay at for the next week. No hookups, narrow gravel interior roads, grass sites that aren’t very level, but only $6 a night without senior pass. I was worried about overhanging trees making it impossible to get the coach down the steep hill, but we decided it would be fine if I drove slowly and used both lanes a small needed.
Friday morning we left Echo Bluff and drove the 8 miles to Pulltite. Yes, that is how it is spelled. It was misspelled years ago from the expected “Pulltight” meaning the horses had to be carefully driven down the steep hill to the river. And the river is still,why we come. The Current River is a lovely gem, part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. Clear, cold, spring fed rivers are a joy to see any time of year, even in the cold and rain we got moving in. We will stay until Sunday, a total of 10 days.
It was overcast when I took it, but we are in a lovely riverbottom of deciduous trees.
We just drove around sight seeing until Tuesday when we made a purposeful trip into Springfield to see the World Of Wildlife museum at the Bass Pro Shop headquarters. Very, very nice, and well worth the price.
I did take some pictures of the Ozarks, but I haven’t downloaded them from the camera. I will do that tomorrow and post more.
We left Iowa about 1:00 pm on Friday after running a number of last minute errands. We spent the night in the Walmart parking lot in Hannibal, MO. Nice quiet place. We got around Saturday around 9:00 and headed to Jackson, TN. We spent the night again in a Walmart parking lot. Like most small towns on a Saturday night, there were some young idiots in very loud cars cruising the parking lot, but it got quiet well before midnight. Since we only had 100 miles to go, we took our ever loving time getting out. We finally got to the Tiffin Service Center campground by noon. However we found out the campground was already full. Tiffin recommended we go to the Red Bay campground a couple of miles away. It is just a big gravel parking lot, but it has 50 amp full hookups. Cheap at $25 a night, but it would have been free if we were at the Tiffin site. Hopefully we can move in the next day or so. The roads all the way from Iowa we’re divided four lanes with the exception of the last 20 miles or so.
We have all our forms filled out for our warranty work, and some time tomorrow a Tiffin SC rep will come out to evaluate the time needed to complete our list. That will decide how long we have to wait our turn.
I admit this is a short post without pictures, but I should have more to post when we can get out and about. It is, unsurprisingly, very, very green here. It was also ridiculously hot today, almost 90 degrees! Should be better tomorrow, but I still miss my cool, dry mountains and deserts. All those folks who retired and moved to Florida – good for them! I can’t even imagine it.
We left Mark Twain Lake and headed south to the Ozark National Scenic Riverways and the Current River. I just love this area of the Ozarks! We camped at Pulltite campground, a NPS site along the Current River. We had reserved our favorite site (#28) months ago, and it was plenty big for the travel trailer and truck. We even had some decent sun for the solar system, a luxury in these deeply forested hills. The weather was all over the place: rain on Tuesday, cool on Wednesday, warm on Thursday, warmer on Friday, and damned hot on Saturday. It just isn’t right to have temperatures of 90 degrees in mid October in south central Missouri!
On Tuesday we did boring housekeeping tasks like laundry. On Wednesday we did the Cedar Grove to Akers run on the Current. Thursday we did Pulltite to Round Spring, and on Friday we did Akers Ferry to Pulltite. Lots of nice paddling with a really fun crew. By Saturday we were really tired and a little sore so we went to The Haunting of the Hills put on by the OSNR at Alley Mill. There were lots of historic activities demonstrated by costumed interpreters, plus the mill itself is really lovely. It was so hot we were really worried about keeping the trailer comfortable enough for the cats, but the vent fans on all day plus leaving the windows open on the north side of the trailer kept is under 85 inside. Love the solar! We would have been challenged to run all the fans without turning on the generator before Kevin installed the system.
Forecasts showed rain on Saturday night, so we packed up a lot of outdoor gear before going to bed. We also decided to start our gradual trek back to Iowa by heading to Mark Twain Lake again for a couple of nights. This time I remembered to take pictures!
At Mark Twain LakePulltite CampsiteCanoeing on the Current? Note the gorgeous color of the water.
We met up with friends from the RVForum on Wednesday for a mini-rally at Eagle Cliff Campground just outside of Lanesboro, MN. What fun! The first night was good weather and we had a campfire. We got to meet a number of new folks, and that is always fun. Thursday wasn’t too bad with just some light rain/mist. We did some sightseeing and had lunch at a nice little place in town. Then it started raining in earnest! It rained all Thursday night, all day and night on Friday, and most of the day on Saturday. I really should hire myself out as a rain maker since it always seems to rain when I go to Minnesota!
We did get to spend time with friends Heather and Marshall on Thursday after they arrived, and we spent a lot of time with Greg, Lisa, and their three girls after they arrived on Friday. Also on Friday we had the traditional rally potluck, and we also had the traditional too much food! Luckily the campground had an enclosed pavilion since it rained so hard. I got to do a little singing too, always a fun thing.
By Saturday around 7:00 pm the rain finally stopped. We had a great group campfire at Eric and Max’s campsite, the rally organizers. Sunday morning saw us saying goodbye and heading south. We had hoped to do some biking and canoeing, but the weather just didn’t cooperate.
We are making our way to the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, and we drove quite a bit of the trip today. We are now camped at Indian Creek campground (Corps of Engineers) at Mark Twain Lake in Missouri. What a gorgeous place! Since it is a federal campground our senior pass meant we paid only $9 for a water and electric site. The campsite isn’t too level, but it is very large and heavily wooded. If they are open when we come back through in a week, we are thinking of staying here a few days on the way back to Iowa.
I remembered just as I started to write this post that I took exactly zero pictures at the rally. Sorry!
