Exit Day

Wednesday, May 4 - Halleluiah, the sunshine has returned!  Pretty chilly morning (41 degrees overnight), but the sun is shining!  We finished gathering up our stuff (hopefully we got everything) and made a trip into town for groceries.  The Fire Dept. had 2 ladder trucks parked on the overpass with a huge American flag flying between them.  We were told it was in honor of the troops, and it was an awesome sight.

 We made a quick stop at Mike and Rachelle's to see her daycare operation, then drove past the Indian Hills Produce Inc. watermelon distribution center, which is between Mike and Lucille's houses.  They truck watermelons into this center, then repack them and truck them all over the country.  There are semi trucks passing by Lucille's house all day long, going to this distribution center.

 About 12:30, we were ready to hit the road.  Joe drove to the station just up the road to fill up our propane tank, so I took a couple of last pictures, then drove up to meet him and hook up the car.  Lucille walked outside to see us off.
 
We had a really good visit, but it was time to move on.  After much debate last night, Joe picked out a route that took us through Evansville (another White Castle hamburger lunch), then into Kentucky.  We saw terrible flooding throughout this drive, fields and even houses and barns with water in and all around them.

 

It's going to take a long time to recover from the damage this flooding is causing.  We crossed the Ohio River at Evansville, which had flooded all the surrounding area too.

We drove through Kentucky to the Kentucky Lake area, crossing the Tennessee River.

 We used to come to Kentucky Lake to fish for crappie in the spring, so this area was familiar to us, although it had changed dramatically in the 25+ years since we had been here.  We had intended to camp at the Kentucky Dam Village and Campground, but it was all under water.

They recommended a campground just a mile down the road, so we got set up then drove around the area.  The water was rushing through the spillways at the dam, going into the Tennessee River which certainly did not need any more water.

We drove through some of the camping resorts we had been to back in the 80's, then ended up at Jonathan Creek where we camped many times.  This inlet was huge, due to the high water of the lake, and our old campground, Lakeside, was mostly underwater.  We were glad we had not planned on staying here tonight.  We did see two red foxes on this drive, along with a turtle and numerous squirrels.

We headed back to the camper then, and I fixed dinner.  It was an interesting day, and we were glad to be on the road again, seeing the sights.  We are hoping for another sunny day tomorrow.