Day 5 - Heading East - Home Stretch

Friday - We slept in a little this morning, then drove into Mt. Vernon (about 1/2 mile) for breakfast before we hit the road.  We really liked this little campground, it's a very convenient location if we come across I-64 so we will have to remember it -- Archway RV Park.

 Cute little cabins (above).  Campsites are fairly roomy.

We finally got on the road at 9:40, had a few miles to drive on I-57, which was south, then reconnected with I-64 and headed East again. But the sun was high enough that it wasn't blinding us this morning, and we crossed the Indiana state line about an hour later, at 10:35.  Shortly after that, we hit U.S. 41, headed north, and arrived at Mike and Rachelle's (have to get used to calling it that, rather than Mom's house), at 12:42.  No one was home, so after we got parked, we drove on into Vincennes to go shopping for funeral clothes, since I didn't pack any "church clothes" on this trip.  We ran into Judy Ann there, and visited briefly with her, got our shopping done, stopped at Barbara's "country cottage" where Dixie and Jim were going to stay, and visited with Maurice until Barbara arrived, then visited with Barbara until Dixie and Jim arrived. 

Joe had announced that we were doing Bobe's pizza tonight, and I called ahead and reserved their back room, so we had a family get-together there.  That was fun, and the pizza was delicious, as usual.

Joe and Ashley's selfie.

We ended our day and headed back to the RV to get some rest.  We had hoped to work a nap in this afternoon, but that didn't happen.

Saturday was a busy day.  We met Dixie and Jim for breakfast at 9:30, and went to the funeral home at 10:30.  Aunt Nellie's funeral was very nicely done, with Marilyn's kids and grandkids providing a wonderful personal touch with their singing and reading of the scriptures.  As soon as the graveside service was over, Joedropped me off at another funeral home so I could attend the funeral of Glenda Williams Carie the sister of one of my classmates, Sherry Williams Hedge.  Glenda actually had graduated in my sister's class, and I spent many overnights there.  I met Barbara there and we paid our respects to this Decker Chapel family.  An added treat -- another classmate, who is now a musician and Elvis-impersonator, and a nephew of the deceased -- was there and we got to catch up a little with Eddie Carson.  We hadn't seen him for probably 54 years.

I missed the "family dinner" following Aunt Nellie's funeral since I went to the second funeral, but some of the family migrated out to Mike's afterwards, so it was much like old times.  We all thought Lucille would have appreciated having the family together, on her carport.

Mike got out the barbeque grill and cooked up some hamburgers and hotdogs, so along with the leftovers from the funeral home and dinner afterwards, there was plenty to eat.  Another long day, but a good one, given the circumstances.

Sunday morning, we did make it to church, as did Dixie and Jim.  Joe and I slept in until almost 9:00, unheard of for me, although we still haven't adjusted to this time zone.  But we had the opportunity after church to walk over to the cemetery and see the new tombstone at Mom and Dad' grave, which had just been set about a week ago.  It is very lovely, Dixie did good.

After church, we gathered up some more family and drove in to the Ponderosa for lunch.  Then, Jaclyn gave us a tour of their new house, which they will be moving into shortly.  I left my camera at home so I don't have pictures, but it is lovely, with lots and lots of room, and two wonderful garages.  We are all envious of those garages.

From there, we headed back to the RV and Joe and I finally got our naps.  Our travel days caught up with us and we were both really tired, so it didn't take us long to fall asleep.

This is my final blog of this trip.  We plan on leaving here Wednesday and heading to Florida.  At some point, we will head back to Arizona, probably after Halloween.  John and Bridgette have sold their house and bought another one, as well, so it looks like they plan on putting us to work.  Everyone seems to be moving this year.

I totaled up some numbers of our trip thus far: 

Grass Valley, California to Vincennes, Indiana -- 2,241 miles

RV miles since we left home - 5,631 miles
Buick miles since we left home - 7,994 miles (we did lots of day-trips seeing the sights).

Out of curiousity, I added up the hours we spent driving across the country from California to Indiana --
approximately 44 1/2 hours (that's 43 for Joe, 1 1/2 for me).  In approximately 4 1/2 days.  Thanks to Joe, the marathon-driver!

The End!

9/28/2017 - Driving East - Day 4

Thursday (I think) - It's really bad when you are looking at the Cracker Barrel menu trying to figure out if you should be reading the Tuesday special or Wednesday special -- that was us last night.

Although we had another parking lot sweeper episode last night (we are now checking out the Walmart parking lots as we pass them to see if they are clean), we got up on time, had breakfast at Stacy's Restaurant which was recommended by the helpful lady at the laundromat, and were on the road by 7:15.  We beat the sun, but it greeted us very shortly, in full blast.

Our visors didn't quite get it yet, and even our clip-on sunglasses only helped a little.  So Joe had to sit up a little straighter for the visor to come into play.

I started giving him hundred-mile treats yesterday -- when we reached a 100-mile marker (multiples), he would get 3 cherry sour candies.  We stopped at mile marker 298 last night so he missed out on his last one yesterday, and wasn't ready first thing this morning, so he finally got his treat somewhere past Topeka.

They messed us up, from Topeka to Kansas City with a toll road, and they changed the mile marker numbers, so he probably was a little passed his 100 mile treat, but we are back on track now.  But unless I buy another bag of candy, I'm going to have to parcel them out just one or two at a time.  We have more hundreds than I have enough candy for at the 3-at-a-time rate.

We went through Topeka and I waved at Mark Dillon's parents, as requested. 

We hit Kansas City, Kansas about 9:00 and buzzed right through there, although the freeway makes lots of jogs through that city, and the city itself was really smoggy - it did not look very appealing.

We crossed the Kansas River, but I missed the Missouri River, I must have been typing. We crossed the Missouri state line at 9:20 (which I also missed) and started across that state.  We finally made a fuel stop at Higgingsville and I replenished Joe's 100-mile treats so we should be able to continue on. 

And sure enough, it wasn't long before he had logged another 100.

We began to come into the outskirts of St. Louis about 1:00 and Joe immediately started watching for signs of a White Castle.  We took the 370 bypass, to the 270 bypass, and I found a couple in my Next Exit book, so we found his White Castle and made our lunch stop.

I think we crossed three arms of the Mississippi River, or two plus a canal, going across on the 270.  We think this may be beyond where the barges run.

Once across the river, we took the 255 south to I-64, then started working our way across Illinois.  We could see the Arch and St. Louis skyscrapers in the distance.  We decided to spend the night in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, at the Archway RV Park, a very nice little campground about a mile off the interstate, where it inte3rsects with I-57.  We have full hook-ups here (I didn't even ask about a laundromat after last night's fiasco, and I have my laundry done now, anyway), and can go in tomorrow from here with empty tanks and a full tank of water.  We are about 100 miles from Vincennes so that should be an easy run in the morning, thanks to Joe's marathon driving.  But today we were off the road by 4:15, and he ONLY drove 455 miles today.  And we only bought 85 gallons of gas today.  No wildlife today, but they are really working the fields in southern Illinois -- the combines are really stirring up the dust in the bean fields, it must be really dry here.

We are really looking forward to arriving in Vincennes tomorrow and getting this part of the journey behind us.  It's been a trip!

9/27/2017 - Driving East - Day 3

Wednesday - Well, that wasn't the best night on a Walmart  parking lot.  About 1:00 a.m., the sweeper started cleaning the parking lot, very loudly.  I thought it was traffic from the highway, but it just kept going and going.  And this was not a very heavily-traveled highway when we were on it.  Finally, I asked Joe what that was and he said they were cleaning the parking lot, it was the street sweeper or whatever you call it.  That went on for a long, long time.  So please take note of how clean the parking lot is.

But we were on the move early again, by 7:05.  And we were only about a mile or so from beautiful Vail, Colorado!!!

We didn't have any sun this morning, but we could still see some of the fall colors on the mountainsides and we could see the ski slopes.

Then we encountered some fog.  The spots in the pictures are not snowflakes -- they are bugs on the windshield -- Joe didn't get that chore taken care of this morning.

 But we did have snow on the mountainsides.

These pictures would have been better if the sun was shining on the mountain slopes, but it made for easier driving to have the clouds.

We had two passes over 11,000 feet to climb.  We were not making fast miles this morning.

And we went through a few tunnels, a couple were pretty long, maybe a mile long.

We drove through some fog, and could see lots of very low clouds in the valleys (and lots of bugs on the windshield).

Once we cleared the mountains, we hit Denver about 9:00, and there we encountered some rain, but it quit about the time we came out the East side.  But that spiced up the drive through Denver a little bit.

Here is downtown Denver, through the rain and distance.

From Denver east, Colorado is very flat, very different from the western part of the state.

We did see some antelope through this plains section, 3 small herds. The second group was on Joe's side and he thought it was sheep at first, but I straightened him out.

We crossed the Kansas state line at 12:45, and we saw one more antelope, all by herself.  We are definitely in the grain belt -- we saw big fields of corn, soybeans, sunflower, milo, and hay that had already been cut.

We saw fields of late beans in the low areas, but I would say milo (or sorghum) is the main crop through here, and it makes a really pretty field as it matures - sort of reddish-amber.

We had hoped to see a whole line of combines coming across a field, but the closest we saw was a line of farm equipment, some of it looked like it was ready to go, but maybe not.

We didn't see any more antelope once we got into the farming area, and no deer all day.  But we did see several hawks along the road, especially as it got more towards evening.  We got in 575 miles today, all Joe again, and got off the road in Junction City at 6:00.  I had a plan here, but it didn't work out exactly right.  There was a Cracker Barrel at the same exit as the Walmart, and I found a laundromat in town, so I thought we would park at Walmart, eat at Cracker Barrel, then I would do laundry while Joe took a shower back at the RV.  Well, we decided to do a drive by on the laundromat so I could come back by myself.  And check the hours.  So we found one, and it said the doors locked at 8:00, and you had to be done at 10:00.  So we decided we should start the washers, then run back to Cracker Barrel, then come back to put the clothes in the dryer.  We got the washers started.  Then we decided we better wait and get them in the dryer before we left.  So we did that.  Joe added an extra quarter to the dryers, but as we were getting ready to walk out the door, a lady doing her laundry told us that the doors were already locked (oh, forgot to mention, we lost another hour, and we thought we got here at 6:30 but it was actually 7:30) and she had to let her husband back in when he took a load to their car.  So if no one was in here to open the door, you couldn't get back in after 8:00, and after 10:00, it went to automatic lockdown and you couldn't get in or out. So we stayed, got them done and folded and hit the Cracker Barrel about 9:10.  Fortunately, they were open until 10:00 so we got our meal.

Then, we went back to the RV, Joe had to wait for his shower until the water heated because we forgot to turn the hot water heater on before we left for the laundromat.  I got the clothes put away and went to bed, too tired to do the blog (I'm doing this as we drive down the road across Kansas).  And then the parking lot sweeper started up again.  They must just do this in the west, we have never run into this before.  And those things are loud.  At least this was at 10:00 p.m. instead of 1:00 a.m.  That went on for about half an hour, sounded like they were coming on in to the RV.  Then a helicopter sounded like it was landing on our roof (we are near a military base, we later learned.)  Finally, it got quiet.  Then a semi pulled in right beside us, I mean RIGHT beside us, on the driving lane side, not the parking side.  He must have gotten out to get to get his suitcase out of the back of his truck, but it sounded like he was opening our outside storage boxes, so Joe had to go check that out.  Finally, we settled down, and we did et a good night's sleep.

We are making good progress.  Got through Colorado today and more than halfway across Kansas.  We are still on track to arrive in Vincennes Friday .And we bought 105 gallons of gas today, but the prices in Kansas were better -- $2.449, then $2.189. We hope the price keeps going down the further east we get.  It got a little warmer today, 72.

Joe is putting in long, hard days but we are making good progress.  If we can continue our early-rising, we should be in good shape to get to Indiana on Friday.