Hello from Du Quoin, IL

Hello from Du Quoin, IL

Saturday Morning June 26, 2010 (tenth travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Du Quoin State Fairgrounds  (map) for a Fleetwood motorhome rally. We arrived here Thursday (6/24). Set-up day was supposed to be yesterday, but they let us set up on Thursday. That was nice and gave us a day to catch up on projects.

One of the projects was to pay state taxes for the last two rallies. I really need to vent here. Both the state of New Mexico and Wisconsin are terrible to deal with. I have had sign up ahead of time (a huge project where they want vast amounts of personal data and the birth certificate of our third daughter (sorry Judy {grin}). The latter is, obviously, an exaggeration, but not much. Then trying to file my payment (unfortunately very small) is equally a hassle. I would say that I have spent at least 4 hours (probably closer to 6) on each state. In the case of WI, I can't file it till we get home, since they mailed me a “Letter ID” which is separate from my tax account ID number which they emailed me. Arrrrrgh. Of course, CA is terrible as well, but we did not sell there this year. Other states like WY and here in IL make it so easy. They hand you a slip of paper and you simply enter your gross sales and extended tax and mail it in.

Now, lets catch up on Hannibal. We chose to stop there because of some very fond memories. In 1987 we headed out in a '56 Chevy that I had just finished a total rebuild with all three girls and headed to Springfield, IL for a big car show. To this day, we don't know how we talked the girls into going with us (Lisa was 21!) but somehow we did. They were getting a bit restless, so we decided to do something fun. Somehow we found Hannibal (famous for being the boyhood home of Mark Twain). One evening we took a dinner cruise on the Mississippi and had a ton of fun.

So, we decided to take the riverboat dinner tour again and it was fun again. I have attached a photo of the boat taken from “Lover's Leap” (an overlook on the huge bluffs adjacent to the Mississippi).

River Boat Cruise taken from "Lovers Leap"

I had mentioned that we had observed some serious flooding of the farm fields in the river bottom areas as we traveled south. Well, just before we went on the cruise, we got a call telling us that they had to move the departure location up the river a bit to higher land. Indeed, the city had to install the flood gates in the levy that protects the town (see photo)

Flood gates installed in the levy

We also toured the Mark Twain Museum and the buildings where he grew up in Hannibal. At the museum there was an actor that portrayed him and he did an excellent job!!

We drove south on MO route 79 which is a part of the Great River Road. It was a nice drive, but we did not get to see the river very much.

The Injun Joe campground was showing its age. The sites were very small and close together, but it was on our route out of town and had 50 amp service which let us run all three of our air conditioners at once. I was able to take a dip in the pool and that was really fun.

I mentioned air conditioners. Wow, do we need them!! There have been heat warnings all over the area for several days. The heat index has been well into the 100s most days. Even the locals comment about how hot and muggy it is. The same is true here in Du Quoin. We only have 30 amp service here, but that lets us run two of the air conditioners and that keeps us comfortable.

Got to get ready for the opening of the rally today, so that is all for now.

Hello from Hannibal, MO

Hello from Hannibal, MO

Tuesday Morning June 22, 2010 (ninth travelogue of this trip).

Lots of miscellaneous stuff to catch up on. Our wonderful campground in West Salem, WI was right on the La Crosse River. It looked like a good place to fish, so I bought an out-of-state 4 day license ($24). I guess that is not too bad, but compared to the very reduced fee in CO for folks over 65, it kind of hurt. Worse yet, I never find the time to fish in CO. I did not catch anything, but had a lot of fun.

I talked about how neat the campground was. We were lucky and did not have any close RVs except for the last day. Even that was not bad. The camp hosts even had great rolls and coffee for Fathers Day. We had only planned to say a couple of days, but we enjoyed the area so much that we stayed 7 nights! I have included a photo which does not come close to showing how neat the area was.

I brought my bicycle with me on this trip and have been riding it a bit. Pat got it for me as a gift a few years ago and it is the first high quality bike I have owned. The shifting is flawless! I was able to ride it on some trails in the campground area and it was a ton of fun. Rides were not long, but I still got a bit of exercise.

I mentioned that I had been working on a problem with the bus. It is not a huge problem, but my charge air cooler air flow is not what it should be and it allows the air entering the engine to get hotter than I would like. I built/installed a hydraulic fan system before this trip. That should have solved the problem, but it did not. I have been working with the fan blade supplier and he said that I must have a shroud to make the fan work properly. So, I fabricated one out of fiberglass in the campground (see photo). The photo shows the raw shroud with the fan. I wrapped the fan with cardboard to get the best fit I could, given the situation. The shroud doesn't look all that impressive, but once I got it trimmed up, it looked pretty good. That did not solve the problem completely, so I am doing some more system analysis and working with both the fan manufacturer and the pump/motor manufacture.

When we were touring the upper Mississippi, we saw some strange purple contraptions hanging from trees along the highway. Then we found one in the campground. It turns out that they are bug traps that are mounted in selected Ash trees. It turns out that there is a terrible infestation of Emerald Ash Borer (http://www.emeraldashborer.info/). This threatens ash trees in North America.

We left the campground on Sunday and drove a bit less than 250 miles to a truck stop close to Mediapolis, IA on US 61. We then drove a bit over 100 miles to Hannibal. Normally we enjoy two lane roads, but the two days getting here were not a lot of fun. The trip through Wisconsin was not good at all. The roads were very rough and there was a lot of tight twisty areas. In addition, it rained heavily during parts of both days. Indeed, it has been raining in the Midwest a bunch. All along our journey we saw flooding of the farm fields. The rivers are out of their banks in some areas, and there have been a lot of flash flood warnings. It is probably not bad enough to make the evening news, but the huge number of folks affected are probably really suffering.

We are staying in Injun Joe Campground (map). We will have more about Hannibal in the next installment.


That is all for now.