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.

Hello again from West Salem, WI

Hello again from West Salem, WI

Saturday afternoon   June 18, 2010   (eight  travelogue of this trip).

Monday (6/14) we took a northern tour on the Great River Road.  We drove up the Minnesota side from the I-90 exit to Wabasha, MN and then crossed the river and came down the Wisconsin side.  That whole valley is so beautiful!  We stopped in Winona, MN for lunch in a great bar/cafe right on the Mississippi.  They are famous for their grilled cheese sandwiches.  Pat ordered the grilled cheese and I ordered a barbecue sandwich. We split the sandwiches and they were great.

Our next stop was Alma, WI.  That is a site of one of many dams/locks along the route.  Most of the dams are very shallow and are probably used for flood control.  The locks have an elevation change of less that 10 feet from the looks of it.  When we got to Alma, we saw a tugboat and 6 barges approaching the locks.  It was taking some time, so we decided to look around Alma (very small town) for a coffee house.  Well, not only did we find one, but it looked like it was straight out of the '30s or '40s.  As you can see in the picture, they use a very old espresso machine.  Not only that, they had great pie for Pat and I had a great scone.  By the time we got done, the tug and barges were in the lock.  I have attached a picture of them leaving.  I have also attached a photo of the main street of Alma.  It is very typical of the small towns all along the river.

Coffee House in Alma, WI

Tugboat and barges leaving lock in Alma, WI

Looking down on main street in Alma, WI

Almost all of this tour (a bit less than  200 miles) was in drizzling rain.  Sounds terrible, but it really made for some neat scenery. 

Tuesday, we just took it easy and I started a fairly major project on the bus (more in the next travelogue). 

Wednesday, we took the southern route from I-90 to Dubuque and back.  This was a bit over 200 miles round trip.  We took the MN/IA side down and the Wisconsin side back.  As was the case with our tour on Monday, the scenery was beautiful!  The weather was bright and sunny, giving us a contrast to Monday.  One of our stops was at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in IA.  The history of these mounds is not well documented, but it appears that the Indians created them as burial grounds.  Some of the mounds are huge in breath and width.  Some are shaped like the profile of an animal.  We took a fairly steep hike in the woods (about two miles round trip) to get to the Eagle Rock overlook.  It was much more picturesque that the photo shows.

Mississippi from Eagle Rock in Effigy Mounds National Monument

We then drove to Guttenberg, IA where we had lunch right on the Mississippi.  The first half of our return trip was a bit disappointing as we did not see the river.  However, we did go thought some very neat little towns.  On the last half to the leg, we were right on the river and it was again very picturesque.

Lunch on the Mississippi in Guttenberg, IA

With all of the pictures we are posting, we will cut this travelogue short and pick up with more details in the next one.

Hello from West Salem, WI

Hello from West Salem, WI

Tuesday morning June 15, 2010 (seventh travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Veteran's Memorial Campground in West Salem, WI (map). Getting here was quite an adventure. We wanted to be close to the Mississippi in the La Crosse, WI area. We saw an advertisement for a campground as we traveled down I-90. Trying to find it with the convoluted route and very small marking signs was a real hassle. Indeed, we took the wrong turn and had to travel over some very narrow roads. Eventually we found the campground, but the first problem was it had the word “resort” in the name and we don't fit well in that environment. This campground did not look that fancy, but they were very proud of their real estate (close to $50 per night!). We were tired and decided to pay the horrible fee. When we tried to get to our site, it was obvious that it would not work out. We got our money back and headed to this campground. It is a wonderful place and less than half the price! It looked like it would be hard to get into the huge park, and my nerves were shot from our experience with the “resort”. We had to cross a small stone bridge to get into the park/campground. As we did, we noticed about four kids (perhaps teenagers or in their early '20s) fishing from the bridge. As we approached, they turned around and got grins on their faces. One gave us a big “thumbs up” and that made my day.

The campground is in a huge La Crosse county park that is dedicated to Veterans. The campground is quite large. It has a ton of hardwood trees, lots of cute little squirrels and is right on the La Crosse river. We originally paid for two nights, but have decided to stay four nights. We will use this as our base for at least two one-day trips along the Great River Road (more about that later).

We need to catch up on the FMCA rally. Simply stated, it was a disaster! Some of the organizers were less than friendly, the facilities were very marginal, and the attendees were not interested in spending money. They would not let Pat man the craft sign-up desk, and the result was a class of only 5 ladies. Normally she sells out very quickly with a class size of 25.

The building we were in was a barn on the fairgrounds. The booth size was not what was advertised/normal (9 ft front vs the normal 10 ft.). The booth size was not a big issue for us, since we had signed up for a double booth, but for some folks it was a very significant problem. One day was very hot and the building had very little ventilation. Traffic in the vendor area was very sparse. Usually some vendors are busy, but almost universally, most experienced very low sales. We were almost skunked, but did sell one Silverleaf unit in the last hour of the show! We have made the decision not to attend this event in the future.

Sunday, we drove a short distance to a very special restaurant in Delavan (Millies: http://www.millieswi.com/ ), WI at the suggestion of our neighbor Karyn. They specialize in pancake breakfast menu items. It was absolutely fantastic. The food was great, the drive was very picuresque and the little shops were fun for Pat. After we returned from breakfast, we packed up and headed west towards La Crosse. The terrain and farm buildings really reminded us of Germany. They have had a lot of rain and everything was green and beautiful.

I mentioned the Great River Road. This is national parkway of the Mississippi, established in 1938. It consists of many different highways that are designated as part of the system. It runs for 3,000 miles through 10 states. There are several websites detailing this parkway. One of the best I found was: http://www.experiencemississippiriver.com/. We plan to travel along this route on our way to Du Quoin, IL for our next rally. We have several days to make the trip, and we plan to enjoy this wonderful part of our country. I will post some of the details of this adventure in later posts.

That is all for now.