Traveling To Elkhart

Miss Terry is still feeling pretty bad, so I wasn’t sure if she was up to traveling yesterday. But when we woke up she said that maybe her problem is not a cold, but rather allergies, and she wanted to get out of the area to see if that made any difference.

So we left Ray Behrens Corps of Engineers Campground about 9:30 a.m., drove north a few miles to U.S. Highway 36 and took it east to Hannibal. We crossed the Mississippi River and the road became Interstate 72 on the Illinois side of the river.

The weather had predicted scattered thunderstorms, and we had a few sprinkles as we were leaving Missouri, but they soon disappeared. Traffic was light and the bus was running good, so it was a great day for traveling.

We had talked about stopping in Springfield, Illinois to see the Abraham Lincoln Home National Historic Site, but Terry was feeling so bad that about an hour into our trip she went back to the bedroom and laid down. She was still asleep when we reached Springfield and I didn’t want to wake her, so I just kept driving. Terry woke up about 160 miles down the highway, as we were passing by Rantoul, Illinois on Interstate 57.

We try to avoid driving anywhere near Chicago whenever we can, so at Gilman, Illinois we took U.S. Highway 24 east into Indiana and turned north again on U.S. Highway 41 and followed it until we came to U.S. 30, drove east again for ten miles, then got onto Interstate 65. It was a short jog north again to Interstate 80, and we followed it all the way to Elkhart.

Except for one short stop for a late lunch/early dinner at one of the service plazas on the Indiana Toll Road, we just kept on rolling, putting about 450 miles behind us. This is more than most RVers like to travel in a day, but sometimes we get out there on the open road and the miles just keep going by effortlessly.

It is always nice to pull into Elkhart Campground, which feels like home to us because we have been coming here so many years. We know all of the regular visitors here, and got lots of waves as we drove past. As soon as I stopped the bus in front of our regular site several fellows came by to say hello.

It always takes a while to get the bus set up when we arrive at a new location, and I told Terry to just let it go until she got to feeling better, but she likes things in order, so she insisted on getting organized while I hooked up our utilities.

After more than a week of very slow National Access service on our Verizon air card, it’s great to have four full bars of EVDO high speed internet again. We’ll be here for much of the summer, with some trips out to visit family members in Michigan, and maybe to a few RV rallies in the region. It’s good to be home again.

Thought For The Day – When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you’re the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.

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