4/15/2022 0 Comments Wrapping Up3/27/22 - 3/29/22 When we woke up about 7ish, we couldn't even get a cup of coffee cooked up because we had very little battery power available. Not for something that heats up as fast as the coffeepot, it draws a lot of energy right off the bat and it just wasn't happening this morning. We've looked at putting some solar panels on top, which would help us out if we were doing this camping without power at the site. But so far, we haven't actually been "boondocking" very much so it hasn't been at the top of our priority list. I really could have easily made pour-over coffee if we wanted it badly enough. The stove runs on propane, so it's easy to get that going. But we decided to just get ready to take off and pick up some coffee in Hopkinsville, which was big enough to have more than 1 coffee shop. But on the way there, I remembered it was Sunday, and the town was pretty well shut down. So we got some gas station coffee and sweet stuff to tide us over. All morning we joked about the sugar in the cookies, mini donuts and orange juice we had gobbled up! We spent most of the day driving westward. We crossed the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and then found ourselves in Missouri. We decided to see if we could stay at St. Francois State Park, not too far off our path. It's sometimes hard to tell which campgrounds are open at this time of year. We look at our camping apps to get as much information as possible, and from what we could see, the campground was open and the electricity was on but the water was off due to the cold. We did find the campground after driving a roller coaster road for about 10 miles! Lots of hills and valleys, twists and turns. Thankfully not much traffic to dodge! This turned out to be a nice quiet wooded campground near a small river. We did some walking to get the joints moving again, and found the water. We also noticed that there were some very large trees near the river, really huge trunks that were covered with dark bark near the ground but the upper branches were whitened. They didn't have any leaves yet, so were kind of mystical looking with those branches exposed looking like bones! We found out they are sycamore trees. Bob grilled hamburgers tonight and cooked tater tots in the air fryer. I was a little leery of bringing that big appliance along, but we've had some good use out of it and made a spot to store it. Everything that comes into the trailer has to be evaluated for the size, weight and usefulness. The air fryer made the cut! Its size is the biggest downfall. After eating, we decided to try out watching a new series that we have on DVD, and we may be the last people in the country to see this -- Game of Thrones. So we watched an episode, but were not enthralled enough to watch a second episode. We'll have to try it again another time. On Monday, we did have our own coffee and simple breakfast before hitting the road again. We drove north with the temp in the 30's and some sunshine. This is a hilly area of farming, but no work in the fields yet. We crossed into Iowa and continued north to near Cedar Rapids. We drove to Pleasant Creek State Park and found a spot, with electricity, for the night. Very few other people here. As we did our usual walk around the park, we could see that a lot of tree removal was underway. Really big trees. The campground must have been a nice shady spot before, but now just has small trees. Many big stumps remaining along with piles of logs and branches. Many trees broken off everywhere we looked. We guessed that this must have been the area hit by the Derecho winds in August, 2020. On Tuesday morning we didn't take long to get going because we knew we were headed to Mom's house for the night! Our trip is winding down, which is a good thing and a bad thing. The drive was easy and we had the wind at our back. It was so nice to pull into mom's place and have some home-cooked goodness! Mom is 92 and going strong, and follows our trips closely on her maps. Good to know she's looking out for us! She has traveled many miles in her life, and often has been to some of the places we have been. There's a little video about her camping adventures below... We made the final leg of the trip, about 3.5 hours, to home, sweet home on Wednesday morning. So nice to be back in our space again!
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February 2022
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Hi! I'm Pam! Join me on this journey through the next steps of life!
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