Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Illinois Wrap Up

Although we spent 9 days in Illinois, I have almost no pictures.  What's up with that?  Since so many of the COE campgrounds were closed, we moved up river to Mississippi Palisades State Park.  Illinois, like Iowa, does not charge a day use fee for their state parks and this beautiful park was a reasonable $10 for dry camping.

We did a little hiking to the park overlooks.  The Mississippi is the far waterway, out where the bridge is.

The view the other direction is not the river, but backwater.  I don't know how much of that is normal and how much is flood water.

Look!  Two for the price of one.

The park was absolutely beautiful, but, even though it was mid-week and almost empty, we ended up with the smokers near us.  These people pulled in, immediately built their smoke (not worthy of being called a fire) and it looked just like this the whole time they and we were there.  Maybe they were trying to send smoke signals.
(Look at them just sitting in the smoke.)

We moved on to Chain O' Lakes State Park for a night and I have no pictures.  Not one.  I think I was just too hot.  Then we 'moochdocked' in Ron's brother's driveway for three nights, in the northeast corner of Illinois.

It was not an accident, but rather exceptional planning, that had us arriving just in time to attend Ron's high school reunion in southern Wisconsin.  I don't know who all those old guys are with Ron.

I actually had a really good time and it was fun to watch Ron with all his friends.  His best friend growing up was Jim in the center of the back row.  Oh, the trouble they got into.

The women were all very nice and made me feel welcome, although I talked mostly to one of the wives Diane, who is also an RVer.

4 comments:

  1. I can relate to the "too hot to take pictures". Reunions really can be a lot of fun. And to find somebody who can talk RVing - that's even better.

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  2. It's a massive river. Sometimes the place or your eye doesn't inspire you to take pictures. I think that sometimes its the "back to nature" thing that make some campers want to cook over a fire. I'm always a little bit wary of reunions!!

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  3. I've never been to one reunion of my class...hmmm I still see all my classmates on the sidewalks in town so no reason to go see them! the mighty Mississippi...wow big water!

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  4. I wonder if people build 'smokers' to keep skeeters and the like away. I think I read that somewhere.

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