Branson!

Monday June 9th, 2008 Temp 79*

Where we are currently

Well we left Terre Haute this morning hoping to be the next storm heading their way. The local channel was calling for another 2-3" of rain by morning. Our intention was to make it to Cuba, Missouri to meet up with our friends Ken and Kathy, by chance we stopped at the rest arear about 25 miles from our destination campground and Ken and Kathy were there! :) So we traveled to the campground together. From there it all started going bad, first they said they did not have our reservations, and I failed to mention that coming into the park it seemed like a really nice park up front, big conference center and 2 pools outside all trimmed real nice. Now back to the reservations, we made ours online a couple of weeks ago and so did Kathy, but of course when we get there they don't know anything about it but they will find a place for us. We asked for a couple of spots together, no problem they said. We fill out the paper work and get a map to our side and head off, well the first thing we notice is the farther we go into the park the crappier it looks. By the time we get to our sites we seem to be in a ghetto of alleys! None of the sites are paved but some have gravel, but the problem is there are already trailer sitting on our sites. Thats the FIRST problem, the second is the sites were to tight for us to get into anyway, and our friends have a 40' rv, hell the site isn't even that long! The guys say in a fine toothless manner, 'well we'll get a tuck and mov em fer ya', calls the office and tells em he's gonna move em and they call back 'ya can't the trailer on 106 is broke' NOW excuse me we just came from the office and there was no mention of any trailer sitting on our spots let alone a broken down one. Well OFF he goes to find us a couple of new spots and Kathy says "SCREW IT, lets just go on to Branson' so that was a great idea! We stop at the office and I tell them we are not staying and to cancel our reservations, I met Kathy as I am coming out and tell her I told them to cancel them and they said they would, She said 'did they confirm the cancellation? I said its as confirmed as our reservations!


Well we went ahead and made the trip which was another 170 miles. We got here about 7pm and upon entering the office we see they have a pizza place! ORDER US UP A COUPLE OF DEM DAR PIZZAS! $20 and they deliver them to the site! We got set up the pizzas showed up and we gobbled em down! At least now we are at our Rv Rally destination a day early so we can just relax! SO here we are, I will get some pictures posted tomorrow, to tired tonight :)

Oh, forgot to mention. On the trip today we saw a semi pulling doubles that ran off the road, a coyote standing in the middle of a once flooded field and have decided that Illionis needs to be called the land of turtles! I have never seen so many turtles hit on the side of the road as that state! I know we saw a minimum of 30 turtles. Don't know if the flood drove them to dry ground which unfortunately happened to be a highway or what, and these were not all small turtles. Actually I suppose they were probably tortoise's and some were the size of pie pans!

Pictures from Terre Haute Campground

When Keith and Mary redid their campground sheets they were trying to decide whether or not to use a picture of Keith or one of me, The kids voted for me

They used a look alike of me on the golf cart!











I have a funny story, Keith and Mary have a couple of horse's so I go back to visit them and Deanna is with me, I pick up some hay to give the horse, so I am leaning over and it doesn't want it so I drop it on the ground, but I hold my hand out and it comes forward to sniff with SNAP! WHAT THE HELL! Seems I was leaning on the electric fence and the horse's nose was enough to complete the circuit! YEOUSSSAAAAAAAAAAAA that hurts , FELLA"S! lesson learned.

Morning after soggy part DUEX

Same Sunday just later in the day! Temp 90*

Got started this moring about 9am, intentions to bypass Terre Haute and our friend Mary who owns it and head straight for St. Louis. Well things were going pretty well till we got to the spot where the highway was still closed from the flooding.This is about 30 miles from Terre Haute. The detour just took us a little north to Route 40 and then west. It took us through a little town called Brazil, not very big but not a burg either. Took 45 minutes to travel 1.5 miles ! YIKES! That slowed our progress down quite a bit. We got back onto I70 just about 10 miles from the Terre Haute exit so I called Mary and asked is she was open and had electric. She said YEP! So here we are, at our original destination for Saturday just a day late. Took a couple pictures along the way of some of the water left standing along the highway.







Left over flood water along highway.


Also took a picture of this moth the day we left Ohio, there were originally 2 of them but by the time I got back with the camera one was already gone. They must be like vampires and have to get out of the light










Here is Mary and Deanna hugging on our arrival!










Tonight we will take Mary to dinner to a Mexican restaruant.

Morning after Soggy

Follow along and see where we are by clicking this link

June 8th, 2008 Sunday 74* sunny

Well at 6:30 the doggy thought I shoud be up already so up is what I got to take him for a walk. The sun is out and it is already warm and humid and gonna be worse as the day goes on I am sure. A quick check of the local news for Terre Haute shows that at 1 am they reopened Interstate 70 eastbound and sometime today were going to reopen west bound, which is what we need. SO whenever we get motivated and going we will just take 70 west till they reroute us around. Our stop in Terre Haute is pretty much off now and we will head towards our next point which will be south of St. Louis to meet up with our friends Ken and Kathy. We will probably stop somewhere just east of St. Louis for the night, that gives us about 250 miles to travel today and then another 150 to meet them tomorrow night.

I know some of my friends from the metal detecting site are following me along on the trip, so wanted to say hello to you guys and especially Marcus! :)

See ya soon guys, will try to post a couple of pics along the way.

Soggy day

If you want to track our location as we travel click here

Track where we are!

June 7th, 2008 Saturday 81* Rain has stopped


Well we took off today in our quest for a little fun and reunion with friends. Left about 10am saturday morning headed for Terre Haute Indiana. Got to the Indiana/Ohio border and stopped at the rest area. Had a message on my cell so I check it out and it is Keith from the KOA. He says that Interstate 70 is closed at mile marker 30 in Indiana, well we need to get to marker 11. Said we were best to stay where we were. So we found a local campground "Deer Ridge Camping Resort". Seems like an old park and pretty tight but nice enough, a little pricey for a small campground at $32 a night with a $3 discount for our Good Sams club membership. Anyway it was close and we didn't want to return home. So we are sitting here till tomorrow and will attempt to move west towards St. Louis. I think we will most likely have to go north to get around Terre Haute. They apparently had a levee break and flooded the town. Several dams are in jeopardy according to the local news station. Our friends at the KOA, when I called said they had no electricity or knew when they would get it back. The town is basically isolated. Fortunately there were no deaths.

Kind of a rocky start to a 3 week long trek! :) I70 in Putnam county Indiana is washed out.

So here are a couple pictures from the current campground.

Cladmania

Salty and myself


April 27th, 2008 Sunday 63*

Meet up with a couple of friends in Columbus this morning for a metal detecting hunt. Bill who was at the hunt we went too week or so ago and Dave (salty dog) who lives in Columbus. Dave was kind enough to share a couple of his spots with Bill and myself! It was a great day and a couple of firsts for me. I found my first Kennedy half dollar and in the same hole was 2 Sacagewa Dollar coins, there was a 3rd dollar coin just 8 inches away that I missed somehow, Bill found it! I found a total of 4 dollar coins in one day. Last year I only found 3 all year long. My take for the day was $22.48 and between the 3 of us over $48 for the day!

My luck is incredible!

April 29th, 2008 Tuesday 43*

Well I found out today I won a contest for a White's Metal detector! I had bought some tickets to a raffle that was to support Autism and I managed to come away with a win! I really wanted to just make the donation as I never figured I would win anything but it all worked in my favor. The charity made out and I got a benefit from it. This after Deanna won a digging too at the Metal Detecting meet we went to week or so ago :)

Weather is cool right now but just a temp thing. Suppose to be back into the 70's by end of week. We are going to go visit our friends Terry and Dale in Elkhart Indiana for the weekend. We were not able to go last weekend as we had to attend a funeral.

The last trip we made with truck and rv was a good one as far as fuel mileage goes. We got almost 12 MPG which is up from our previous best of 10MPG. Hope it happens again this weekend with the price of diesel at $4.25 a gallon :(

We have a friend Mark from the rv.net forum we are on who stopped by to visit us. He has gone to Kentucky to take a couple of tours as a day trip and will be back on Wednesday. Great to see Mark again, we only get to see him once a year.

That's the quick update so you know as much as I do