Repositioning 101.....

6:41 am - Tuesday - May 1st - London, OH - 46º F, 67% humidity, wind 8 mph out of the southwest......again, clear blue skies with a forecast high of 77º F.   We roll our wheels in 90 minutes!

I left off yesterday's blog post mentioning that our camp host, Ed, was preparing breakfast crepes for us.  They were delicious!  We added strawberry jam,  fresh strawberries and whipped cream.  We each had two, bid our adieus to Ed and Sheba (Jackie was still asleep.....sorry we missed saying goodbye to Jackie!) and then we were walking back to the Newell to shove off and move down the road.....we had a long driving day ahead of us and knew we would lose an hour off our clock within 10 miles, so we needed to get moving.  As it was I think our ETA for our destination was about 3 pm, or later.

Barely had we covered a mile when we got the 5 mile warning from our Garmin Trucker that the Indiana border was coming......

......initially I liked Indiana's version of I-70, but eventually became quite disenchanted.  The road surface itself was fine, but each time we would approach either an underpass, or overpass it would change to this rumbley, rough, uneven concrete surface for about 50 feet before the bridge, and the same afterwards bouncing us around, and then we would return to the nice smooth asphalt and all was well.  This scenario repeated itself 100's of times as we crossed the southern tip of Indiana.....uggghhh!

One thing I had forgotten about driving in the eastern half of the USA is that there are many, many more trees, and often you are driving in what TLE and I affectionately call a 'tree tunnel'......

......which kind of limits your view to just this narrow tunnel down the middle of the road.  Not many big views here.  Eventually the rough roads, and tree tunnels of Indiana gave way to to Ohio......

I never knew this was the motto of Ohio

.....the roads smoothed out, and the tree tunnel ended as we broke into beautiful farmland, and bigger views.  In all we covered about 260 miles on Monday crossing Indiana, and pushing within 30 miles of Columbus, OH.......

We made one stop in Indiana at a Rest Area, and then one more about 76 miles from the end of our driving day in Ohio.  At the second we got dressed and walked 2 full laps around the Rest Area covering about 1.0 mile.....it was a very large Rest Area!

On this day we passed over the 2,000 mile mark on our journey to Maine, and are presently sitting at 2,239 miles driven so far leaving us just under 1,000 miles until we reach Southwest Harbor, ME.  We've got two weeks before we report for work, so we will slow down a little and see some things we haven't seen before.....Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Football Hall of Fame, Baseball Hall of Fame, Niagra Falls, and many, many more cool things!

So, we are a little over 2/3's of the way to repositioning ourselves and our Newell for the summer.  It does not seem as if it has been two weeks since we left the Fontana/Rialto Elks Lodge.

We spent the night at a lovely, out of the way Walmart in London, OH.....it is about 4 miles south of I-70, and was very quiet.  We'll start rolling our wheels in just a few minutes, take on some diesel, or 'pay the rent' as TLE and I often remark, and then head north toward Cleveland where we will pick up I-90, which will take us most of the rest of the way to our destination.

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A new state of mind.....

6:43 am - Monday - April 30th - Marshall, IL - 36º F, 77% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the west.....clear blue skies with a forecast high for today of 71º F.  We roll our wheels in 90 minutes.....into Indiana, and maybe even Ohio!

We took our time getting ready to depart the Oakville, MO Elks Lodge and were finally on our way by 9:50 am rolling ever northeast on I-70.  Within 5 minutes we had crossed the Mississippi going eastward for the first time in over 4 years into Illinois.  We had a modest driving goal Sunday of 171 miles to a small Illinois town called Marshall where we would exit to spend the night at Lincoln Trails State Park where a blog follower is hosting for the summer.  I had gotten a text a few days ago offering a pull through site from Ed and his wife Jackie who have been reading our blog for almost as long as I have been writing it.....but I get ahead of myself.

The Illinois (our sixth state on this trip) version of I-70 was smooth and flat.....very little up and down.....my kind of road!  All in all it was a rather unremarkable day completely without drama.  We stopped at a couple of Rest Areas to take breaks and were getting off the Interstate in Marshall about 1:30 pm....

......Lincoln Trails State Park is located about 5 miles south of I-70.  The road is a straight and smooth 2 lane road, and the entrance to the park is easy to navigate for our 62'.  Since we have not dumped our black tank since Oklahoma, or our grey tank for that matter, our first order of business was to utilize the dump station located right at the entrance, and also take on fresh water as we were down to 80 gallons....not low by any means, but you never know when fresh water will be available again so you take what is available.

As I filled our fresh water tank Ed walked over from his camp host site to introduce himself, and explain the layout of the park.  Since it was Sunday most folks with workaday lives had already left leaving 90% of the pull through sites available for us.  There are a lot of trees in this park, which is pretty typical of the countryside we drove through Monday so it appeared to me that satellite reception might be an issue, and it was. Oh well, we can live without TV for one night.  Additionally, the broadband is a little weak here....we could get about 1 bar of LTE.....sometimes 2.....so streaming TV was not an option either.  At any rate, we found a good pull through site and hooked up to 50 amp electrical.  There are no water, or sewer hookups, but the 50 amp is strong, and steady.

The park is almost empty....we are all by ourselves in the last pull through site

Around 4:30 pm we walked over to Ed and Jackie's site to chat, and eventually have pulled pork sandwiches for dinner.  The pulled pork was delicious!  We ate and talked until after 7 pm before we walked home to change clothes and return about 8 pm for a fire and smores.  We enjoyed the fire and continued talking until after 10 pm.  Since we enter Indiana Monday where they are on Eastern Daylight Savings Time it was really 11 pm, so we bid our adieus, and headed home for the evening.  Ed and Jackie are typical of the blog readers we have met over the years....good, salt of the earth people who are engaging and enjoyable to be around.  After just a few hours we felt like we had known them for years.  We also enjoyed meeting their 9 year old female collie, Sheba.

It took us a while to wind down after all that stimulating conversation, but we were in bed by 11 pm (really 12 am, right?).  We're going to walk down to Ed and Jackie's site in just a few minutes to have breakfast them......Ed is a 'renowned' crepe maker!

 Ed making crepes Monday morning

Sheba the collie....very sweet, quiet dog!

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