9 in a row!

 7:59 am - Thursday - 04/26/2018 - St. Louis, MO - 48º F, 100% humidity....yes, that's right....100% humidity, wind 11 mph out of the south by southeast.......looking outside I see no evidence of any wind whatsoever.....seems totally CALM.

We began our 9th consecutive travel day with St. Louis just 157 miles away.  Yeah, I know, another 'strenuous' travel day, right?  Well, it is what it is.....you still have to drive the miles and arrive without incident....that is the trick.

Rain was forecast for our starting location, Lebanon, MO by mid morning, so we decided to roll our wheels by 7:50 am and arrive at our destination for the day before the rain caught up with us.  That's the thing about dry camping......all you have to do is turn the engine over and roll.....you don't have to roll up a water hose, disconnect an electric line, or finish dumping your tanks.....you just start the engine and go.

We were back on I-44 and rolling eastward within minutes.  The route this day was full of big rolling hills....up and down we would go over and over again.....300' up.....300' down for 150 miles until we finally began our descent to the Mississippi River at 450' elevation.  The interesting thing about St. Louis is that from here to New Orleans where this great river empties into the Gulf of Mexico you will only lose 450' in elevation over 658 miles.

We made just one stop with about 50 miles to go at a Rest Area for about 15 minutes to go to the bathroom, and stretch and then continued on to our destination.....the Oakville Elks Lodge on the east side of St. Louis.  They offer just 6 back in RV sites with 20 amp electrical....total cost for four days.....a minimum $15 donation!

Since we had an extremely early start with only one stop along the way, we arrived at the Elks Lodge in Oakville, about 300 yards from the Mississippi, around 11:38 am....the lodge does not open until 2 pm on Wednesdays so we went about parking, and hooking up to one of the 20 amp plugs provided.  TLE called her brother, Creig, about the time we arrived so while we waited for the lodge to open, and Creig to arrive I went about a few chores which included finally stowing the new hose I bought on Tuesday, and removing the brass male and female fittings from the old hose before discarding it into the Elks dumpster.  By the time I finished with that Creig had arrived and we sat talking until the lodge opened.  This is one of the most scenic Elks Lodges at which we have stayed on our journeys.....

There are some soccer fields immediately adjacent to the Lodge....I feel right at home

Once I had made my $15 donation (I actually donated $20) we got in Creig's Ford truck to drive over to his home in Fenton, MO (a suburb of St. Louis located to the southeast of St. Louis), which was only about 10 miles away.  We planned to go out for dinner with he and his wife Kay later in the evening, but first he needed us to help him move his 1996 C-4 Corvette back to his storage garage about 10 miles away......I got the assignment of driving it....I have never driven a Corvette of any vintage before, so I gladly accepted the assignment.....

 TLE took this short video of me driving the 'Vette

.....Creig stores his C-4 in his daughters garage across town when he is not using it.....his garage is full of Triumph TR-6's.....more on that another time.  We arrived at his daughter's garage about 20 minutes later where I backed the 'Vette into the driveway....

.....getting into this low slung beauty is much easier than getting out....at least for me!

Once we had the 'Vette tucked away we then headed back to Creig's home to await the return of his wife Kay who was out getting her hair done, and doing some light shopping.  She returned home about 5:30 pm at which time we headed into downtown St. Louis to a micro brewery called '4 Hands Brewing Company' for some brews and food......

Moi, TLE, Kay and Creig

.....for our first round (we weren't driving) of beers TLE and I ordered two 12 oz. La Belleza's (an Imperial stout brewed with cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, chilies, and ginger)....delicioso!  For our second round we chose their Zellige (Moroccan Coffee Stout brewed with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamon, black pepper and sea salt)......both were scrumptous!

Our two 12 oz La Belleza's 

The food menu

For us to give our top marks to any micro brewery the food must live up to the beer, and 4 Hands' food definitely rises to that level.  We ordered a Chopped salad, Smoked Brisket Nachos, and their Brisket Poor Boy sandwich to share.....OMG.....this place definitely lives up to its 4 star Yelp rating on 229 reviews!

Creig and Kay delivered us back to the Newell by 8:30....what a great day!  We arrived home in a light rainfall....the rain finally caught up with us! 

Thanks for stopping by!

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You'll get a charge out of this....

6:53 am - Wednesday - April 25th - Lebanon, MO - 51º F, 72% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the north......high clouds with a forecast high of 57º F and rain about mid morning....we will be long gone by then.....no rain forecast at today's destination....St. Louis.

Once again we did not plan to leave Downstream Casino until about mid morning so after I finished writing my daily blog entry we took off on a walk around the enormous parking lot....

.....each lap was about .8 of a mile, so we walked around the lot two times for a total of 1.6 miles.....

.......we covered the 1.6 miles averaging over 3.5 mph burning about 296 caloric units.  While we are moving every day we try to walk every single day just to keep the juices flowing.

By 10:30 am we were ready to roll so I unhooked our electrical and we were on our way to our oh so modest goal of Lebanon, MO.....just 127 miles to the east.  Ultimately we plan to spend a few days in St. Louis, but St. Louis was 286 miles away, and I didn't want to drive that far in one day, so we chose a closer destination.

The drive was quite easy along I-44 which in this section has a lot of gentle rolling hills.  I just set the cruise control on 60 mph and held on to the steering wheel.  We ended up stopping to take a break 3 times in 127 miles, a new record for us.  One of our stops was at a Camping World just east of Springfield, MO.  Camping World is owned by Good Sam, and they are a great resource for anything you might need for your RV.  They also sell RV's, and work on them, but I would never let them work on my Newell.  I've heard nothing but complaints over the years from everyone I have met who has had them work on their RV.

I needed to replace my 50' white water hose as it has been 'done' for a long time.  I wanted to get one just like my 25' white hose, which I also bought at Camping World 6 years ago.  It is still going strong after all these years, and I was hoping they had a 50' version of that hose.....they did!  We picked up a couple of other things (valve stem extenders for my rear dualies, and some tension bars for our cupboards to keep things from falling out after a day of driving).

We were back on the road for the final 40 miles to Lebanon and arrived at the Walmart Supercenter there about 2 pm.  We went inside to order a couple of Subway sandwiches for lunch, and pick up some fruit for the next few days.  Our plan after our late lunch was to get the VW out of the trailer and drive one exit back on I-44 to visit a knife outlet store (Buck, Henckels, etc.), and then directly across the Interstate to a large antique store (Heartland Antiques) which boasted 350 booths.  Unfortunately, when TLE got in the VW to back it out of the trailer she found that the battery was dead as a door nail, so I had to get out my portable charger, turn on the big Kohler genset, plug in the trailer to the Newell, then hook up the charger to the battery to get some charge into it before we tried the 85 amp boost quick start option.  It took about 45 minutes to get the battery up to 56% before we tried to use the 85 amp option and it worked.  The car fired right up and we were on our way to the factory outlet knife store.  As it turned out TLE had forgotten to turn off the XM Radio receiver when we inserted the VW into the trailer in Fontana 8 days prior and it drained the battery.

We didn't find any knives we could not live without, so we headed across the Interstate to Heartland Antiques where we probably spent an hour browsing........we came away with a Mason jar to replace the one TLE broke a couple of weeks ago while we were in Fontana.....$2.50.

As luck would have it there was an automated car wash right across the parking lot from where we are parked where you could get a quick wash for $5, so we ran our filthy VW through the wash, dried her off, and then stowed her back in the trailer before heading inside for the day.  By this time it was almost 7 pm....where did that 5 hours go?

Getting ready to role our wheels in about 30 minutes so I will bid you adieu for now.....thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which helps defer the costs of producing this blog each day.