Heading Back West

We left Grand Rapids on May 16 after a very nice visit with Ardelle's brother and wife and went back to Elkhart for a couple days before starting our trip west. We stayed over a couple days at an RV park at the Casino Queen Casino in East St. Louis, IL. It was a very nice, modern park, but must have been laid out by someone who had never seen an RV before. We needed every inch of power cable we had and 25 feet of sewer hose to make the hookups! We had an excellent view of the St. Louis arch out of our windshield. We had a couple of great meals in the casino and played video poker. We even managed to leave there with some  of their money! Since the casino is on the IL side of the river, there is no smoking allowed in the casino, making it very pleasant to play there.

After leaving St. Louis, it was time to hunker down somewhere while the Memorial Day weekend warriors did their thing so we pulled into Cottonwoods RV Park in Columbia, MO for 5 days. This park must have been laid out by the same idiot that did the one at Casino Queen ... same routine on the hookups! There was a Bass Pro Shop near the park, so we went in and made our annual contribution. While in Columbia, we learned that the Escapees RV Club was having a rally this week in Sedalia, MO, about 70 miles from Columbia, so yesterday we moved to a small park in Sedalia that is about a mile from the State Fairgrounds, where the rally is. We opted for the park rather than the fairgrounds because we have been having quite a few of thundershowers and heard that getting stuck in the mud at the fairgrounds is not uncommon. The thought of having to have this monster pulled out of the mud was not very appealing!

Since we have been in MO, the weather has been relatively comfortable, with the temps running in the 70's and 80's, with or without rain. The humidity is a little high for our liking, but bearable. While in Columbia, we saw lot of fireflys (lightning bugs). It was Roger's first glimpse of them. They are sure fun to see. Last night, after a round of thundershowers, the tree frogs in the trees behind our rig went nuts. We thought we were hearing crickets in the motorhome until I opened the door to an almost deafening symphony of frogs going on outside. Since the trees were right behind our bedroom, needless to say, we didn't need to use our sound effects machine to go to sleep to.

Today we are going to the rally, mainly to wander through the market area. Fantastic Fan is there and we need a couple of parts for the one's in our coach. I'm sure we'll be able to find some other "must haves" before we get out of there.

We plan to continue our trek west into Kansas tomorrow.