Today was a travel day so we pulled stakes in Arnold and headed for the last bit of I-64 we would drive over before it disappeared at I-70. We have been either on or paralleling I-64 since we were in Pennsylvania and it is sort of sad to see it finally peter out. It has been a great road in Missouri, a good road in Illinois, a fair road in Kentucky and an absolute nightmare in West Virginia.
Since leaving St. Louis we have been cruising along close to but not always in sight of the Missouri River. We continued our westward trek on I-70 until we had knocked out about 3 hours of air conditioned comfort zinging through weather similar to conditions in a boiler. It was 97 when we pulled into the tiny town of New Franklin. We found our way to the Katy Roundhouse RV Park, selected by us because we had no other options available for miles.
It is certainly unlike other parks. There is no office or desk, just a counter where you fill out your info on a form and cram a check into a box. They do have full hookups but little else. There is some shade thrown by a nice grove of mature trees. There is nothing in this part of Missouri, as far as I can tell.
Spot the Missouri River. Click the asterisk *

We intended to do a bit of shopping and banking today but the oppressive weather continued and we were not interested in any forays into the furnace until the evening. We left after 7:00 PM for Trader Joe’s about 20 miles away and were successful there. On the way back to our trailer, however, things started to get weird.
As we approached Trader Joe’s, we were at the culmination of a long uphill run and at the very top of the run, we got a message on the dashboard that warned us we only had 50 miles left before we needed to get fuel. On the return trip, the roads incline slightly downhill for a few miles and it didn’t take long before the message changed to 25 miles, then 15, then 8 then 0. We had only gone about 5 miles when we went from 40 to 0. Probably due to a quirk in how the warning system is configured, we may have been getting bogus results but the freeway is a crummy spot to run our truck out of diesel. Peggy tried to get us off at one of the far-flung exits but the police and a tow truck had the exit bollixed up and we ended up idling for some time before Peg zipped into a moving lane and politely cut off a unsuspecting motorist and got us off the freeway.
I carry a fuel can of diesel but bungled some attempts to get fuel from the can to the tank. I put in about 2 gallons, only spilling some on my shoes and hands, but the message on the dash still indicated we had no fuel. Peggy looked under the truck but didn’t spot any fuel running out on the ground. We rolled to a nearby flat parking lot that actually had lighting and put another 3 gallons of fuel into the tank. The message still said we were empty but we knew there was fuel in the tank. We were then on our way, headed for a gas station.
We soon pulled into a gas station and I got out and pumped some fuel. However, based on the amount of fuel we purchased, the warning message was bogus and unreliable when driving downhill. As I was filling the tank, a very weird individual pulled up on the other side of the pump playing loud music. He had a full complement of tattoos covering all his visible skin except some unembellished sections on his face. Over the racket of his crummy music, he started hollering some things and I bravely ignored him and continued pumping. I was worried that he was attempting to speak with me and I saw scant reason to conform with his desires. Soon he hollered at me inquiring about whether I knew about Jesus Christ and I indicated that I had heard the name before. Then the guy took off.
We finally ended up finishing up our one hour shopping trip in about 3 hours. It was only 85 degrees when we climbed back into the trailer at about 10:30. The humidity had dropped to 79 percent. The weather, during this time in St. Louis, has been awful and if I lived here, I’d move.

Today we took a spin into St. Louis to give it a sniff. It is about a 20 minute drive from our current RV park in Arnold for locals who know their way around. Unfortunately, we are not locals so we ended up discovering many ways to not get to the Arch, down on the waterfront. We would think we were on the correct path and would encounter a temporarily closed exit or a closed street with no detour shown. We eventually gave up on the GPS and tried to get to the Arch by dead reckoning and received glimpses of the faraway city icon. Eventually, we got to within about 2 blocks but found no way to get closer and no place to park. We mutually decided to delay our view of the Arch until we had driven back across the Mississippi into Illinois.
Our aimless wanderings in downtown St. Louis did yield some benefits. We got to cruise the poorly maintained city streets and check out the fabulous architecture. Most of the older construction is masonry but there are a few steel buildings and some really artistic modern structures unlike others we have seen. We stopped in at the St. Louis Basilica, a truly impressive structure with fabulous stone structural components and mosaic interior finishes. It is too big to get a picture from the outside without resorting to aircraft.
From the basilica we headed toward St. Louis’s central park and on the way we passed a truly impressive array of palatial mansions that were built by old St. Louis’s robber barons using funds they fleeced from idiots, like me. According to Zillow, many of these shacks have interior areas exceeding 10,000 square feet.
Once we made it to the park, we drove over to take a look at the beautiful St. Louis Art Museum which is a big classical Roman building but with interior lighting and flush toilets. There is a big statue of St. Louis right in front. I am not real skookum on Catholic requirements about what it takes to be a saint. In St. Louis’s case, he was honored for being the king of France, probably by a full complement of quite compliant cardinals sharp enough to realize that not making Louis a saint would separate them from their heads in front of a crowd of rag-clad Frenchmen.
After leaving Louis in the mirror, we headed back downtown to check out something called the St. Louis City Museum. It is a unique collection of stuff both inside and out. It appears that a whole phalanx of welders got together to create a huge array of fantasy structures tying together regular items like school buses and jet aircraft. One school bus projects out from the corner of the roof of the 10 story structure, giving the brave an opportunity to look out the window and 100 feet to the ground. There is an enormous metal praying mantis up there, too. If it wasn’t 98 degrees today, we might have stopped in for a bit at this place, just for a better look.
We set up the GPS again to get to the Illinois side of the river for a view of the Arch unobscured by berms, rural electrification and impressive buildings. The GPS could not find a way to the other side of the Mississippi that was safe for our vehicle regardless of the amount of tampering and tomfoolery we used so we tried Google maps and eventually made it the 5 miles or so into Illinois. We did get a nice view of the Arch from a park in Illinois where we also discovered a series of rotten bridges, low bridges and tight turns that probably scared our Rand McNally wayfinding thingy.
On the way home, we did stop at a local Target store so we could replace our portable ice maker which gasped its last yesterday in the torrid temperatures. The new unit was on sale so we also got a new skillet to replace our current non-stick pan that stuff sticks to regularly. We also got a whole room stand fan because we met some folks in Pennsylvania who were using their similar fan to keep the insects at bay when sitting outside. We love the idea of sitting outside our traveling home but the bugs can be daunting, particularly here in the midwest where the variety of bugs is truly extraordinary. We are going to try to blow them away, once the temperatures get down in the tolerable range and we can go outside.
We took a few pictures in town. To see them, click the asterisk *

We were back on the road today. We left Fitzgerrell State Park near Ida, Illinois, and continued west on I-64. The weather was quite bizarre; the air temperature was in the mid-80s but it was raining pretty hard most of the way. The roadside crops looked very happy and damp. We finally drove out from under the stifling cloud cover when we approached St. Louis. It quit the drenching rain but the temperature and humidity were still brutal. Opening a truck window was like sticking your head into an autoclave.
We turned off I-64 onto I-255 and headed southwest toward Arnold, MO. We crossed the mighty Mississippi. It was mighty brown. Drinking from this river may be problematic. We tried to get a picture of the famous St. Louis Arch but the road surface on 255 was so cratered we couldn’t get the landmark to stay in the viewfinder. We will go give it a leer maybe tomorrow.
In Arnold we pulled off into the Covered Bridge RV Park. It is right next to a highway that we hope doesn’t have a lot of nocturnal truck traffic. The individual spaces in the park are quite large, they have full utility hookups, there is cable TV, a laundry and their wifi is a zinger compared to that which we have recently had. There is a herd of American goldfinches here and they are gorgeous. Should be called yellowfinches, though.

It was another day of us doing almost nothing. I have been feeling a bit punky the last few days and Peggy was nice to let me lay low for another day. It may not have been a big sacrifice on her part because the torrid outside temperatures and stupifying humidity have made venturing outdoors unpleasant.
We did take a short spin to see if we could spot some deer and we were quite successful on that point. We also wandered about in the area just outside the park looking for diesel. We filled up because we are off tomorrow, continuing our westward progress.

Today we woke up and the outside temperature was already on the way to miserable. It never dropped below 76 last night and by the time the sunlight started trickling through the shade trees it was well into the 80’s. The humidity was much higher than we wanted to confront so we stayed pretty close to our air conditioned trailer.
We noted from our comfy chairs that there was a bunch of critters moving around outside so we finally let temptation get the better of reason and we ventured out as far as our air conditioned truck so we could take a spin around the massive campground complex here at Fitzgerrell State Park.
There are a few critter pix. Click the asterisk *

Today we left Indiana and headed west into Illinois. We again used I-64 for most of the drive because we are trying to sort of scamper across this part of the U.S. It is hotter than hell and the humidity is hard on us desert types who prefer the crispy west. However, the countryside along the road is gorgeous and I kept slowing down to leer at the surroundings. We figured Illinois was flat but the part we drove through yesterday was gently rolling hills. Due to recent rains, everything was bright green except the road which had lumpy bridge approaches.
About halfway between Indiana and St. Louis, we pulled into Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park. The park is located on some peninsulas protruding into Rend Lake, near Whittington. The lake is really a reservoir created by the Corps of Engineers but it is very pretty nonetheless. There are electrical hookups in the RV section but, strangely, only a few locations in the campground to get water. There are no sewer hookups. This arrangement certainly keeps big RVs from overstaying their welcome unless everyone camping chooses to go to the scattered public restrooms to go. There are no shower houses. The spaces are large and paved but the remainder of the area is lush grass and large hardwood shade trees.
I can get some satellite reception but it took some crafty compass work to get that. We don’t get all the channels but we do get an NBC broadcast from Evansville. Their news is funny because they really have very little to report in this farming country but they do an extensive local sports broadcast covering high school football hell weeks and they are showing the NASCAR races this weekend so I am pretty happy.

We swung into Evansville, Indiana, again today. We started out at Wolf Bar-B-Q where we pigged out at their wonderful buffet. It was only $9.95 a head without drinks and we found just about everything was very tasty although the chicken in sauce was dry. It’s a great bargain. We found Wolf’s in a book we have titled 1000 Places to See Before You Die. It was a good place to eat but I think the book author should get out more.
After turning away from the trough, we took another cruise into Evansvillle and we were dazzled by the abundance of fabulous old residences lining some streets. You can see that the tenants or owners of a few of these pretty buildings have lost out to the environment and their houses are falling apart. However, most of the buildings are well-maintained and beautiful. They are very large and maintenance must be expensive but the owners are putting up a valiant fight and their houses are testaments to their tenacity and dedication. The architecture is varied, creative and stunning.
We finally tore ourselves away from ogling the magnificent structures and headed along the Ohio River where we spotted and old LST (Landing Ship, Tank, in military parlance) Apparently, there were hundreds of these ships feeding the efforts of D-Day in Normandy in WWII and this ship is the last operating unit. They even take it out and drive it up and down the Ohio River during summer months, visiting shoreline communities but not landing any tanks.
We found a road across the Ohio into Kentucky and headed across to Henderson, home to John J. Audubon State Park. It seemed appropriate because we fancy ourselves birders, albeit woefully ignorant ones. Audubon Park is a gorgeous spot with some terrific birdwatching opportunities and, strangely, some gorgeous buildings built by the Works Project Administration back in the 1930s. They have a great observation room and I almost had to be blasted out of there because I was having a pretty good time speculating about what varieties of birds I was seeing. There were lots of them and they were very colorful. We thought this place was terrific.
Seethe downtown stuff. Click the asterisk *

Another travel day today. We continue our westward trek. We left Add-More RV Park in Clarksville and jumped onto I-64 again. I always thought Indiana was dead flat but, as usual, I was full of shit. It was a gorgeous drive west through southern Indiana with combined forest and farmland situated in gently rolling but not insubstantial hills. We are starting to pick up our pace so we are breaking our informal rule and using the interstate system to cross the midwest.
We pulled off near Evansville, another Indiana town on the banks of the Ohio River. We pulled into the Vanderburg 4-H Center. It looks like the location where a county fair or an NRA meeting might be held but they have full hookups and it’s fairly cheap. Our drive today only took a couple hours and we crossed over the dividing line between the Eastern and Central time zones a half dozen times before leaving the Eastern behind and cruising into the Central, gaining an hour.
We had so much spare time after setting up our trailer that we headed into Evansville to look around. Foolishly, I did not expect anything interesting but, again, I was the donkey because the first thing we found was Gerst Bavarian Haus which was a restaurant and a tavern and previously a hardware store. It is in a gorgeous building. The food was pretty good and they had a fabulous beer selection, so we took advantage of both. It wasn’t cheap but the food was worth it.
Then we took a cruise through downtown and for the third time today, I underestimated something and found a metro area oozing with gorgeous architecture of municipal, residential and churches that look like old cathedrals. The traffic was even pretty good. It seemed a very nice place.
There are a few pix for perusal taken today. Click the asterisk *

We did not do anything interesting today. We scheduled some future stays west of here. We drove to two gas stations to get some tobaccy for me. I dumped the tanks. It was mundane.