Slow Down For Farm Vehicles Safety Grows Here

October 17, 2024 – Day 7

Cracker Barrel, Lafayette, IN — Cracker Barrel, Fenton, MO

We’re so far west in the east coast time zone that we woke up and it was dark in the Cracker Barrel parking lot! The sun soon rose and we saw a police car there, presumably looking for speeders. He left after half an hour or so.

We passed a curious tree farm. It is curious because we couldn’t figure out what type of tree they had there. The sign is blurry, and the sign on google street view has too many weeds in front of it. It is 40°21’34.1″N 86°59’23.5″W if you want to try your luck.

Irrigation rigs in Shadeland, IL.

Some farm equipment is bigger than a lane! We were stuck behind this for 3 or 4 miles until we turned off. It continued down the road making driving difficult for everyone else.

‎⁨Attica⁩, ⁨Wabash Valley⁩, IL The town’s slogan is, “It’s the place to be.” We saw nothing that backed that lofty statement up.

Attica⁩ has a big chicken! Ok, so maybe it is the place to be!

We then stopped at Blaine Farm and Fleet to get the lug nuts re-torqued. Normally this is something Paul does for our vehicles. But he doesn’t own the $700 3 foot long torque wrench that is needed to get the required 450 ft-lbs!

There were miles and miles of road construction between ‎⁨Champaign IL⁩ and St. Louis MO. We saw something new that we weren’t able to get a picture of. A concrete boom coming from a truck below the bridge. It was poking out between the decks and the guys were pouring concrete. Very clever!

Dusty road construction

Farm vehicles on a 70mph road?

Next time we come through Paul is going to plan it better so he doesn’t have to drive this scary bridge. There isn’t a shoulder and we’ve always needed to take the exit ramp that starts on the bridge, so we have to be in the rightmost lane. This marks at least 7 times we’ve crossed the Mississippi to get to the southwest plus crossing at other times. Like when we were in Memphis. We crossed it twice a day.

We’ve caught Paul’s brother! We’re meeting up for breakfast tomorrow.

We changed the statistics panel. The last three days had 18, 18, and 6 miles. Even though we were driving the RV we’re going to call them non-travel days because they really were. We didn’t leave Lafayette, IN. But, we’re not going back to update all the old blogs.

Daily: 299 miles.

Total: 1,236 miles

Driving miles/Day: 309 miles/day

Overall miles/Day: 177 miles