April 5, 2024 – Day 20 Giant City State Park, Makanda Illinois Giant City State Park is named after the “Giant City” which is a collection sandstone that has split, eroded, and then slid down the hill. This leaves some pretty cool paths through the vertical walls. We asked about the hike, since it was listed as “Moderate.” We like the ones listed as easy. The ranger told us that they have taken pre-schoolers on the hike so we decided “Why not!” and set out to do it today. Why? Today is the first nice day. We’ve had heavy rains, and on and off rains, and drizzle, and just overcast.…

April 4, 2024 – Day 19 Giant City State Park, Makanda Illinois Today is decision day. We must cancel the reservation in Texas at least 48 hours in advance. At 9AM, this is what windy.com tells us. We’re staying! Susan called the Texas campground and the phone didn’t even ring, she got some weird error message. So she emailed them. What else do our intrepid travelers do? We went into the big city of Carbondale to find the library. You see, we needed to upload all the pictures for the blog, and we needed to file our income taxes. Income taxes… We hate you Intuit. It was all set to…

April 3, 2024 – Day 18 Giant City State Park, Makanda Illinois We actually did something today. We were still both pretty beat, we hung out in the coach in the morning then headed over to the Giant City Lodge for a late lunch. Giant City Lodge was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. It is a pretty nice building. They have cabins and a restaurant. Three CCC units were assigned to Giant City State Park. The first company was the nearly 200 men of the company #696. The 696th CCC Company remained at the park from 1933 until 1942. Company #1657 assisted the 696th for five…

April 2, 2024 – Day 18 Giant City State Park, Makanda Illinois We actually didn’t do anything today. Ok, Paul played radio for about an hour. But we were beat from the travel and also emotionally drained from not knowing where we would be for the eclipse. We stayed in the coach and just rested. Despite poor cell signal we relentlessly clicked refresh on various weather apps trying to figure out what to do next. Stay here? Go there? It was decision time. Here’s what the seven day forecast looked like in the morning. The red arrow points to where we are. The yellow arrow is where we were supposed…

April 1, 2024 – Day 17 Chester Frost Park, Hixson TN – Giant City State Park, Makanda Illinois Today was decision day, do we do the 600 mile drive to Ennis, TX? Or, completely change plans and head to Makanda IL and hope that the prediction of better weather is accurate and hope that some of the walk-in sites would still be available when we got there. At 9AM Paul called the campground to inquire about open walk-in sites. The ranger said they had just gotten in. When they left on Friday there were still 20 sites available. They needed to go to the park to check. The decision hasn’t…

March 31, 2024 – Day 16 Chester Frost Park, Hixson TN Today was Easter Sunday, the Roman Catholic flavor, not Orthodox Greek one. For the second year in a row we found ourselves on the road at Easter. Susan had plans for a roast pork loin, or ham, or something traditional. Paul tried to dissuade her since doing something like that in the RV seemed difficult to him even if it was just for two people. (susan here: It’s easy but don’t tell Paul!) So, what did we do? We went to the Chattanooga Aquarium! We’d bought the tickets earlier in the week on the way back from seeing something…

March 30, 2024 – Day 15 Chester Frost Park, Hixson TN Today was a travel day. By way of the dump station, we slid over just 9 sites. We had mentioned earlier that we needed to change sites in the same park. We had never done that before, it seemed inconvenient. Checkout for this park was noon, check-in was 2pm. Do we just drive around for 2 hours? At check-in the helpful ranger told us to sit tight and between noon and 1pm a ranger would stop by and give us our new paperwork for the new site. You clip the paperwork to the power pole at this camp. When…

March 29, 2024 – Day 14 Chester Frost Park, Hixson TN After yesterday’s day of walking and touristy things we wanted to take it easy. This was for a few reasons. The first that yesterday was a lot. Visually it was a lot to take in and it was a lot a fair bit of walking. Today’s plan was Ruby Falls and Raccoon Mountain Caverns. An ambitious goal. Possibly a lofty goal (susan here: well, okay an impossible goal. But goals are good things to have, right?) Through My Lens YouTube’s Josh said that Ruby Falls was worth it, but warned that it could be a strenuous 5 miles and…

March 27, 2024 – Day 12 Lake Powhatan Recreation Area, Arden NC to Chester Frost Park, Hixson TN We didn’t head out early from Lake Powhatan. We had a short drive (HA, yeah, we really said that. But! More importantly the site we were going to did not have a sewer hookup.) The next location would have power and water but no sewer. This means “home style” showers will be exchanged for “navy shower” for a while. This meant “home style” showers before we headed out to the next place for a 5 night stop. Paul also did ham radio while sitting in the Jeep. His second contact was Australia!…

March 26, 2024 – Day 11 Henderson NC to Lake Powhatan Recreation Area, Arden NC News flash: North Carolina is a big state. It’s not Texas big. That’s just BIG in all directions. NC is “tiny big.” When traveling from the east side to west side it’s 503 miles. Back to the morning. Paul was startled awake around 7AM by a loud BEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEP!!! Around 8:30 p.m. the night before we looked at our coach batteries. They were way low, dropping faster than we’d have liked and definitely wouldn’t make the night. We did a quick google map search. (susan here: how the heck did we live without Google?)…