Once in a Lifetime. Again. – Not The Painter

April 6 & 7, 2024 – Days 21 & 22

Giant City State Park, Makanda Illinois

We had a nice quiet Saturday. We went to the dump station, or maybe we didn’t. Maybe it the day before. We can’t remember and we’ve already published April 5th’s blog. We did walk out to the eclipse viewing field. The State Park has half a dozen viewing fields setup all over the park. One was, we were led to believe, just for us in the campground. It was only a 10 minute walk so we figured we’d get the lay of the land ahead of time..

Our first stop was at the campsite of a Sol Horizon! That’s the same model we had before Clifford. We chatted with the camper for maybe an hour. Paul has been hauling that part around from that camper for a year now. We forget to give to the new owners but figured we’d see one of these out on the road and we could give it them. Some things you just want spares, and this is one. See, the sewer hose tube lid had broken and Amazon only sold them in 2-packs. She was quite surprised as Paul produced a camper part and said here’s a spare part for you that we don’t need anymore. We chatted forever about our respective journeys, traded notes on parks and Harvests Hosts to visit, and generally just had fun chatting and visiting. We miss this a lot. When we had our Horizon people were curious and chatty. A big Class A isn’t nearly as weird, or as friendly, as a tiny, cute trailer. (susan here: People would kind of look at the front, sometimes (!) even try to peer hands positioned by their eyes to keep out light. It was funny to watch from inside. We’d surprise them and come out and ask if they wanted to see inside and they almost always wanted to see inside. Laughingly I told her that, no we didn’t need a tour. She also laughed because that’s what happens.)

Then onto the trail.

Aside from being wide enough to drive a Jeep on, the trail was also exceptionally well marked. REALLY well marked.

We saw, we think, 5 different species of butterflies (or moths?) on the walk out to the viewing field. We saw a lot of this one:

We didn’t walk fast or anything and we met some campers out there that we talked to at the park entrance the day before. Or maybe it was was Friday. Oh well, we’re not changing the blog. That’s one of the things about travel, sometimes the days blur together. This is one of those times.

We actually chatted a while with them. Part of the reason we walked out there was to learn how much time to allow for the next day. We spent so much time chatting we had no firm idea only a good guess. So we checked Susan’s Apple Watch. 1.7 miles. Now, the detour to the Horizon wasn’t even 1/10th of mile and we don’t know about you, but 20 minutes for 1.7 miles is not a “walk” (susan here: 4 miles an hour is a good pace, this was obviously faster, but we still weren’t winded or anything. I’d call it moderate or brisk but it wasn’t the leisurely 10-minute walk the ranger told us.) But still, it could be fun to be on the field with a lot of other people.

We had met Greg and Anna at the visitor center and got to chatting as people do. Susan asked why the matching shirt and phone, in plaid (of all things). He replied he was Scottish and that was their tartan. She stuck out her hand and said, “Clan McCutcheon.” Instant friends. Anna went off to look at things and the conversation continued around to what we were using to RV in. Well, Greg really wants a Class A but Anna isn’t sold just yet. We invited them to come on over to have a peek. Unknown to Anna who was still shopping this offer pleased Greg. It went well. I think Greg will be getting a new Class A in the not so distant future. Later back at camp (or was it the next day), a neighbor named Rick showed up. We noticed his rig coming in as it was a horse trailer. Now, don’t think it’s a livestock hauler. These things have a nice living area for people and hauling area for horses. As it happened Greg and Anna, the campers we met at the visitor center, had told him of tale of woe with the campground in Junction TX that canceled us on short notice, the bad weather in Ennis, TX and our frantic jaunt up to Makanda to grab a walk in site. (susan here: this is what passes for BigNews™ apparently). We chatted with him about ham radio. That antenna is a real conversation starter. Phrases like “Is that CB?” and “Are you talking to the commies?” come to mind! But Rick’s son was ham radio operator thus Paul could say he was a ham and there was no further explanation needed. We had a nice visit.

As a neighbor camper, Rick, told us, the crossover point was about a mile away from the campground in the middle of a small lake. That’s why this blog entry is called what is called “Once in a Lifetime, Again.” That was Carbondale’s eclipse motto or something close to that phrase.

Many towns in rural America have been struggling with how to deal with the large crowds that might descend on their little towns. Makanada, and the nearby “big” city of Carbondale were at the “crossroads.” The 2017 total eclipse was a Oregon to South Carolina event that went right through the area. The 2024 path crosses here on its way from Mexico to New Brunswick.

But this all meant that Carbondale and Giant City State Park knew what to do because they had learned from 2017’s eclipse. It was a pretty pleasant experience!

At some point we headed into Carbondale to go to the library and get groceries. We noticed traffic was increasing. It was obvious that the town was filling up with Umbraphiles. The cell towers were becoming over loaded and it was becoming challenging to even get a weather report. Susan was able to call her dad. But Paul wouldn’t see Internet again until Tuesday while Susan would barely see it and only for fleeting periods. Texts didn’t seem affected too much. Sure they took a while to send but they sent. Eventually. Susan had one that took almost 30 minutes to send. We needed to go to the library to both upload more blog photos but to also both rebook the next several days travel. Susan got the rebooking done. It wasn’t easy. There is a State Park in NM that we both have been to before and we really wanted to camp there, not just give them our poo. We had reservations there for this trip. But we’re now about 700 miles north of Dallas and east of where we thought we’d be. It was a lot of ground to make up. She tried mightily to make it work but no matter how she tried to piece it together it wasn’t happening. We more territory than time so that reservation was canceled. The new schedule took a bit of time and patience to cobble together so that’s the big reason we were in the library.

And who can resist $1.3 billion dollars?

Why yes. Paul did study Probability at MIT. He knows it’s a losing game but getting $1.3 billion on a $10 ticket? Just think of the radio tower he could put up. And no, we didn’t win, not even $1.

We started this blog on the 10th (it’s now the latter hours of the 11th). We really can’t remember what day some of these things happened on. Oh well. Normally we take a lot of photos. We get the dates from the pictures, the pictures clue us into our activities. But we hadn’t been taking many photos. We’d been in a holding pattern waiting on the eclipse with not much to write about and even if we did have things to write about there was almost no internet to upload if we did!

Continuing on with the “Fuzzy Recollections Blog” we went back to the Visitor Center to ask about trails and the best places to see birds. The ranger told us about several promising spots. The first place was only about 500′ from the parking area and you stood on a small wooded bridge with babbling water underneath while viewing two clearings, one on either side. It was a prime birding spot because you could plant your elbows on the bridge’s railings to steady your binoculars. We watched a trio of Phoebe‘s hunt for a good 10 minutes. We could hear elusive Northern Parula, but couldn’t find it (or them?). Then the rains came. We hoofed it back and got to the Jeep just in time. We explored a lot of the rest of the park from the Jeep.

One section said high clearance 4WD vehicles only. So of course we had to drive down that road. There was a large culvert you drove down into, into the stream that would be flowing after a heavy rain.

The water wasn’t ready to crest the road yet, but still, it was cool. Really not “high clearance 4WD” territory. (susan here: we’d seen a similar crossing a few days ago with the water raging across it. That would be a “no cross even in a 4WD” territory.)

Another thing we noticed about the woods here? It’ i’s very different from the woods in New England. Green stuff grows on the ground!

Back home the ground would be a carpet of brown dead leaves. Here it’s a carpet of green then really not much of anything in the middle areas. It’s open and airy. It was a delightful change to see this, especially with the flowers in bloom.

We kept on driving around the park, it is pretty large and there are many hiking trails and cool rock formations.