As I was preparing to just head south, I decided, hell, maybe it would be fun to stop by Fairfield, Iowa, where Shelly had gone to college, gotten married, was the star of the local production of “Once upon a Mattress”, and lived for many years. She’s been gone for years, but still has friends there.
Perhaps I’ll visit one of her and my current internet friends, Cat. Cat still lives there in a big ol’ house, it was on my way, and Fairfield was near where I’d have to stop for the night anyway. A quick phone call, and yes, I could stay out in front of her house for the night. So, I visited with them after arriving, we went out for dinner, I crashed in my RV out front of their house, and next morning, was back on the highway. And the storm had slipped south again. As I was leaving town, it wasn’t all that bad. Most of the rain had been earlier in the morning.
But here you can see the clouds are going to be with me for a while. Getting close to St. Louis and it’s not let up that much. It’s only been ‘sprinkles’ though.
My plan was to find a low cost RV park on the outskirts of St. Louis, and take public transportation into town to visit the Arch. I’d seen it from the freeway while passing in past trips, but never gone up the arch. Sounded like a fun thing to do though. I’d spent some time online at Cat’s place to find this RV park near St. Louis. I should have taken longer.
Not much here to write about. But the WiFi worked, TV was good, lots of room for my rig. But after one early morning rain storm, found that I’d parked where a rain caused puddle formed right in front of my door. Had to move the RV over a space to get away from it. 
I’d paid for 3 nights when I arrived. Then went to work online trying to find how to use public transportation to get to the arch. Next morning, took a walk around the RV, and damn, there’s a slice or crack on the sidewall of the tire. You can’t fix those, need a new tire. I figured it had happened when I’d left a diesel station a couple days before and rolled that tire around a ground barrier a bit. Crap. So back online to find a mobile tire place. I felt it might be possible to drive to the shop to save $70, but, paying for onsite repair would be the safer thing to do. The shop with my brand tire & size, and the best price I found, was around 25 miles away. And this area had a low speed limit on the freeways. OK, hired them to come out instead of me limping to them. He comes out the next day, and my wallet is $437 lighter when he leaves. Since he was there, had him top all the other tires up to where I like them.
And to top it off, we’d been having a rain storm off and on for two days now. Looked like that was going to be the weather pattern for the next couple days, so I extended my stay to 5 days. On the four day, rain was still threatening. So I decided, because of the tire issue and the weather, that I would not go to the arch this trip. There wasn’t a bus stop near the RV park either. I’d have had to hoof it a couple miles to catch one, then the trip would have been a couple hours on a bus. Didn’t want to visit the arch, return and find I’d have to walk through a downpour to get back to the RV. Another example of why I should think about getting a car I can tow.
Off down the road I went. It was about this point when I decided, since I’d never been to Florida, that it might be fun to check it out. I know lots of retirees retire there, so it must have something going for it, right? I’d just delay my visit to New Orleans a month or two. Yeah. There’s a plan. So I point the nose of my RV towards Florida.
But just before leaving the RV park, I check tire pressures. And my passenger front is 30 pounds under inflated. What the hell. Just had them topped off a couple days ago…
As I’m heading for the freeway, I’m scanning all over to try and find a truck stop or tire shop where I can top off the tires. It ends up being a hundred and sixty freaking miles before I find a tire shop just off the freeway. Damn.
I stop in and tell the guy what’s going on, he pulls the tire, and can’t find a leak. Removed the tire from the rim. OK, no leak, $30. Get back on the road, and the tires are shaking the RV so badly I can’t get over 35 MPH. Back to the tire shop and have him rotate the tires and add beads to dynamically balance them. That’s another $125. Plus a couple hours.
And as I got back on the freeway, that pesky storm front is still wandering nearby.
But wait, hours later, the sun has made a grand entrance, right over Morgan Avenue. Cool.
My chosen RV park, after I’d got online and searched during the tire fiasco, was around 8 miles off the freeway, on an island. That’s a lake in the below shot.
This is the Between the Lakes Recreational Area. Fairly interesting history. I’m heading for the Kenlake Campground, Hardin, Kentucky. It’s a state park and overnight parking is $19. BUT…the sites are soooo small. The park is beautiful but it looks like someone from 1950’s style RV’ing ran the place. All the sites seemed to be for RV’s that are only 24 feet long or less. Mine is 37 feet. And they’ve remodeled the place recently, you could tell that, based on the quality of the services and the new buildings. So why didn’t they make the sites deeper at the same time?? I tried to fit into 3 different spots before I found one where I could get in, not mow down the electrical post in the rear of the site, and could get a little level. It took about 1/2 hour of maneuvering too. I had to walk my front tires off the blacktop drop off from the road into the site as I backed the rig in very carefully.
Next morning, I retracted my jacks, gathered my landing pads, unhooked, and roared the engine while trying to jump the 6 inch difference between the ground level and the road. Hummm. First 3 or 4 attempts at taking a run at it failed. OK, so I backed up as far as I could go, built a couple ramps for the front tires, and hit the road at an angle so only one tire at a time had to climb, then the rears. It worked! Yea! Get the rig all the way on the road, get out grab my wooden landing pads, and off I go. Out on the main road I can see that just a 100 yards up the entrance from this state park is a nice private campground. When I looked it up later, it would have been great. Large, flat sites, WiFi, cable TV, all the goodies. And only $4 more. They even had a restaurant. D’oh!
That evening, I pull into a RV park that I thought was a 50% off club type park. The Harvest Moon in Adairsville, Georgia. It isn’t, and I was too tired of driving to care so I went ahead and signed in for 3 nights, unaware that the WiFi here sucked. Office staff hemmed and hawed after I asked how the WiFi was so that should have tipped me off, but it didn’t. Also, the 50% off park was right next door. If I’d just driven up the road another 50 feet, I’d have seen the place.
Another D’oh! moment.