Rollin'...

Not like the CCR song: "Rollin'... Rollin'... Rollin' on the river."

If you said, "Proud Mary, 1969," you get 10 bonus points.  Really, this may be the easiest music trivia question ever on this blog.

After our ride this morning, we came back to the coach, cleaned up, got a bite to eat, got ready to roll, and hit the road.  Most commercial campgrounds have a check-out time of noon; these city/county parks are often 4:00pm.

Why roll?  Thanks for asking.  After deciding to go north to visit my brother-in-law, we made arrangements to attend Gear Fest 2017, put on by Sweetwater, a nationally known music shop in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  Never been there, but they are predicting between 14,000 and 15,000 people; there will be seminars, concerts, music equipment manufacturer booths (around 400).  They have dry camping on the grounds.  No, there is absolutely nothing I need, but I have ordered from Sweetwater before, and this sounded like an interesting event.  We'll see.

So, we had to give them an approximate arrival time for tomorrow... and Clinton, Iowa, is about 300 miles... Joan found us an RV park 100 miles down the road... so, that gives us fewer miles to do tomorrow.  It makes sense to us.

I was hoping to get out today before the rain hit.  We got about 6 blocks from the RV park in Clinton, before the first sprinkles hit the windshield.  Yes, we can drive in the rain, but we had the coach looking all pretty... it would be nice to have it stay that way for a few days.

Yep, that same bridge we rode our bikes on this morning.  The bike/pedestrian lane seems narrow - driving the coach across, these lanes feel narrow, too.

Illinois has plenty of farmland that we passed today...

That rain-band in the photo above was following close behind us...

We are the little blue dot in the middle of that radar image... with the storms to the west and north coming our way.

Going through one of the small towns, we saw this piece of farm equipment...

Plenty of that kind of stuff on the roads the past few days... no, you won't see that on the Interstates.  ;-)

In one small town, we got stopped by a train rolling through... "Good time for a potty break for the driver - be ready to hop in the driver's seat if I'm not back!"  You can see by the photo above, I made it back in time.  Handy to have all the amenities (including the bathroom) right here with us.

It rained on us off and on much of the way, but it was light enough that we weren't going through standing water on the road - that is where the coach gets the dirtiest.

We pulled into the campground just after 3:00.  They have a lot of rules here, and each of the two ladies in the office took a turn at hollering at someone outside ("Get that dog on a leash!"  "No parking on the grass!") while checking me in.  I promised that I would not park anything on the grass, nor would I allow a dog to run loose, if I get a dog between here and our assigned site... which probably won't happen, because my cat doesn't want to travel with a pet.  ;-)

On the bright side, we are parked on a nice level concrete pad.  They asked if I wanted a shady site or something more open for satellite TV reception... yeah, that's how you "camp."  Another rule is "no vehicle or RV washing"... I did quietly wipe down the rear cap on the coach, before it got all water spotted (that is drying, not washing).

Joan cooked in this evening.  We have been eating out a lot.  Nice to just chill.

We will dump holding tanks and make sure the fresh water tank is full before we head out in the morning.  "Dry camping" means no hook-ups.  We'll have plenty of water for the three days... no worry about not having a daily shower, although there are showers for those who will be camping at Gear Fest (prefer my own, thanks).  Our batteries can handle our electrical needs, with the generator to run the a/c - it is supposed to be hot the next few days.

Looking forward to Gear Fest.