Life's a beach

We are at the Elks lodge in Fort Walton Beach, Florida (map), right on the "Miracle Strip" on Okaloosa Island. We are just across the street from a county beach right on the gulf, which is next door to the visitors' center, and the lodge has its own dock on the bay side. We have a mini-mart right next door for those midnight munchies, and all of Destin and Fort Walton Beach are within easy scooter distance.

We've already been here three nights, and I'd love to say we've been to the beach and the water park and the aquarium, but the reality is more prosaic. While it's a bit more pleasant here than it is a few miles inland, it has still been hot, with daytime temperatures in the mid 90s and humidity to match. We've mostly been inside the bus getting caught up. Between Red Cross conference calls, the last of our "homework," and dealing with the very last of the detritus from the great storage locker exodus, we haven't had much time to go out and play.

That said, we are looking forward to swimming in the gulf, as there is no oil here in Fort Walton Beach, even though the booms and containment equipment are conspicuously stockpiled at public beach access points throughout the island, and cleanup crews are combing the beaches. Nevertheless, business here is way down, with 60% or so cancellation rates at area resorts, and we've had the place more or less to ourselves.

With no tropical storms on the horizon, we decided to have our mail sent here, which means we'll be here at least into next week. Unless the lodge gets tired of us and boots us out, we plan to just stay put here until we are needed elsewhere by the Red Cross. With 30 amps of power we can run two air conditioners as needed to stay cool, and at $10 a night we are unlikely to do better anyplace else. Plus there are enough restaurants and attractions here to keep us well fed and entertained indefinitely. We are about equal distance from either end of the gulf coast, and close enough for deployment to the eastern seaboard of the southeast U.S. if needed.

As luck would have it, of course, the big trouble spots right now are flooding in the Midwest, suggesting we perhaps moved south from there too soon, and wildfires in California. They are unlikely to send us out of the hurricane belt, however, because unlike two years ago at this time, there are still plenty of fresh volunteers in the deployment pool.

Now that the project backlog is under control and no more to-be-sold items linger in the living room, we're going to take some time to relax, swim, and enjoy the area. In addition to public beaches right across the street on the gulf side and a quarter mile up the road on the bay side, there is also an aquarium a few blocks down, and I saw a water park in Destin that looked inviting. I still have work to do on the satellite dish, but it's too hot and unshaded on the roof for that right now.

Hot at the Hot Site

We are at the Red Cross disaster "hot site" in Montgomery, Alabama. No map link today for security reasons. Long-time readers know we have been here before.

We arrived here just a little before 4pm yesterday, early enough for someone from the local chapter to come over and let us in. Good thing we stopped by, because about a quarter of the computers pre-positioned here were off line for one reason or another, and that means they could not be remotely upgraded or managed by headquarters. We were able to fix all but two, with an additional two unusable because the screen back-lights had gone out.

The building here has a lone 20-amp receptacle on the outside, and while we did run the genny for about an hour after we arrived, that outlet has been keeping us mostly cool since then. In fact, we decided to just spend another night here, since we still did not know by mid-day if we were standing down from Bonnie yet. It was 99° here in the heat of the day, and it has been a mighty struggle for the lone air conditioner we can run on such a small power feed to keep up. I've had the air compressor off most of the day, bumping it on briefly every couple hours while I switch the air conditioner to fan-only, otherwise the inverter trips about every other time -- that's how hot it is here. The oppressive heat has had us pinned down inside the bus all day, with the awnings out and the blinds drawn.

Still, it's hard to complain about a "free" power outlet. And if we actually had to run a relief operation out of this building, there is enough power inside for us to pull a full 50-amp, 240-volt circuit. Without access to the building when we are ready to leave, though, I could not make use of the inside service. The building also has a water spigot and an outside sewer access, so we could settle in for the long haul if we had to.

We were able to wrap up everything we needed to do yesterday evening, so we did not need to call anyone today to let us back in. And we still had plenty of time to make it to dinner at the excellent Capital City Club downtown, atop the Regions Bank building. It was quite warm when we left for dinner, and we started riding over there in our shirtsleeves.

Unfortunately, the heavens opened into a torrential downpour as we were about half way there. We both have all the gear needed to ride in almost any weather, including this kind of rain, but with the temperature well into the 90s, we neglected to bring any of it, and so we had to turn back home and strip out of our wet clothes. In about half an hour the storm had passed, and with dry clothes on and proper rain gear with us just in case, we made our way back to the club for a nice dinner, just about 45 minutes behind schedule.

With Bonnie having fizzled completely, and being a bit too far away from the dam failure in Iowa (although we were just a few miles from there barely a week ago) to be considered for deployment there, tomorrow we will resume our planned route south to Fort Walton Beach. It's about a four-hour drive, but with no convenient power pedestals between here and there, we're just going to push all the way through. It's too hot anyplace north of the state line to want to linger, and the beachfront is anywhere from five to ten degrees cooler.

Photo by StewBl@ck, used under a Creative Commons license. And because those are some cute dogs.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean

We are at the Elks lodge in Birmingham, Alabama (map). We have not seen a soul since we arrived yesterday afternoon; the lodge has limited hours, and the property, while large, is rather run down.

We had a nice stay in Huntsville, and we ended up extending our stay there at Monte Sano State Park until yesterday morning. I managed to get several errands done, including topping up the reserve oil reservoir and changing the engine air filter. We also had a nice dinner with the parents of one of our close friends from California, who live in town.

We never made it to our club there, because they are in the process of moving from their downtown location to a new facility out at one of these newfangled mixed-use malls called The Bridge Street. They're closed until September, so we'll have to catch them on our next visit. We did end up eating right next door to the old downtown facility, at a place called The Chophouse. It was quite nice.

We enjoyed riding our scooters around Huntsville. One thing we noticed right away is that it is a good ten degrees cooler at the park, which is not only heavily wooded, but also about 1,000' higher in elevation than most of the town. We never did make it to the space center; after I learned that you can't actually see any of the Marshall Space Flight Center, I lost interest. I've already seen two real Saturn-V rockets, so seeing either a standing mock-up or a set of test stages was not reason enough to brave the heat or the crowds. The fact that the place sports both a drop-tower amusement ride and an exhibit on Star Wars (the movie, not the missile defense system) speaks to the highly commercialized nature of modern science museums, and I prefer old school.

Last night we had a nice dinner at the Summit Club here in Birmingham, with a panoramic view of the city. But we have been eying the tropical system in the Caribbean that started out as Investigation Area 97, had morphed into Tropical Depression 3 by yesterday morning, and was upgraded to Tropical Storm Bonnie by the time we arrived here. Before we left Huntsville the Disaster Operations Center called us to check on our status.

Although we had planned to leave here this morning for Montgomery, where we have more dinner reservations, we've been holding here in case we were sent to Baton Rouge, rendering Montgomery a bit out of the way. Bonnie unexpectedly sped up this morning, however, meaning it will not have as much chance to intensify over the gulf, and we are not being sent anywhere, as yet.

Absent direction to go to Baton Rouge, we will resume our plan to continue to Montgomery today. The Red Cross has a "hot site" there and we will check in on that facility while we are in town, which means we'll need to be there early enough this afternoon to pick up the key at the chapter.

With any luck, Bonnie will fizzle out to mostly a non-event, although I am afraid on the current track that it will churn up a lot of the spilled oil from the Deepwater Horizon.

Attacked by pirates!

We are at the Monte Sano State Park, in the hills just east of Huntsville, Alabama (map). As we had surmised, by the time we arrived just before 2pm, the park had cleared out, and we had our pick of spaces; the person at the check-in desk was kind enough to let us drive around the campground until we could find a space where we could get on-line.

The park is lovely, and part of the reason is that it is in a stand of tall mixed hardwood. We drove around both loops, and we found this space with a narrow gap in the direction of the satellite. It may well be the only such spot in the whole park, and it is certainly the only one that was empty when we arrived. It's also one of the cheaper spaces, at $18 per night on weekdays for 30-amp power and water. As we drove around under the tree canopy, we pretty much decided that if the only space we could find to get on-line was a more expensive full hookup, or still more expensive pull-through site, we'd just take it.

Once we had the dish pointed and were certain we could get on-line, we pulled the scooters out and rode back to the office to pay. After all that effort we decided to stay at least three nights. That made it worthwhile to set up the hot tub, and we're pretty well settled in this spot. I spent the afternoon getting some projects done, and grilled a nice flat iron steak for dinner. Afterward, as we were catching up on email and news and planning out our stay, I got a pop-up telling us we had exceeded our bandwidth allowance, and we've been "turned off" for 24 hours, so now we have no Internet access until 9pm tonight.

I knew neither one of us had used that much bandwidth, and when I checked the router, the guy across the street had his laptop and two iPhones on our network. Somewhere around 5pm they downloaded over 200 megabytes of stuff, and I was hopping mad. To make matters worse, they are Escapees, who should know better. Mostly, I was mad at myself for not locking down the network as soon as we arrived.

Long-time readers may know that, once upon a time, we deliberately left our wireless network open so that other RVers could use our signal for checking email and doing moderate web surfing. We made a lot of friends this way, and it really was helpful on our Mexico caravan. It was not really a burden for us, as our own laptops are already secure, and we've been using open signals from other WiFi networks for years, so this was just maintaining the balance of cosmic karma.

Then one day, HughesNet changed the way they penalize users for going over quota under their "Fair Access Policy" (FAP). Previously, if you accidentally went over your usage allowance, you merely had to stop or limit your usage for an hour or two before you could return to full-speed browsing, and then keep an eye on usage until your "bucket" refilled. The new policy is still a "leaky bucket" algorithm, but the instant you go over your daily limit, you are throttled back for a full 24 hours, no ifs, ands, or buts. HughesNet users call this "getting FAPped."

The first time this happened to us unwittingly, due to neighbors using our signal, we locked down the network. In pained me to do it, but with no warning mechanism, and no way to tell the neighbors to limit their usage, we really had no choice. Our router is now carefully configured to permit access only to those devices we've pre-approved. We still provide network access for friends and traveling companions, but it requires specific configuration ahead of time and I can monitor the usage. This allows us to explain how the limit works and to ask folks to limit their use to email and normal web surfing, and not to download large video clips, audio streams, or software updates.

All well and good, but regular readers will also know that we are having problems with our satellite equipment, and I've spent dozens of hours on the phone with customer support over the last month or so trying to resolve it. We've already swapped out several components of the satellite dish itself as well as the modem, but somewhere in the troubleshooting the suggestion was made that the problem might be our WiFi router. So I swapped in a spare router temporarily for testing purposes, one that does not have the full configuration to implement our security scheme. No big deal for test purposes, and until yesterday, it has not been an issue.

In a classic case of locking the barn door after the horses are out, as soon as I realized we'd been FAPped by pirates, I yanked the open router and put our secure one back in place. I'm sure old Earl there is wondering what happened to his network connection. Even though his big download was at 5pm, we did not go over the daily allowance until after 8, and so we are shut down now until 9 tonight. "Shut down" means that we still have access, but our throughput is limited to about half that of a dial-up connection. We can load pretty much any all-text page, and send or receive text emails. I'll be able to post this blog, but without any graphics.

There is a "free window" in the middle of every night, where usage does not count toward the allowance, and where full speed is restored to FAPped stations. So at 1am I was able to get back on and pre-load some information I'll need today, as well as generate my shipping labels for the eBay items I need to mail today. We'll spend the rest of today out and about running errands.

While we're in Huntsville we'd like to see the space center, and there is some sort of observatory and planetarium right here in the park. I also need to pick up an air filter and some oil for the bus, and we're going to try to find someplace nice for dinner tonight. Probably using my Blackberry, since even searching for restaurants while FAPped is nearly impossible.

Photo by Dunechaser, used under a Creative Commons license.

In theater

We are at a Wal-Mart in Huntsville, Alabama (map). We are now just eight hours' drive from either the gulf or the Atlantic seaboard and could be more or less anywhere in hurricane territory within a day and a half, effectively putting us "in theater," as they say in the military, for the season. The season is off to a slow start, with the map still clear this morning save for a broad area of low pressure east of the Leewards that has only a small chance of cyclonic development.

Friday evening found us at the home of good friends Russ and Pat, in Christiana, just a short drive from our previous stop in Madison. I say "short" in terms of miles; it took us more than two hours to traverse the 70 miles or so on the freeway, because Vice President Biden was apparently in Nashville on Friday, and authorities closed the freeways in all directions for a brief period to accommodate his movement. Having once hosted a vice presidential visit myself, I know what a colossal PITA this is for law enforcement and the entire community. We were in no rush, but the truckers were, well, swearing like truckers about it.

Russ and Pat took us out for a nice dinner at the Five Senses restaurant in nearby Murfreesboro, and then we enjoyed a swim in their pool. The pool felt rather luxurious in this weather, just a bit warmer than ambient in the late evening, and cooler than ambient when we returned yesterday afternoon for a quick pre-departure dip. It was great catching up with them and seeing the progress he's made on his Kenworth T2000 truck and Teton fifth wheel. We always enjoy visiting, and it was very generous of them to lend us their 30-amp power outlet during our stay.

Yesterday afternoon we had a very pleasant drive down US-231 to Huntsville. Our plan had been to proceed directly to Monte Sano state park just east of the city, where we'd settle in for a few days with a nice fat power outlet while we visit Huntsville. We knew, though, that the park was mostly full for the weekend, and that we'd have to hunt around for a space with a shot through the trees to the satellite. As we rolled into Huntsville at 6pm or so, the outside temperature had dropped to a mostly tolerable 85°, and we decided to come here instead for a night. That will give us a much better selection of sites this afternoon, when most of the weekenders have left, saved us $21 for the night, and let us wander across the street to dinner at Carrabas in the Parkway City Mall.

After dinner we strolled the mall, getting 12-minute massages at one of those Asian sit-up massage booths, and poking our noses into stores full of stuff no one needs. Try as we might, we could not find a single item to buy at the mall, although we were entertained by these two girls paying $2 to be in a simulated hurricane, especially given why we are in Alabama. By the time we walked back across the street, the outside temperature was quite pleasant, and it was even reasonable aboard the bus, whose windows and vents we had opened before we left.

It's warmer now, and we just popped an air conditioner back on, but we should have enough battery to carry us until we leave here in half an hour or so. We don't want to get to the park too early, or some of today's checkouts will not yet have left.

Hot night in Music City

We are at the Elks lodge in Madison, Tennessee (map), a suburb of Nashville. We hadn't remembered it until we were already in the driveway, but we'd visited this lodge three years ago, under similar circumstances. By which I mean it was hot and we were looking for a power outlet.

If we had even a glimmer of a memory that we had been here once, I could have checked the blog, and read there that even though the guide now says this place has a 30-amp outlet, it really just has a couple of 15-amp outlets on shared circuits, put in by amateur electricians. This is, after all, the reason I write so much detail here in the blog, for our own reference later. Not to bore you, as you may at times suspect.

Back then the temperature was about ten degrees warmer, and unbeknown to us until the next day we were also having some wiring issues with the air conditioning, and we quickly determined the ratty-looking 15-amp outlet was not going to keep us cool overnight, and so we bailed out immediately. This time we figured 15 amps would get us by for a day, and we paid the $10 "donation." The outlets are so poorly wired the grounds are open, and the bird's nest of Romex^® is so long that we're only getting 99 volts here at the bus after our 50', 10-gauge cord. But that's enough to keep one air conditioner running full time, and we've been mostly comfortable. The lodge says they're putting in some real RV spaces with pedestals this year.

We came here so we could have dinner in downtown Nashville at the City Club, atop the Fourth and Church Tower. Dinner was excellent as usual, and after dessert, with temperatures just a few degrees cooler after sunset, we rode the scooters around Printers Alley, along the waterfront, and back up 2nd. On a warm Thursday night, the streets were packed with tourists and the more popular clubs had lines out on the sidewalks. We were a bit overdressed for the weather, or we might have strolled a bit. On a side note, I fail to understand why anyone would travel all the way from wherever to downtown Nashville, and then eat at Hooters or Joe's Crab Shack and go clubbing at the Hard Rock, when there are so many original restaurants and clubs here. To each her own, I suppose.

Yesterday's drive was quite pleasant, along mostly country roads. We left Columbus on state route 58, and zig-zagged our way into Tennessee on 339, 97, 94, and 121. That put us on US-79 in the middle of Kentucky Lake, and there is a lovely state park right there at the bridge called Paris Landing. We drove in to look at it, and filed it away for a future stay. We wanted to make Nashville last night, and state parks here tend to get crowded coming into a summer weekend. The park had a nice marina, too, so perhaps we will return someday in a boat.

Today we spent three hours on Red Cross conference calls, part of our ongoing curriculum development work. Now that it is past 1pm, the lone air conditioner is struggling to keep up, running as it is on 83% voltage. We'll be leaving in a couple of hours for the short drive to Christiana, south of Murfreesboro, to visit our friends there.

Change of plans

We are at the Columbus-Belmont State Park, in Coumbus, Kentucky (map), overlooking the Mississippi. We have a "premium" site with a river view and 50 amps for a princely sum north of $25, but we needed the power, and once here figured we might as well go for the high-zoot digs. How we ended up here is something of a story, with a happy ending but much drama in the middle.

Tuesday evening, after checking the hurricane forecast (still blank) and the nationwide heat-index charts (grim), we decided to abandon our lazy amble down the river, with its concomitant daily hunt for power outlets, in favor of picking a destination along the gulf coast and heading there more or less directly. After looking at weather, driving distances, and tarball forecasts, we chose Fort Walton Beach, Florida, at the western end of the panhandle. Not only is that more or less equidistant from both ends of the gulf coast, but it is also striking distance from the eastern seaboard hurricane belt, is somewhat cooler than anything further west, and has an Elks lodge right on the beach with a 30-amp power outlet.

Having made the decision to head expeditiously to the coast, we then faced a choice of perhaps three or four sensible routes, all about the same length. Ultimately we made the decision based on maximizing the number of associate clubs we'd pass along the way, as our membership gets us a free meal at each club we visit. The route we settled on hits clubs in Nashville, Huntsville, Birmingham, and Montgomery before landing us on the beach.

The most direct route from Sikeston to Nashville cuts across the southern tip of Illinois, but having done that more than once, now, I was looking for an alternative. Besides, while we were still ambling down the river, I was looking forward to passing through New Madrid, famous for being close to the epicenter of a destructive earthquake, and across the river from a piece of Kentucky disconnected from its mother state. From there to Nashville the most direct route crosses the river at the Dorena-Hickman Ferry, which met my objective of avoiding the now-familiar Illinois route.

We have a love-hate relationship with ferries. I love them, and Louise hates them. In part that's because Odyssey's low ground clearance and long front and rear overhangs can make ferry embarkation and disembarkation challenging or sometimes impossible. Many ferries across flat water have been no trouble at all, including the Cape May -- Lewes ferry, all the North Carolina ferries, the Port Aransas Ferry, and, once we got the hang of it, the Cameron Ferry in Louisiana. Other ferries have been less kind, including the Baja Ferries' Topolobampo -- La Paz ferry, which took a chunk out of our bodywork, the Dauphin Island ferry near Mobile, whose ramp was so steep we could not board at all, and our first encounter with the Cameron Ferry where we dropped an air bag before we understood the technique.

Because of the issues, I do as much research as possible before heading towards a ferry, and this one looked OK. However, when we arrived at the landing, in the middle of nowhere, after a long drive down minor state roads, we discovered the ramp at the landing to be steep enough to be of concern. We waited patiently for the ferry to arrive, and when it did, Louise went down to talk to the ferryman about our concerns. On top of everything else, it turned out the ferry had one busted ramp, which meant we'd have to either back on, or back off at the other end.

We opted to back on, and with Louise on deck with a radio, and the rear suspension at full elevation, I carefully backed down the concrete towards the ramp. Due to safety concerns with the loading ramp, they made Louise stand a good 40' away, and so it was that she could not really see that we were about to bottom out on the ramp, and that's exactly what happened. And there we were, front wheels on land, tail skid firmly on the ferry, and the drive wheels completely off the ground. I'm sorry we did not get a photo, but we were both very focused now on how to get unstuck.

(Actually, the left drive wheel was on the ground, and the right one was just barely touching. When the ferry captain asked Sean to pull forward, the right wheel spun, making just enough contact with the concrete to smoke and stink. -Louise)

I won't bore you with the details of the next half hour, other than to say that the now very annoyed people behind us in line got out of their cars in the 95° heat to watch the unfolding drama. The ferry captain was very resistant to my plan, but after trying it his way for half an hour with no success, and, in fact, inching the whole time further onto the ferry and closer to becoming a submarine in the Mississippi, he finally relented. (All the negotiations between the ferry captain in the tow boat cockpit and Sean in the bus cockpit were via two radios: our little FRS walkie-talkies and another radio link between the captain and the bemused deck hand standing next to me on the ferry barge. -L)

I put our two massive rubber chocks under the front wheels and released the brakes, and the ferry backed slowly out from under us. This ultimately destroyed one of the chocks, but it worked, and I was able to drive back up the concrete to the road.

Louise says we are never taking a ferry again. (He can take all the ferries he wants, but I'm not going. -L)

In any case, we then ended up driving north to US-60 and the bridge to Cairo, Illinois. We stopped at the parking lot of the closed Fort Defiance State Park and the still-defunct toll house museum to regroup. This state park in Kentucky would be the closest power option, and we were past done for the day after the ferry experience. Today we will leave the river and the Great River Road behind and head east to Nashville.

Photo by jocelyn.aubert, used under a Creative Commons license. Note: Not the ferry we were on. Because you know, it could have been worse. But I'm still not going on any more ferries.

Throwed rolls

We are at the Elks lodge in Sikeston, Missouri (map). We had our sights set on this spot Sunday, even though that meant a slightly longer drive than usual, because our guide said there was 15-amp power available. When we arrived, though, we were pleasantly surprised to find they actually have one 50-amp and two 30-amp outlets, as well as dedicated 20-amp one. They are all on a single post, which would make parking three or four rigs a challenge, but we have the place to ourselves. Even so, the post is just far enough from the pavement that we had to maneuver until our inlet was immediately opposite the post for our 25' shore cord to reach on its own.

The whole time we were heading for Sikeston we had it in our heads that we'd have dinner at Lambert's, home of the Throwed Rolls and where we'd eaten five years ago. By dinner time, however, the heavens had opened and we did not want to drag the scooters out in a gully-washer. As luck would have it, though, the lodge was serving dinner. They have a kitchen with a full menu and they do a pretty good job.

As long as we had a 50-amp outlet, we decided to spend another night. That gave us a chance to get a few things done yesterday, including setting up the new propane camp fire with some parts from Orscheln Farm & Home at the end of the block. It also gave us the opportunity to get that dinner at Lambert's. The place was packed on a Monday night, and we are reminded that once every five years is just about as often as we can eat at a place like this. It was good, though, and tons of food at a great price.

We spent no time along the river Sunday. The Great River Road mostly stays to US-61, which is a bit inland. We passed through the outskirts of Ste. Genevieve, and, as with Hannibal, I would have driven into town and spent a night if there had been a decent place to stay with power available. Nothing about Ste. Genevieve or its shops and restaurants warranted an unnatural act to try to spend the night, so we continued south through St. Mary. The Illinois state line comes right up to the railroad tracks there, as it follows an old route of the river around the only part of the state west of the Mississippi. The great flood of 1881 stranded the historical capital, Kaskaskia, on the Missouri side of the river, and the few residents there live in Illinois with a Missouri mailing address. We judged the "Liberty Bell of the West" not sufficient reason for a ten-mile detour to the little town.

In Cape Girardeau we would have crossed into Illinois and headed down route 3 to Cairo if Fort Defiance Park was open. Last time we were there, though, all the power was off and the park had fallen even further into disrepair, with the odd exception of a newly constructed but unopen museum at the old toll house. Research Saturday night revealed that the park is now closed entirely, nominally due to flooding but from the comments of Cairo residents and local media it would appear that the town has simply lost interest in the park, with no money to run it. Sadly, it would also appear that the museum, whose construction was financed by the state, has never been opened since it was built. Our one stay there must remain a fond memory, and with nothing for us there any longer, we opted to stay on the Missouri side.

Today we are on Red Cross conference calls all afternoon. When we're done, we'll most likely continue downriver into the boot-heel, although if the calls run late we may just stay another night. I am contemplating starting to swing away from the river to the west, as temperatures increase more quickly heading downriver than they do towards the western edge of Arkansas. The hurricane forecast is still blank, so we are moving gulf-ward only very slowly. As things stand now, it is almost equally likely we'll see more flooding in the Midwest, and we are well-positioned for that.

Photo by Zama Ree Do, used under a Creative Commons license.

Too many engineers?

Or too few?

St. Louis Fly-by

We are at the Elks lodge in Festus, Missouri (map). The lodge here is a veritable hotbed of activity; when we arrived yesterday afternoon, the pool was in full swing, with perhaps three dozen folks swimming or lounging around. The two 30-amp power outlets happen to be immediately adjacent to the pool, and a couple of folks graciously moved their vehicles so we could back in The pool deck is right out our window.

In addition to all the daytime activity at the pool, there were also perhaps a half dozen families either enjoying picnics at the various picnic areas around the enormous property, or fishing down at the private lake. This latter item is ultimately connected to the river and is consequently ten feet or so over its normal high water mark at the moment, with picnic ramadas sticking out of the water.

In the evening the lodge had a pork steak dinner, with all the fixin's for $6, which we enjoyed. As if the daytime busyness was not enough, the pool had some kind of private birthday party well into the evening (normal pool hours ended at 7pm), and the giant pavilion across from our front window hosted a wedding reception, whose fairly loud music ran well past midnight.

None of this really bothered us, not even the music, which merely prompted us to sleep with the windows closed and the air conditioner running. And it's hard to complain about the free power outlet or the $6 dinner. It was hot enough when we arrived that we were tempted to spend some time in the pool, where a day pass is $3, but it was actually a bit crowded for our tastes. It's really good, though, to see a lodge that has found a way to attract some younger folks and keep them interested, and the lodge is clearly a vibrant, going concern. Unfortunately the main lodge building suffered some kind of fire in January and most of it is closed; lodge operations are being conducted in a basement meeting room. They have plans to rebuild.

Yesterday's drive was a bit mundane. We enjoyed state route 79 along the river and into Clarksville, but south of there it moves inland. The road is in bad shape, and signs commanded us to slow to 15mph at various bridges due to our weight and the bridges' deteriorating conditions. When 79 intersected I-70, we hopped on and bypassed St. Louis altogether on I-270. We did bail off briefly when we spotted $2.67 diesel, about the best we've seen in a long time, and likely the best we will see for a long time still. I filled the tank.

While St. Louis is an interesting city, parking options with power for the air conditioners are few, and we did spend a week there just a few years ago. So on this pass we opted to just go around and land someplace downriver. This afternoon we will resume our journey on the Great River Road. The hurricane map is again blank, and unless we get called for flooding here in the midwest, we have no particular schedule.

Backtrackathon

We are at the Elks lodge in Louisiana (map). Not the state, but the small town of that name in Missouri, on the Mississippi river. Few had ever heard of this place before Tuesday. We're here because the lodge not only allows RV parking, but also has a pair of 30-amp receptacles for guests, and we've been using the power since we arrived to keep the air conditioning running.

Getting here was something of a challenge. As I wrote Wednesday, US-61 was closed at the Des Moines river. Crossing to Missouri from elsewhere in Iowa would involve a 20-mile detour, and so we instead crossed the Mississippi into Hamilton, Illinois, and then headed south on Illinois 96, which is the eastern Great River Road. Fortunately, so far no backtracking, and 96 was a straight shot to Quincy. We had to cross the river, though, at Quincy, even though the river road south of there is actually more interesting than US-61 on the Missouri side, and a shorter route to boot, because I had already labeled a large package from an eBay sale to depart from the UPS station at Palmyra, Missouri. So the short lateral segment across the river and back to US-61 was something of a backtrack, or at least some unnecessary mileage.

The real trouble started in Palmyra. I had very carefully looked up UPS locations on the company web site, and Palmyra was the most convenient to our route, or at least it was before we detoured through Illinois. The UPS web site conveniently provides locator maps and directions to their facilities, and I dutifully transferred the map coordinates to the GPS and verified the written directions followed the same route. When we arrived at that location, however, we found ourselves inside the Marion County Fairgrounds. The person who answered the 800 number gave us directions to the exact same spot, and they had to email the location to have a local employee call us back. After fifteen minutes at the fairgrounds someone called us back and directed us to a location a mile north of town, that we had driven right past on our way in. It was not the first time they had to direct someone from the fairgrounds.

After finally getting rid of our enormous UPS package, we headed back south on US-61 and past the same bridge construction for the third time in a row. Just before Palmyra the Great River Road diverts onto Missouri 168, and we followed this all the way in to Hannibal. Hannibal is actually a thriving river town, owing mostly to the tourism business. Hannibal was the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens, and I don't think there is a business in town that does not bear one of his names or the name of one of his characters. We would have stopped and sampled some of the dining or the kitschy riverfront if we could have stayed within walking distance of the town. The only options with power, though, were some distance away and pricey, and we did not have enough fuel to run the generator if we could even find a spot closer in. This sort of tourist trap is not really our bag, and we'll only stop when conditions are perfect.

South of Hannibal the Great River Road traverses Missouri 79. It would have been nice to know before we even left town that 79 is closed for two full years about 20 miles south, at Ashburn. As it was, we made it a full 10 miles before hitting a sign informing us of the closure, and we then had to make our way back to US-61 on some narrow county roads. 61 brought us past the closure, and we then needed to thread our way back to the river road on some more narrow county roads in order to make our way here to Louisiana, where we had previously confirmed that the power outlet would be available.

This is a sleepy little river town, with a pleasant main street and a nice river front park, and the Elks lodge is right downtown. About half of the buildings here appear to be vacant, and I wonder if that is in part due to the two year closure of the River Road north of here. Few travelers would have made the detour that we did, instead continuing on US-61 all the way to St. Louis. We did find $2.75 diesel on our way into town, at a cluster of stations right near the US-54 bridge to Illinois, and I put enough in to get the generator running should we need it in the next few days.

We had a social glass of wine inside the lodge after we got parked, a ritual in which we seldom partake but which seems de riguer when most of the lodge officers come out to chat while you're parking. Then we walked right across the street to Pikers restaurant, which I would characterize as typically Midwestern comfort food; we both enjoyed the "pot-roast style prime rib" special for $5.99 (plus another $3 for the salad bar). These sorts of restaurant prices are one of the endearing features of this part of the country.

After dinner we walked down to the riverfront, where the Mississippi is again spilling over the banks in spots. We then did a quick walk around downtown, where inevitably we ran into the pair of giant television satellite trucks still staking out the Maier house, where the abduction Tuesday of four year old Alisa made national headlines and put this little town on the map. It's a little disturbing to us that the media has such little respect for the privacy of this embattled family (I believe they are sequestered elsewhere); when we spotted the trucks a block away we switched directions to avoid walking past. The bittersweet postscript to this story is that the girl was found "safe" the next day, 70 miles away in St. Louis. The suspected abductor fatally shot himself as police approached his house.

On a more personal note, it is starting to disturb me a little bit that towns along our planned route seem to be having calamity just days or maybe hours before we arrive. This started in North Dakota when we narrowly avoided a tornado by less than an hour. Then we rolled into Wadena, Minnesota where a tornado devastated the city 2 days before and we ended up helping for a day with the Red Cross relief effort. More recently we rolled through Bellevue, Iowa just hours after horses in the July Fourth parade killed one and sent 23 to the hospital. Just as we were arriving in Keokuk, the road south into Missouri was flooding. Most of these events made national news, and all of these towns were on our planned route before those events occurred. I'm wondering if we should publish more details of our route plans so that emergency managers in our path have time to prepare.

Since we are well-parked and have ample power here, and this is a pleasant town with at least one other well-reviewed restaurant in walking distance, we've decided to spend another night. Enabling that decision is the fact that the National Hurricane Center's forecast map is clear at the moment, and the threat of flooding here along the northern Mississippi and its tributaries might even make our presence here fortuitous. As long as we're parked for the day, I'm getting some projects done, including listing more eBay items and rebuilding water pumps. I expect we will roll out of here tomorrow, continuing along the Great River Road all the way to St. Louis.

Trapped in Iowa

We are at the municipal campground in Keokuk, Iowa, right on the Mississippi (map). And by right on, I nearly mean right in -- when we arrived yesterday the river was within inches of the bank. If we wanted a campfire. there is an enormous supply of driftwood littering the river trail east of here. The level has dropped about a foot since we arrived.

Today we are the only ones here, although there was one other rig when we arrived. This area has room for five rigs with 30-amp power; a bit further downriver is a much larger lot with perhaps a dozen pedestals with 50-amp power. That lot is more spartan, having once been the parking for a long-gone casino riverboat. It, too, was empty when we arrived.

At $16 per night it's not exactly a bargain, but we needed the power, and having a riverfront site mostly to ourselves is nice. The Keokuk Junction and BNSF rail yards are across the street, so we have a view of the towboats out one side and the trains out the other. We're right at home here, and both those modes of transportation have the effect of making Odyssey look lilliputian.

Camping is paid for over at the museum, housed in a land-locked, century-old paddlewheel towboat called the Geo. M. Verity. When we wandered in there today to pay we found out that the bridge and road southwest of here across the Des Moines river and into Missouri, on our planned route of US-61, is flooded out, and so we are "trapped" here. We can see if the flooding subsides tomorrow, or we can cross into Illinois and back again at Quincy.

Last night we walked a few blocks uphill to The Cellar restaurant and bar, which had a panoramic view over the river and inexpensive but tasty food. Tonight we are working our way through leftovers. If it cools off a bit later, we may walk out onto the remains of the old highway deck on top of the railroad bridge, now an observation platform. From there can be seen the massive Lock #19 and the last remaining bit of the Des Moines Rapids Canal.

We drove through most of downtown Keokuk on our way here, and although we somehow missed the statue of Chief Keokuk, I think we got our fill of the town. Today was so hot we mostly stayed inside, which was fine since we both had Red Cross projects to work on, including an hour-plus conference call this afternoon. It was when we wrapped up that call that we decided to just spend another night, not yet knowing that the river had already planned that for us. Tomorrow we may extend yet another day, if it looks like that will buy us a pass back onto our preferred route.

It's good that our plans are very flexible. Yesterday we were unceremoniously booted off the Great River Road in downtown Muscatine by some kind of construction project. The detour, just a block into the riverfront, took us all the way inland to US-61, and, once there, we decided to just stay on that all the way to Burlington, whose eponymous rail line is the forebear of today's BNSF. The River Road would have followed SR-99, which isn't riverside anyway.

Into the furnace

We are at the Isle of Capri Casino in Bettendorf, Iowa (map). The casino allows RVs to park in a large paved lot at the eastern (upriver) end of the property, right across the levee from their marina.

From this vantage we had a great view of the fireworks on Sunday night. We set up the rooftop deck and put our chairs up, and I counted no fewer than nine and perhaps more like a dozen professional fireworks displays. In addition to the city of Bettendorf's own display, which was due north of us and mostly visible above a ridge in that direction, we also saw displays across the river in Moline, East Moline, Rock Island, and a few others I could not identify. There was something just northeast of us, and a couple upriver, perhaps Le Claire, IA, or Hampton, IL. We sat on the deck for a good hour nursing a glass of wine, enjoying the cooler night air, and taking in all the displays. The roof deck also put our eye level a few feet above the levee top, and we had a nice view of the river.

There is a water shuttle service called the Channel Cat that stops at the casino's marina just yards from here, and if we were staying a bit longer we'd think about visiting the other three or four stops it makes. It runs in a big loop, and $6 lets you ride all day. The casino property is interconnected with an enclosed walkway system, which will take you to the new Quad Cities Convention Center right across the train tracks from us. If it was just a bit cooler we might stay another day or so.

We had a very pleasant drive here down the Great River Road from Marquette. In Dubuque, where we once again encountered US-61, the road joins US-52 and follows it all the way here, so we had reasonably good alignment and road surface. Our guide said there was a Corps of Engineers park right on the river south of Bellevue and above Dam #13, and as we rolled through downtown Bellevue we decided to see if there might be room. The city was clearly having a nice holiday celebration, and signs proclaimed that there would be a free ski show at 6pm; people were already setting up their chairs along the riverfront, just downstream of Dam #12 in the center of town.

Little did we know as we rolled through that the town's July Fourth celebration had turned deadly that morning, with one killed and 23 injured by parade horses that spooked. In hindsight, after we learned of the accident, the town did seem oddly subdued for one with such an extensive celebration. In any case, the CoE park was, unsurprisingly, full, thus ending any notion of stopping there and riding the scooters back to town for the show.

We continued here to the Isle of Capri, making for a fairly long days' drive, and stumbled into the buffet for dinner. We were hoping for the nicer table-service Farraday's Restaurant, but it is closed Sunday and Monday nights. It was relatively cool when we arrived here on Sunday, and we strolled around the marina and down the levee trail to the nice city park just west of the bridge.

Yesterday we had planned to move along. However, by morning, Sunday night's four tropical investigation areas, one of which had been forecast as having a 50% chance of becoming a cyclone, had dropped to just two areas, one with near 0% and one with less than a 30% probability of cyclonic development. This latter area showed a forecast track right to Brownsville, where the Red Cross already has a team left over from Alex, and so our own personal alert level was greatly reduced from Sunday evening.

It was also quite overcast yesterday morning, which kept the temperature in check, and we decided to just sit here for a day and get some things done, including listing another eight items on eBay from the great closet purge. By mid-afternoon, however, that was starting to look like a bad choice, as the overcast lifted and temperatures rapidly climbed into the uncomfortable zone. We ended up running an air conditioner from late afternoon until early this morning, and that necessitated three to four hours of generator run time. At $3+ per hour, that can quickly negate the benefits of a free parking space. With temperatures forecast to climb, on top of the naturally warmer temperatures the further south we travel, we will now officially be in the mode of looking for at least minimal power at most of our stops from here south.

It's already in the 80s here today, and climbing, so in a few minutes we'll fire up the Detroit, turn on some air conditioners, and get under way. Louise spent two years here in Bettendorf while she was growing up, with her dad stationed at Rock Island Arsenal, and we'll take a quick spin around the old neighborhood on our way out of town. Then we'll continue down the Great River Road towards the Missouri state line.

And the rockets' red glare

Old glory near the Marquette-Joliet bridge.

We are parked at the Lady Luck casino in Marquette, Iowa (map), across the river from Prairie du Chien. We arrived Friday afternoon after a lovely drive that encompassed both sides of the river. The western Great River Road departs the river between Reno and Lansing and again between Lansing and Harpers Ferry, and consists primarily of county roads. So we crossed the river at La Crosse, Wisconsin and then back again right here, and enjoyed Wisconsin 35, closer to the river and having better alignment. Now that we're in Iowa the situation reverses, and we'll stay on this side all the way to the Quad Cities.

This is actually a very small casino, on a riverboat named the Miss Marquette. A shore-side building houses a buffet restaurant and a bar, with an enclosed walkway connecting to the boat. Our guide said there were three marked RV spaces here and that there might be some power. It is owned and operated by Isle of Capri casinos, for whom we have a special fondness.

Ever since we first stayed at their property in Fort Lauderdale, one of the corporate marketing people there has been following our blog, I think via my Twitter feed. We always get a hearty welcome from her when we land at one of their casinos, and someone from the marketing department has posted RV-friendly comments on the entries for almost all their properties on the Casino Camper web site. These folks get it -- it costs almost nothing to welcome RVers, and most of us spend at least some money at the property.

Since then I've been following several of their Twitter streams and keeping an eye out for their properties along our route. Although Louise would probably say I'm biased because their marketing staff appears entirely composed of attractive and vibrant young women. In any case, having built something of a relationship with the company came in handy on this visit.

When we arrived we indeed found there to be three marked RV spaces. Unfortunately, two rigs were already here, and one of them had quite rudely straddled two out of the three stalls.



We were able to squeeze in to the next stall over, about the same size as the first three but not specifically marked for RV's. That still put us in reach of the power outlets, a pair of 20-amp duplex receptacles on a stake next to the first space. Unfortunately, one of the two 20-amp circuits was completely dead, and in addition to us being the third rig, another rig came along shortly after us and parked two stalls over.

I got my tools out and disassembled both receptacles to check the wiring and make sure it was nothing as simple as a bad GFCI, but no such luck. (Long-time readers will know that I am no stranger to repairing receptacles all over the country.) I even found the electrical panel and checked the breakers, which were both "on". I suspected a bad breaker or a loose wire in the panel, but I had figured it was best to draw the line at unscrewing the panel cover -- casinos have cameras everywhere. So I fired off a message to our new friends at headquarters, asking if they could secure permission for me to continue my repair.

Within a few minutes we had first a manager, then one of the maintenance workers visit us, and the maintenance guy and I were able to quickly track the problem to a bad breaker. He had spares back at the shop (I carry them, too) and a short while later a new breaker was installed and all was well. Since then we've had one of the two 20-amp circuits mostly to ourselves, and between that and our whizzy load-supplementing inverter and battery bank, we've been able to run an air conditioner for the few hours we've needed it. It has been climbing into the mid 80s in the afternoons.

Friday night we took the scooters to McGregor, just a mile down river, and had a nice dinner at the Old Man River brew pub. We also found a coin laundry there, to which Louise returned yesterday. In addition, we discovered the schedule for the combined Marquette/McGregor schedule of holiday festivities. Due to some confusion we actually missed the parade yesterday morning in downtown Marquette, but we did pass by the flea market and hatched a plan to take in the fireworks display. We ate yesterday at the casino buffet, which was quite good although in a surprisingly small room, commensurate, I suppose, with the whole small-town nature of this little stretch of river.

Last night before sunset we scooted down to the little city park-cum-marina at the water's edge with our lawn chairs and settled in for the fireworks. We had previously scoped out the open decks of the river boat, which would have been a great view, however there would be no comfortable place to sit and we did not guess we could get lawn chairs past security.

In addition to most of the populations of Marquette and McGregor, I would guess people came from far and wide to watch, possibly even a good portion of Prairie du Chien across the river. Dozens of boats arrived from up and down river and anchored along the banks or tied up to the city docks for the show. It was a good show, lasting perhaps half an hour, with a very small-town-America feel to it, and the weather was perfect. We were glad we stayed right here in Marquette for it, as it was a nice compromise between last year's austere Fourth and the chaos of a large-city celebration.

We generally try not to drive on holiday weekends, and this would be a fine place to wait it out through Tuesday morning, with several more restaurants to sample in these two towns and a power outlet to boot. However, we feel compelled to continue south today, in part because two tropical investigation areas sprung up this morning in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. We had intended to amble, perhaps stopping next at the casino in Dubuque, but I think we will probably press on to Louise's childhood home of Bettendorf. That would give us easy access to Interstates 80 and 74, as well as US-67, putting us within the mandatory two-day distance of most of the gulf coast.

Don't forget Winona

We are at the Elks lodge in Winona, Minnesota (map). It's basically just a concrete parking lot, but it was on the route and free. We've passed quite a number of state parks, and it was tempting to settle in for a few days, but holiday weekends are never a good time for that, and we feel the need to be further south before slowing down, so we will be in striking distance of the gulf.

Speaking of holiday weekends, our next stop will be the casino downriver in Marquette, Iowa. They are reputed to have some 15-amp power available, and we will get an early start today to see if we can snag some. We may end up settling in there to wait out the holiday madness.

We very much enjoyed the Great River Road yesterday and are looking forward to more of it today. In Lake City, which claims to be the birthplace of water skiing, we had sweeping views across the water. I should note here for anyone thinking of doing the road that there is actually a Great River Road on each side of the Mississippi, and we are, of course, on the western one. More information can be found in several spots on the web:

http://www.experiencemississippiriver.com/
http://www.byways.org/explore/byways/2279/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_River_Road

Many of the ten river states have their own web sites dedicated to their portions of the roads as well.

Photo by Jvstin, used under a Creative Commons license.

Hidden treasure

We are at the Treasure Island Resort and Casino. Not the one with the perennially sinking pirate ship in Las Vegas, but rather the one in Welch, Minnesota, just upstream of Red Wing (map). The Prairie Island tribe operates a full-service RV park here, but we are instead parked in the truck and bus lot across the street (hey, we're a bus). Actually, we are told that dry camping along the grassy area in the RV park, where hookups are $22, is also free (with no time limit), but our general aversion to these types of RV parks sent us to this more industrial lot.

We did partake of the nice buffet, which was actually quite good and sported an impressive variety for $13.50. It was a little annoying that I had to walk across the casino to the bar, though, to get a couple glasses of wine with dinner. The casino is a large and rambling affair, but they have a good sized non-smoking area, and free beverage stations throughout.

After leaving our nice digs in Minneapolis yesterday, we basically just wanted to clear out of the city. While I had entertained thoughts of visiting the Mall of America, just for amusement value, several of our friends here informed us that overnight parking anywhere in the city is prohibited by ordinance, and I did not want to be scrambling to find parking after an afternoon there. So instead we meandered down state highway 55 into the town of Hastings.

Hastings had a Wal-Mart, which we needed for some supplies. That would have been a fine overnight stop as well, but it was still early in the day. So we continued across town to the free municipal dump station (thanks, Hastings!) at the Department of Public Works, and then continued along the Great River Road until we landed here. After dinner, we walked down to the river; in addition to the casino and RV park, the tribe operates a nice marina facility and a boat launch.

Immediately downstream from here is the enormous Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant, the two massive containment buildings clearly visible from here over the adjacent RV park. Beyond that is Mississippi Lock and Dam #3, which we'd go see except the visitor center is closed (due, I believe, to a Corps of Engineers improvement project at the lock).

In a few minutes we will move along, continuing downstream on the Great River Road, which is also US-61 along this stretch. Our "plan," such as it is, has us ambling along the Mississippi in the general direction of the gulf coast unless and until we get called to a disaster. We'll try to stay north of the confluence of the Ohio as long as we can, to keep out of the heat, until we have more concrete direction.