Rainin’ in Peoria…, and other news from the road!

We’re sitting in a B arnes and Noble in Peoria, Illinois, catching up on e-mail and other stuff.

Today was supposed to be a rainy day so we decided to look for Barnes and Noble stores in the area that we are in so we could get online.  Turned out there was about 10 within 60 miles, but none closer than 50 miles, so we decided to drive to Peoria, Illinois.

We had planned on leaving last Wednesday, but decided that we didn’t want to drive through the remnants of Gustav all day, so delayed a day.  It started raining Tuesday and rained hard all day Wednesday.  We had a lot of water running through the yard off of the road.  Fortunately, though, we live near the top of a hill in the Ozarks, so flooding is never a real concern.  We did get word today that the main highway from our area going north is going to be closed for a month for road repairs.  We figure it was probably slides due to all of the wet weather that we’ve been getting this year.

The drive Thursday was wet most of the day, but there wasn’t any bad rain.  By the time we got to our destination, Fort Massac State Park, we hadn’t seen any rain in a couple of hours and the ground was dry.  Fort Massac is the site of several forts dating back as far as the French and Indian War, each fort built over the ruins of the older ones.  It is located on the Ohio River in southern Illinois, across the river from Paducah, Kentucky.

On Friday, we visited the quilt museum in Paducah, a huge fabric store (Hancocks of Paducah), and the old downtown area.  I’ll have pictures that I’ll be posting later from there and other places.

Saturday, we took a long drive and got some photos of a old native mounds site and another really neat state park, the name of which eludes me right now…, more photos.  We drove through the old river town of Cairo, Illinois.  I got a couple of shots from the Ohio River, but none from the Cairo.  It seems to be a dying town.

Yesterday, we drove to Starved Rock State Park in north central Illinois.  It seems to be very large.  We’ll be exploring it some tomorrow when the weather will be better.  From there, we’ll be going into Wisconsin on Wednesday.

Hopefully the remnants from this next hurricane will not come back around and go though our area back home.  Everything is so saturated.  Fortunately, we’ve got family, friends, and the neighbors watching and checking the place so we will know right away if there is anything wrong.

While we are traveling, I won’t be checking in as much on all of the feeds that I normally use and won’t be able to comment while we’re traveling.  We will be at a campground starting Wednesday that will have wireless.