Kary and Mary's house near Milan MO

We finally made it to Kary and Mary's house near the town of Milan, MO. They have a farm in the northeast part of Missouri. We knew them when we lived in Kansas City back in the mid to late 1970's. They visited us out in colorado a few years after we had moved but we had not made it back to Missouri to visit them in all the years we had been gone.

They were nice to put us up on the farm and we had a great campsite about 1/4 mi from their house up on a hill. Since the remnants Hurricane Hanna had just gone thru the area the road was muddy so we had to use 4 wheel drive to get up to the site but managed to get set up. It was a great site we even had electric and water hookups. We had a great time visiting with Kary and Mary and got to meet their kids that were away in college in St Joseph, MO as we took a trip over to pick up their daughter and drop off some clothes for their son. We stayed an extra day and Kary and Mary took us out on friday evening to look for all the deer that they have on their land. I think we saw at least 30 deer and they got a look at what they will be hunting when the season starts this year.

Everything was green and the grass was still tall and they told us that there had been about double the amount of rain that they usually get in a year. We had a great time but decided to move on toward Branson on Saturday. We headed for Harry Truman lake in SW Missouri and set up camp in the corp of engineer campground near Warsaw MO. We got there on saturday afternoon and found out that there was a Air Force base nearby and they were having weekend practice. Two Warthog jets kept flying low over the campground and they were loud. Lucky for us they quit by 7pm and it was nice and quiet.

We spent a couple nites there and that gave us a chance to do laundry in town. Seems like we dont take time to do the chores till we have to do them. After spending a nice quiet time at Harry Truman lake we headed down to Branson.

Heading west

After leaving Mississippi Palisades state park we headed to Missouri via the southeast corner of Iowa. After looking at the map we decided to stay at a state park just inside the Missouri border called Battle of Athens state park. It was the site of a battle during the Civil war in 1861 and the town has been saved as a historic site and they had a real nice little campground just outside the town. We just stayed the nite as we were on the way to our friends house near Milan, MO. We were the only ones in the campground other than the wild turkeys that were all over the place and a lot of loud insects. This is a big year for cicadas and there were also lots of lightning bugs in the area.

Mississippi Palisades State Park Illinois

We made it to Mississippi Palisades state Park just north of Savanna, IL for Labor Day weekend. This state park did not take reservations so we could get a site. It was a very nice campground, really green with a lot of hardwood trees and bushes. It was just off the Mississippi river about 1/4 mile but did not have a view of the river. Savanna was a nice little town of about 3,000 people with a lot of old buildings downtown. After settling into camp we went into town to check out things and found out that over labor day weekend they were having a big motorcycle rally in town and were expecting 3000 to 5000 bikers. Savanna is trying to turn itself into another Sturgis and they have been having rallies here for several years.

Turns out that Milwaukee was having a 105th Harley Davidson anniversary the same weekend so we dont think very many bikers turned up in Savanna. We went on a bike ride on the Mississippi River Great River Trail down to the next town and they were having a watermelon festival. seems like that must have been the weekend for all types of activities in this area. We bought some local produce, corn, cantelope and watermelon. It sure is sweet when you get it fresh like that.
I dont remember how many ears of corn we have had on this trip so far, but it has to be close to 2 dozen. The cantelope was very sweet also, we have been buying so much of that we are getting burned out on cantelope.

Illinois had a new fee schedule for their state parks this year, they raised their fee for camping by 5.00 a day, then for holiday weekends they also tacked on another fee of 10.00 per day. But according to local authorities holiday weekends are 4 days long as they charge you 10.00 a day for 4 days instead of the 3 for that labor day weekend.
Leave it to the government to come up with that one. I send an email to the state of Illinois letting them know how I felt about their "extra" fee for the weekend and how they added a day to it also. They wrote back saying thanks for your comments!!
The people at the gate told us that they were getting a lot of complaints on the fee increase for holiday weekends. The campground did not fill up for Labor Day, usually it is full but this year it was probably down 10 to 15% in the amount of campers in the park. Gas prices probably caused some of it also.

On to Green Bay

After leaving Wabeno area we headed to Green Bay, home of the Packers football team. Seems like our grandson, Riley, likes the packers for some reason.
We took a couple photos of the stadium for him and then went and visited Farmer Brothers manager, Dan Golie. I had meet him one time at a computer class in Torrance, CA. He said things are going well and he is keeping busy.
We left Green Bay and headed south to see if we could find a campground for Labor Day weekend.
On the way to Illinois we stopped at a county campground in Beaver Dam Wisconsin. It was a real nice campground called Dredge campground and if you ever go thru that area in your RV be sure and stop. The sunset photo is from this campground. I probably took 30 shots of it while it was displaying its brilliance!!

After looking around town for information about Barb's grandparents we decided to find the cemetary and see what we could find out there. We drove all over looking for it but could not find it so we took a drive out in the country to see the sites. Then while heading back into town we found 3 cemetaries, one catholic, one lutheran and one city cemetary.
we wandered around the Lutheran cemetary and found the grave stones for her grandparents, great uncles, aunt and uncle and several other ones. We also ran into some folks looking around the cemetary and found out that he had worked with Barb's aunt at the bank in town back in the 1950's. His name was Bernie and he ended up being the president of the bank in Wabeno before he retired. Small world!!
The next night we went to a concert in the park in town and ran into Bernie and his wife again and Barb talked with Bernie some more and found out where the Rusch store had been. It had a fire in 1955 and burned most of it down. the only thing remaining now was the back of the store, which is now just storage from the looks of it.