Friday - November 16, 2007

Last night the temperature hit a low of -2C (28F) so it was a very cold night, thank goodness for the electric blanket.

Today was a gorgeous day – sunny with nary a cloud in the sky and the high was 16C (61F) so it is improving. Today we traveled through Iowa, Missouri and into Kansas and there were still lots of cornfields, but at least the land was more rolling than flat so a bit more scenic.

There was a lot of truck traffic this morning to Des Moines but once we got on I-35 south we lost most of the trucks, the traffic thinned right out and it was really good driving. About 15 miles north of Kansas City we took a County Road west for about 20 miles then picked up I-435 down the west side of Kansas City and what a good drive that was. It was around 3:30 Friday afternoon so we were expecting tons of traffic but there was hardly any so what a bonus.

RV parks are not prolific in this area so we decided to go across to Topeka then south so we are now at Lawrence KS which is between Kansas City and Topeka. We are at a 3 star KOA – the Interstate and train tracks are right by the park – the only thing it is missing is the rock crushing plant!!

Tomorrow as we are traveling through Kansas I will be keeping my eyes peeled in the hopes of seeing Dorothy and the Tin Man!

Crossing the Mississippi River

Thursday - November 15, 2007

Today was COLD – when we left Auburn it was raining/snowing and the high on the truck thermometer today was 42F (6C) which is far too cold. The sun broke through about noon so it seemed warmer than it was but the wind was brutal all day, thankfully it finally calmed down late this afternoon.

We drove west from Auburn on US 30 this morning which is a good highway but slower than the interstates as it goes through a lot of towns and there are the usual stop lights etc. on the way. We cut up on I-57 to I-80 west and it was good driving on the interstates with not a lot of traffic, but of course by then we had cleared Chicago. We crossed the Mississippi River today so I guess we can now say we are in the west! Today’s scenery was corn field after corn field and it was very flat – quite boring actually!!

Tonight we are at the KOA at West Liberty, Missouri so we got a bit farther than we thought. Now I have to replot tomorrow’s route, which entails changing over to the Windows side of my Mac as that is where my mapping software is.

“Alice”, our GPS does a fairly good job of directing but she and I do have differences of opinion and I get quite frustrated listening to her recalculating the route until she agrees with mine! Think I should have called her a male name but it is a female voice (but I think her planning is done by a male!). I must admit though that she is handy to tell you which way to turn and alert you to upcoming turns. One of the weird things I have found with her so far is her directions to RV parks, both last night and tonight she was way off – glad I had Trailer Life for directions and didn’t rely on “Alice”.

There is no wi-fi here so I will have to wait to post this until another day.

Lake Huron from Bluewater Bridge, Sarnia

Wednesday - November 14, 2007

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Well, we are finally on The Road Again and it feels good to be heading south into warmer weather – hopefully! We have decided to try a different route to Arizona and go through Iowa and Kansas so it should be interesting, just hope the weather remains okay.

We got away from Can-Am about 8:30 this morning and it was misty with a light rain but by the time we got to Sarnia the sun was out and it felt quite warm. We stopped at the Duty Free, which wasn’t too busy, but then had to wait about 45 minutes to clear customs on the US side - not too bad considering the amount of traffic.

We got to the KOA at Auburn, Indianna shortly after 3 so unhooked and went into Auburn to get groceries and fuel then headed back to the park. John got us hooked back up in case it is raining in the morning so it won’t take us long to get on the road again.

John was going to barbecue dinner but the wind was so strong he couldn’t keep the barbecue lit so we ended up changing the menu and cooking inside. Hopefully we don’t get too much wind like that!