Every Dark Cloud Has A Silver Lining

Just after I posted yesterday’s blog, we heard a knock on the Journey’s door.  I went to the door and met “JP”, one of our blog readers.  It’s always nice to have someone come up to you and tell you how much they enjoy your blog.  JP had recently bought a new to him Journey and had some issues with the generator mount.  He found a post on our blog about having the generator removed for service and it was a big help to him.

Just another reason we write our blog, not just to keep a record of what we’re doing when and where, but hopefully readers find some value and answers to their questions about fulltime life on the road.  We’re paying it forward, when we were researching the fulltime lifestyle, many other people’s blogs were a terrific help to us.

We left our overnight parking spot at Walmart around 10 am and headed East on I-80, under dark clouds and very, very strong winds.

After wrestling with the wheel for a while, we took a lunch break at the famous Iowa 80 Truck Stop.

This place is a hoot, they have so much in chromed truck accessories, you almost have to wear sunglasses so you don’t hurt your eyes.

Not to mention lights of every shape and color.

Even a couple of full size tractors on displayed on the floor.

There is so much squeezed in to see, they had to put this antique truck up on a pedestal due to lack of room.

 

Right next door is the Truck Museum. 

I toured the museum a couple of years ago when we stopped here.  I found it very depressing because many of the trucks on display I worked on before my Coast Guard career.  Yep, I’m getting old.

We passed on “chroming up” the Journey, but we did splurge on one item.

Since we had to give up our “R Sanity” license plate when we left Virginia and haven’t gotten a custom plate from South Dakota because of all the hoops we’d have to jump through, we had this made up.  Our Journey was “R” sanity during our working days when we’d use it to escape the rat race on weekends and short vacations.

Back on the road, we fought really high winds and after 151 miles, we decided to throw in the towel and stop for the night at a Passport America Campground.  It wasn’t worth the struggle with the wheel and seeing mpg figures around 6.2 mpg, we called it a day.

Passport America parks are a bit of a gamble, sometimes you lose and sometimes you win.  Today we won, big time.  We stopped here:

Hickory Hollow Campground in Utica, Illinois.  Full hook up 50 amp pull through with level, cement pads.  Clean and neat, with free WiFi, too!

Not too scruffy for $19/night.  We might stay two nights if the winds still are blowing hard.

Now for the dark cloud.  Taking the day-night shade off the window to repair it yesterday, I moved my laptop off its usual place on the couch and placed it on the floor.  Major oops, I accidently stepped on it and broke the screen.

It still works but the screen has massive cracks on it.  I’ll get it fixed at a computer shop when we get to South Carolina.  The Silver Lining?

Rick's face looks much better with all the cracks in front of it!  :c)

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