Traveling - Food and Gas - Kids - Friends Jim in ER

 O'Fallon, IL  (Hi 81  Lo 61)

We left  Saturday morning about 9am for O'Fallon, IL. We took an extra day for travel to get to St. Louis area, (O'Fallon).  We headed up I 75 thinking it would be great for a weekend travel couple days, we sure were wrong. The traffic was heavy and all the trucks possible were on the road. The highways are being repaved in several places which slowed us down quite a bit. We're really glad we took another day to travel. 

The first night we stopped south of Atlanta, in McDonough. The first place we stopped we couldn't get into the lobby everything was closed up because of Covid. Several places were over $200 a night even one at $300, but we found an Econo Lodge at $72.  (I'm putting details for future reference).  It was a nice room and iffy WIFI, but it worked for us. 

We started out on Sunday morning and wanted to get some breakfast but hard to find anything that wasn't drive thru. We don't like eating in the car but found an IHOP that had just opened this week for dine in. It was a 25 minute wait. The same for the night before at the Longhorn Steakhouse. They can only seat a few in the dining area at a time. For lunch it was the same thing, long wait at Wendy's in fact there were people waiting for 40 minutes. We went across the parking lot to Hardy's. We waited 10 minutes. These are fast food places that have few people working because they make more staying at home and getting checks from the government instead of working. 

Sunday night we made it to Bowling Green, KY. We had another wait of 25 minutes. We're now getting smart. IF you go in the outside line you can get food faster.  We spent the night at LaQuinta at $97.  

Monday morning, very few places are open for breakfast. We went thru the drive up and got our breakfast and ate while on the road. We give up. We stopped in Shepherdsville, KY for a special wine I get every year we go thru the area. It's Pomegranate black cherry wine. It's one of a kind and hard to find. When we were fulltime RV'ers  we stopped at Grandma's RV park and went wine tasting. We found Forest Edge Winery and tried this wine. It's so worth the extra two hours to get it. We were on our way to O'Fallon at 11:45.                                           

   

The last few miles (or hours) of a trip is always the worst. It took forever but we arrived in O'Fallon about 4:30. We got into our Airbnb and checked it out.  We unloaded the car and then went to the kids.

The Airbnb is quite nice. Big living room with Roku TV, nice full kitchen, a special room for computer (with a locked door in the floor), and nice bedroom. The only thing that needs is something to put the suitcases on like a suitcase stand. Click on pictures to enlarge.  This is the Airbnb house. 

We had a great evening with the kids and had a good nights sleep. 

Monday we went to our RV'ing friends, Cindy and Ken,  in Carlinville a little over an hour away. They bought land, cleared some of it and built a barn for the RV and an RV site with a great gazebo. 

                                            Cindy, Ken and Tweezer

The land as they bought it, now with trails through it.

This is the RV in the summer and it's in the barn in winter. 

The barn and the gazebo.  The corn silo is a great way to setup an outdoor sitting area. 

We had a wonderful visit till early evening then went back to the kids.  There's more to come. 

May 25

We got back to the kids house and Jim wasn't doing well and couldn't speak. We went to ER and lots of tests taken. We later found out Jim had GBM, Glioblastoma brain cancer.