This morning we are heading back home. We had planned on stopping somewhere for breakfast after we left Frances and Jack's, but Jack tempted us with his homemade biscuits and sausage gravy. Yes, Jack actually makes biscuits from scratch - so, we stayed for breakfast!
We left Frances and Jack's at 8:45 and decided to take a different route home. We took IL-34 east to Eldorado, IL then south on IL-142 to IL-1 south to Cave-in-Rock and arrived at the ferry landing at 9:45 in time to see the Ferry leaving and going to the Kentucky shore.
While we waited for the ferry to come back to the Illinois shore, we walked Tinker and it gave us a chance to stretch our legs.
After getting off of the ferry on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, we took KY-91 south to Marion, KY and then on to US 641 south which took us to I-24 South and through Nashville and then to East Ridge, TN where we got on to I-75. We stopped to get gas at
This morning we got up and everyone just had a quick breakfast. The funeral for my cousin Jim is this morning. Frances, Jack and Eva left the house a little after 9 a.m. and headed down to the funeral home in West Frankfort. Mike and I left the house about a 9:30 to go to the funeral home.
We met Jim and Sally's 3 sons and their families this morning. Their son Ben is a minister and he conducted the funeral service. Their son Matt lives in Texas and Dan lives in West Frankfort and was a big help to his parents while Jim was ill. It has only been the last several years that we had gotten together with Jim and Sally and never got to meet their children.
The funeral service was at 11:00 and then followed by the burial service at Boner Cemetery. Afterwards the family invited everyone to Jim and Sally's house for lunch which was provided by their church, First Baptist Church of West Frankfort.
We met Frances, Jack and Eva at Jim and Sally's house and had an opportunity to visit with
This morning Jack fixed breakfast for all of us. He made waffles and fried bacon - if that doesn't get your day started right, I don't know what will!
We spent most of the day just relaxing and visiting with Frances and Jack. Frances made potato salad this morning after breakfast for supper tonight. Frances' sister Eva drove over from St. Louis this morning and will be staying with Frances and Jack for a couple of days.
This afternoon we all went out to Rend Lake to join Frances' daughter Karen and her fiance Brian for dinner. They are camping at Rend Lake in their 5th wheel for a few days and drove from their home in Colorado. Mike and Jack left before the rest of us so he could show Mike around Rend Lake and some of the camping facilities there. Frances, Eva and I drove out later to the campground.
The last time Mike and I had seen Karen was when she and Fletcher were little and had come down for a visit in Lake Worth.
Some friends of Karen and Brian's were camping there also and came over for a visit.
It was really great to re-connect with Karen and to meet Brian. Dinner wasn't bad either - hamburgers,
We got up early this morning and checked out of the motel at 8:00. We slept pretty good last night - don't know if it was the bed or that we were just tired. We stopped for breakfast at the Burger King near the motel and then got gas at the Raceway ($1.969 a gallon) before getting on I-75 and heading north.
We stopped for lunch at 1:00 at a Wendy's in Adairsville, GA and then at a Pilot at Dalton, GA for gas ($1.839 a gallon). We got onto I-24 at Chattanooga and continued north through Tennessee. We stopped for gas at 6:00 (CDT) at a Shell station ($1.959 a gallon) at Oak Grove, KY which is on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee.
I had called my cousin Frances and told her that it would probably be after 8:00 when we got to her house, so don't wait supper for us. We stopped at a Subway in Paducah, KY for supper at 6:30 and were back on the road by 7:00.
We continued north on I-24 until it connected with I-57 and then north up to Benton. We arrived at Frances
Last year my first cousin Jim was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and was going to begin chemo therapy. Mike and I drove up in April of last year for a visit with Jim. We stayed with his sister and her husband and their older sister drove over from St. Louis. We had a great time going through Jim's family photo albums and it was a great trip.
I got a call from Jim's sister Frances yesterday and she said that he wasn't doing well and that the hospice nurse said that he only had a day or two. Frances called me this morning just before 9:00 and said that Jim had died earlier this morning. She wasn't sure when the funeral would be - just sometime this week. I started mapping our trip up to Illinois and checking on motels on our route. I called Frances back at 10:00 and told her that we were going to leave this afternoon and would be up at her house sometime late tomorrow.
I went online and stopped our paper and mail delivery for this week. Mike called our next-door neighbor and he said he would pick up any papers or mail in case it was delivered.
While I was packing Mike went to WalMart to get gas ($1.959 a gallon). We left that house at 2:00
Mike's birthday was the 13th and to celebrate we went to Ay Jalisco here in Sebastian for dinner. Mike ordered the steak Fajita Quesadilla and I had my usual chicken Fajita Quesadilla with a couple of Dos Equis on draft.
While we were camping at Sebastian Inlet State Park earlier this month, we started a list of items that we either needed or would be nice to have in our travel trailer. So we have been shopping in the stores here and on the internet to see what would meet our needs.
There are 2 upper cabinets over the kitchen counter that are quite tall and really needed shelves to make better storage use of the space. I bought 4 plastic-coated wire shelves to use and put 2 shelves in each cabinet. They work great and I'm able to have 2 levels of storage in each one. Mike found an under-counter light to go under one of the upper kitchen cabinets. It's touch activated and really lights up the
On Monday we started getting everything together for our trip to Sebastian Inlet State Park. I made a pasta salad to take with us. Sebastian Inlet State Park is only 13 miles from our house and check-in time is 3 p.m., so we didn't leave the house until about 2:30.
We were in site 25 which is a back-in. We are getting better at backing the trailer. We're still using the hand signals that we used with backing up the motor-home, but we don't have a rear camera on the travel trailer like we did with the Winnebago.
Site 25 is a gravel site and is pretty level. Mike set out the grill and we had hamburgers and pasta salad for our first night's dinner. We haven't decided whether to get Dish satellite TV or not, so we're getting some local TV stations with the local antenna.
It was cloudy and looked like it would rain any minute when we got up Wednesday morning. We checked the weather forecast and they were expecting rain to move in that afternoon and rain for the next few days. So Mike took several photos of our campsite while the rain hadn't moved in.
The weather forecast was right and we had rain Wednesday night and most of Thursday and Thursday night.
We did take the opportunity on Wednesday during one of the times it wasn't raining and took Tinker for a walk around the campground. We were looking to see what the other sites looked like and to see if there
