Kentucky, Here We Come

Friday October 21, 2011

Wilma’s nearly forgotten birthday (Betty remembered and texted her at about 9:30 pm). Fred and Wilma had kept it real quiet all day!

The sky was clear, but there were teardrops falling as we bid farewell to the two musketeers as they left for work and school. We would pack it up soon and head off into the unknown.  We went into the thriving metropolis of Houston, MO to fuel up before we hit the road.  We headed south on route 63 to Cabool then east on 60 toward Kentucky.  Just after Van Buren we came out onto the flat fields of cotton in eastern Missouri. We enjoyed seeing the mostly yellow covered cotton bales in the fields, and lots of white fields still to be harvested, but didn’t stop for pictures.  It was also interesting to see all the rice fields in that area. Quite a contrast to being in the oak covered rolling hills of the Ozarks.

Wilma was riding lead shotgun, and called the stops, so we meandered over the southeast part of the state and stopped at a Taco Bell in Poplar Bluff for lunch. We made a stop in Dexter at an RV place looking for a globe for the gas light in the Rubblemobile. The bridge across the Mississippi on route 60 was closed so we had to make a little detour on I-57 to get across the river.  We crossed the river at Cairo, IL then went south on route 51 to get back to 60 and crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky.  We had seen a sign for a ferry, but found out that also was closed because of low water.  We would have considered going that route because of Betty’s fascination with ferries. Oh well.

We had to go here -

- to get here!

Our campsites

Our back yard at the campsite.

There was a brief stop in Paducah. KY at the rest area/welcome center.  There we got a hot tip on a good campground to stay at in the “land Between the Lakes”. It wasn’t far down the road, so we fueled up and went to check it out. We turned off to check out the first campground we came to, Canal Campground, and it is a Corps of Engineers campground. They had sites available, so we signed in for two nights.  It is a really nice place. We got two very level sites, not the premium waterfront sites, but overlooking the lake, with water and electric hookups, very clean restrooms with showers, excellent wireless signals, tucked into the colorful oak trees, all for $8 per night with our geezer cards.  The Flintstone site has a huge round concrete picnic table where we ate our soup and sandwich supper, then we called it a day, and what a good day it was.

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