Finally! Settling in for a Full Week!

Date: Monday, May 5th

Parked at:  Fox Ridge State Park, Charleston, IL

Miles traveled:  192 miles ,  Sikeston, MO to Charleston, IL

Monday we took our time since we did not have a long distance to cover. Once again we had a very comfortable drive, arriving at Fox Ridge State Park at about 3pm.

 

Ken always enjoys his talks with campground host, Paul, and was really happy to see him after all of these months.

 

 

 

We are here in Charleston for our youngest son, Trevor’s, graduation from Eastern Illinois University.  He will receive his MBA on Saturday.  Meantime, he continues to work at his studies for completing his CPA.  He is under contract to begin work with McGladrey and Pullen , in Springfield, IL in mid-October and through that contract they are paying his courses of study now for the CPA and the costs of the tests.

 

Since she was going to be leaving to go back home to Palos, IL, for a few days, Trevor and his girlfriend, Leah, came out for a visit in late afternoon.

 

We talked a lot about summer plans.  Leah will be working fulltime at Nordstrum’s in the Chicago area this summer. She has one more year to come back to finish her fashion merchandising degree at EIU in the fall.  Trevor will be coming back to Quincy at the end of May and will be working for the QND football program.  Primarily, during the summer, this will mean running the weight room 3 hours early morning and again 3 hours late afternoon, along with help with camps. Then come season he will work as D-Line Coach and Strength and Conditioning Coach.  Between all of this he’ll need to continue to move forward on his CPA reviews and exams.

 

We get such a kick out of watching the dogs with Trevor.  While Kyle was already out of the house by the time we got Ditka and Sox, they came in to our house as pups having Trevor around everyday and there is no question that his is ‘part of their pack’. As soon as he pulls up the car, they start yodeling and squealing for his attention.  Sox immediately expects to become a lap dog!

 

The team was having a barbeque for the graduating players so Trev and Leah had to leave before dinner.

After a trip in to town for some of Ken’s favorite pizza, at Pagliais, we came back to settle in for a nice long stay in one place.

If asked the biggest lesson learned in this two month full-timing experiment, it would be that the way we planned this trip is NOT how we would full-time.

We moved MUCH to often.  In fact, after we started the trip, we said our planned moving every two days to get to the Carolinas was too much, then every 3 days was too much, then every 4 days was too much.  Now we are settling in for a week and REALLY looking forward to it.  And, this is in an area where we have explored for several years so there really isn’t a lot new to do, so it will definitely be downtime.

There are only 3 other rigs in the entire park and so, at night, we are getting to enjoy listening to the uninterrupted sounds of nature all around us.  There are several types of owls here that make for interesting listening after dark, and we are lucky that the mosquitoes don’t seem to have come out in earnest yet.  This makes long evenings sitting outdoors pure heaven.

On Tuesday, Ken washed the RV.  He did it with buckets since this is not a place where he can do this with a hose and a lot of water.  While that was going on, I went to town to stock up on groceries and do a few things online using the internet at the boys’ house.  Trev was going out with the guys that night, so Ken and I whipped up some spaghetti for dinner and had a quiet evening at the campsite.

Ken and Trev golfed on Wednesday with roommate Kevin Mahoney, and then Trev came by for dinner at the rig. 

I’m writing this on Thursday.

Ken has been nursing some back problems for several months and has decided to pay a visit to Trevor’s chiropractor here in Charleston, since this doctor has done really good things for Trevor over the last several years of football.   I’ll drive him in to Charleston at 2pm for that appointment.   I plan to use that time to drop in to the local coffee house in Charleston, Jackson Avenue Coffee,   and post this blog, check emails and catch up on blogs.  Unfortunately, while we love the seclusion at Fox Ridge, it is one of the few places that my Kindle doesn’t even consistently get a signal, so I need my internet fix!!

I continue to be thrilled with using LiveWriter and Picassa for blogging since I can have my posts completely written and photos applied while offline, enjoying the lovely weather here under the awning while I do so, without a care of weather I can maintain adequate internet signal.  Then when I have wifi, its simply a matter of hitting publish and I’m posted. 

Ken just came back from a walk to the pond and is totally frustrated with our camera.  We’ve known for sometime that the mechanism for putting out the lense was shooting craps but now it seems that it will actually working only about 1 out of 5 times which is not at all good heading in to graduation weekend.  The picture below, of the spring flowers overlooking the fishing pond, may be one of our last from this 6 year old Canon as it sounds like I may be getting a new camera now for Mother’s Day!!

Hugs, C