Rex and Nancy's Travels - "ALL WHO WANDER ARE NOT LOST" - JRR Tolkein

Sunday we continued our trip to Colorado and arrived at Loveland RV Resort just in time for a downpour.   We had to wait in the truck for a while before we could unhook and get set up for our stay here. We spent 8 days visiting with Nancy’s family and also with our good friends Bob and Jean.   We enjoyed out time with Nancy’s son, Chad, his wife, Kim and our granddaughter, Mariah.   Also, we thank Kim for the much needed haircuts. We drove to Longmont several times to visit with Nancy’s parents.   We really miss them in Arizona in the winter. We spent a couple of afternoons with Nancy’s sister, Carol, and her husband Vince.   We greatly appreciate the use of your laundry facilities! We also saw Nancy’s oldest sister, Kathy, and were finally able to see the Condo she bought last year.   We enjoyed our time in Colorado visiting with family and friends.   After driving around Fort Collins we decided we moved away about the right time a

We left Donnellson Saturday morning and continued our trip west to Colorado.   We stopped in Elm Creek Nebraska and spent the night at Sunny Meadows Campground.

We arrived at Donnellson, Iowa where we are staying at Wilson Lake Park, a very nice county park surrounding Wilson Lake.   We have a great full hook-up site with lots of shade trees.   We are visiting our friends, Larry and Pauline, who are snowbirds we met in Arizona.   We spent 2 days driving around the southwest corner of Iowa between the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers. One stop was in Bentonsport which was established in 1836 and was a steamboat port on the Des Moines River until the railroad was built to Des Moines in 1866.   Many historic buildings are still standing like the Mason House Inn which was built in the late 1840s.   It served steamboat passengers and other travelers under a number of owners.   Its barn reportedly sheltered runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad.   It is now a bed and breakfast with 9 bedrooms furnished in 19 th century antiques.   We stopped at a great shop down the road called Iron and Lace which sells Queen Anne’s Lace pott

We left Ohio Tuesday morning and drove to Champaign, IL where we spent the night at D & W Lake RV.

Rex’s mom’s back yard is a wonderful place to park the 5 th wheel but it is not as green as it usually is.   It has been hot and dry here this summer – except that it is still humid!   We have access to water and minimal electric but works great we only sleep here and spend the rest of the time in her house.   Rex spent a few days washing the moss off the shop and a smaller shed and then he painted them both red. We enjoyed visiting with Rex’s mom and she had a long list of handyman jobs for him.   She kept him happy with home baked cookies and peanut M&Ms!   We also visited with a lot of Rex’s relatives including several trips to his Uncle Ike’s house on Odell Lake.   We kayaked around the small lake and enjoyed sitting in Uncle Ike’s screened porch while we visited and heard lots of stories about his mom’s family.   We also saw Rex’s step-brother, Scott and his wife, Nora, his Uncle Pat and Aunt Carolyn and many of his cousins.

Tuesday morning we woke to rain and waited a while to see if it would quit, but eventually we had to hook up in the rain.   It rained until around noon but was cloudy and overcast all day.   We stopped in Neosho, MO and spent the night at the Stage Stop RV Park.   Wednesday morning we again woke to rain but we were lucky enough to get a long camp site so we didn’t have to unhook either the truck or Jeep making it easier to get ready to leave in the rain.   It rained hard most of the day and didn’t stop until late afternoon.    We stopped at Cloverdale RV Park in Cloverdale, IN.   This park is a gem in the woods about ¼ mile from the Interstate – quiet and well maintained with lots of trees and grass.   Cody and Camille really enjoyed walking in the grass and being able to sniff around.   We again had a nice long site and did not have to unhook either vehicle. We were fortunate that it did not rain here and we did not have to get ready to leave in the rain.    We arrived at

Thursday morning we headed to Wichita Falls, TX where we are meeting Rex’s daughter, Jen, her boyfriend, Jeremy, and their 3 dogs, Jack, Haley and Penny.   Jen and Jeremy live in Falfurrias, TX which is Southeast of Corpus Christie – a long way to drive.    Jeremy’s parents live in Wichita Falls so it was a good meeting place and it gives us a chance to meet his parents.   We are staying at the Wichita Falls RV Resort, a very nice RV park along the Wichita River. We have enjoyed spending time with Jen and Jeremy and finally getting to meet the new Dachshund puppy, Penny.   Of course we were also glad to see Jack, their Jack Russell Terrier and Haley, their other Dachshund.   We enjoyed meeting and spending some time with Jeremy’s parents, Becky and Gary. Jeremy noticed that one of our front truck tires was bad and found us a tire shop where we got 2 new tires.   Jeremy generously surprised us with a gift of the tires and the alignment costs - thank you very much!

We left Heber on Tuesday morning and headed to Albuquerque, NM where we spent the night at Leisure Mountain RV just west of town.   Wednesday we drove to Amarillo, TX where we stayed at the A-OK RV Park.