Out of Our Rut Blog Welcome Page

Welcome to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.

Who we are:

We are a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in June of 2016.

Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State

At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast

Our mission:

To explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities. Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for a week or more.

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000

The blog:

For friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come back in the future.

Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona

At the Window in Big Bend National Park

This landing page:

The problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological. This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017 to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.

Since I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have created a special map that has all of our stops since going full time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.

So if you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should provide a much easier way to find the blog post.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

2025 Year End Review

With 2025 coming to an end, we are celebrating nine and a half years of living on the road full time in our 38 foot motorhome. We began and finished the year at our RV lot in Titusville Florida at The Great Outdoors (TGO). We purchased the lot almost 2 years ago. It’s a fairly basic lot with a nice flat concrete driveway and the standard full hook up utilities but it does have a 10 foot by 12 foot shed which is very convenient for working on projects over the months we will be stationary here. The resort has a lot of nice amenities but we don’t take advantage of most of them. I must admit that I do miss the occasional winter spent out in southern California and Arizona where the hiking and views are a lot nicer.

We started out 2025 wrapping up some of our doctors appointments in an attempt to get our old bodies in shape for another six months of travel. Our plans for the year were to explore some of the upper Midwest. As we looked into what we wanted to see and do in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, we picked out a few events that were both location and date specific. These types of stops have a much firmer window that form the rough outline and timing of our journey.

The first event was to take part in a Habitat for Humanity build in Marquette Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. The two week window for the RV-Care-A-Vanner program was from mid to late June. The second planned event was to attend the Oshkosh Air Show in Wisconsin. This weeklong show runs in late July. With those two points on our map we have quite a bit of distance and time to fill in before, between and after these events.

It is definitely a time consuming task to map out a route, plan our camping stops and figure out how long we want to stay in areas along the way. We spent a few weeks over last winter researching things to see and do in various cities along the route. Where is the good hiking or points of interest?  I use a Google Map and a website called Furkot to piece together a plan. As we get a better handle on our route and timing, we can start to make reservations at various campgrounds and by the end of April we had a 70% of the nights reserved out through Labor Day. We have found that after then, we can be much more serendipitous about our planning for the route back to Florida.

Below is a map of our route for the year. By starting and returning to the same place, the map is a bit confusing. I have a link below the map that will open the actual Google Map which allows others to zoom and pan around to get a better view of the route. Clicking on any of the pins for a travel stop will pop up a window with the name of the stop as well as the blog post related to that stop.

Click HERE to open the Google Map

We left Titusville in late April with just over 7 weeks to make our way to Marquette. While getting the rig serviced in South Carolina, we needed to make a quick drive up to Ohio for a death in the family. It was nice to see so many relatives and friends even if it was at a sad time. We continued our journey with 2 weeks in a few state parks in the southern Appalachians.  In Cincinnati, we got a chance to get together with family and have some Skyline Chili and Graeters Ice Cream. We managed to sneak in a stop at a National Park and get our motorhome windshield replaced in northern Indiana. Then we worked our way up north through Michigan stopping at a few Elks Lodges before crossing over the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula. The time spent working with the Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Marquette was quite rewarding and we learned a few construction tricks.

We had about 3 weeks before the Oshkosh Air Show and we got to explore the western side of the UP at a few different campgrounds before working our way south into Wisconsin. We really enjoyed the air show and you’ll read more about that later in this post. Then we continued west into Minnesota where we spent the next 37 nights at various county and state parks. I was able to talk my wife into a side trip into eastern North Dakota to experience what others have called the Disneyland of geocaching - more on that later as well.

It was about this time that we “called an audible”. We had previously planned to head back to Marquette and help out again on the Habitat build and see how it had progressed since our stop in June. But after we had talked with some fellow campers while in Minnesota, we decided to return to Minnesota to check out the north shore area along Lake Superior. This gave us the opportunity to even meet up with my nephew and his wife from Cincinnati while they were in town for her high school reunion. By then it was late September and we figured we better start making our way south to avoid the cold and snow that is inevitable for this area.

We stopped in the Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin for several days where we got a chance to explore some of the unique landscape along the shoreline. As we headed south, we got to experience a cranberry harvest up close and personal and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin both in Wisconsin. We continued through parts of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana with Chris making a return to her college town of Peoria after 40 years!

Coming through Tennessee, we got to spend a week back in the mountains to see the fall colors before timing our drive through Atlanta on a Sunday morning to minimize the traffic. A few days in a state park in Georgia and a couple of overnight stops at Elks Lodges and we made it back to Florida. It felt good when we returned to TGO after being gone for 190 nights. Things have definitely slowed down over the last two months as we get back to doing some work on the motorhome, our lot and getting in doctors appointments.

Here are a few more maps to help show where we spent our time. These “heat maps” are shaded to reflect the number of nights spent in each state - dark red is more nights, pale red is fewer nights. The first one is just for 2025. We camped in 13 different states this year with Florida, Minnesota and Michigan coming in the top 3 spots. The second map is similar but includes all 9.5 years we’ve been fulltime. The final map is the full 9.5 years but divided down to the county level to get a better understanding of where we were in each state.

Our 2025 Camping Map

Our 9.5 Year Camping Map

9.5 Years at County Level

Lots of people ask “how much does this lifestyle cost?”  Well the table below should help answer that. It doesn’t include items that would be spent if we were living in a sticks and bricks home like groceries, dining out, health care, clothing. But it does include camping costs as well as fuel for both the motorhome and the car as well as the miles driven. We did put on more miles on the rig this year but not significantly more.  Nothing else was all that surprising. Since the actual table has so many years now, I only include the past six years.  One other aspect is that the cost per night here at TGO is initially an educated estimate but I won’t have our last rental income check for the year until mid February at which point I will update the spreadsheet and this table.

Just the Stats for the Past 6 Years

The table does breakdown the type of places we have camped into four categories: boondocking, state parks, private campgrounds and Elks Lodges. While we tend to like state, county or city parks over private campgrounds, location is our most important consideration when picking a campground as well as availability and do we fit in the site. This year we did bump up our state park number a little bit compared the past couple of years. Our overall cost per night worked out to be just over $32 - a bit higher than many years but again not significantly higher.

Like we have done in past year end reviews, we have looked over the 49 stops from this year and tried to identify our favorites. After the votes were tallied, we came up with 8 clear winners. Don't look at this list as the best campgrounds we stayed at during the year. I will provide the name of the campground we stayed at but these winning stops are based purely on its location or what we found to see and do in the area. I will also warn readers that one place on the list might be a mediocre location if you’re not an avid geocacher but we found it to be quite entertaining.

For each winning stop, there is a short description of what we liked about it, a link to the first blog post for that location which will provide much more information about the stop and some of our favorite pictures from the stop. Since I am behind on my blog writing, there are some of the stops without the link to the post but this will be updated as they are written. In chronological order, here are the top 8 stops for 2025.

• Cloudland Canyon State Park, Trenton Georgia - We had done a day trip to this park back in 2021 and fell in love with the park and it’s wonderful hikes and views. We managed to get a spot for 5 nights and found it to be a rather roomy site. The final 8 miles into the parking lot is up a rather steep and curving road. It is doable in a rig our size but not necessarily fun. We repeated one of our favorite hikes the West Rim Loop. By staying in the park for multiple days, we were able to hike Sitton’s Gulch Trail which follows the base of the valley along a creek. This park is not too far from Chattanooga so we spent one day exploring some of the sights in that town including the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Cloudland Canyon is a nice relaxing place to visit in northern Georgia.

Cloudland Canyon Blog Post

Cloudland Canyon View

Large Overhanging Rock

• Union River Big Bear Campground, Silver City Michigan - Situated in the far western part of the Upper Peninsula, this private campground is pretty much surrounded by the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We stayed here for a week after completing our Habitat build in Marquette. It is a remote location that didn’t have any cell coverage for our devices but there was reasonable WiFi that worked in our rig. There are many hiking trails within the park and we take advantage of many of them. The main feature of this area are the numerous waterfalls - more of them than can be seen in the time we were here. We had found a decent guide that rated the falls on beauty and ease of getting to the viewing location and we managed to hit a great number of the better ones. The only real problem with this stop was coming in early July - the bugs were pretty bad at times. If you can time your visit for the fall colors, I bet the views would be spectacular and the bugs would be less of an issue.

First Porcupine Mountains Blog Post

Lake of the Clouds

Beautiful Bond Falls

• Hancock Recreation Area Campground, Hancock Michigan - This stop isn’t all that far from the Porcupine Mountains but there is so much to see and do in this area that it would be a challenge to attempt both areas from one campground. Situated on the Keweenaw Peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior, this part of the UP was formerly a big copper mining area. Several of the old mines and facilities have been taken over by the National Park Service and offer a wide range of interesting tours. We did head up to Copper Harbor to explore an old lighthouse and fort. This area is known for some excellent mountain biking be we didn’t get a chance to try any bike trails and only got In minimal hiking since there were so many other things to see and do and we only had 5 nights in Hancock.

First Keweenaw Peninsula Blog Post

Shaft-Rock House at Quincy Mine

Eagle Harbor Light House

Incredible Stone Building in Calumet

• Camp Scholler Air Show, Oshkosh Wisconsin - Usually I don’t try to rank our tops picks for any given year, but this stop was so much fun that it was easily our favorite place of 2025 and rates up with the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and the Lake Havasu Pyrotechnics Show as bucket list destinations. Similar to these other two, Oshkosh is only on the list because of the event that takes place every July - the EAA Airventure Show. There are around 12,000 mostly primitive camping sites in a 400 acre field so you’re not here for the camping experience. But for a full week, you can join in with roughly 100,000 other visitors each day and partake in everything aviation related. We are not at all into airplanes or flying but we still had a great time. There are 4 hour long airshows each afternoon and two nights during the week are nighttime airshows with planes, fireworks, laser lights and drones which were some of the most incredible events to behold. My blog post listed below will provide all the details about attending and what you’ll see while at Oshkosh. Add it to your bucket list!

Oshkosh Air Show Blog Post

Large Group of Warbirds During Air Show

Colorful Aerobatic Biplane

Nighttime Air Show Begins

• Bear Paw Campground Itasca State Park, Shelvin Minnesota - In mid August, we spent 9 nights camping inside Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota. The park’s claim to fame is being the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It’s one of the few places along this 2300 mile long river where visitors are encouraged to walk across from one side to the other. It’s only about 15 feet and ankle deep so it isn’t all that impressive of a feat. There are many miles of hiking trails to enjoy. The 11 mile paved bike path right out of the campground can be linked with a gravel one way wilderness drive for a great 17 mile loop around the lake.

Being there for an extended time, we were able to venture out of the park to see some other sights. The Heartland Trail a little southeast of camp was a wonderful bike ride out of the town of Walker. Possibly the highlight of the stop was a day trip to the town of Detroit Lakes to see the trolls. These 6 art installations are scattered all around the area and we found it is a full day to get them all in since most of them are not right at a parking area but require a bit of a walk. But the effort was worth it.

 First Itasca State Park Blog Post

Calm Waters of Lake Itasca Near Sunset

The First Few Feet of the Mighty Mississippi River

Chris Mimics Ronny Funny Face Troll

• Turtle River State Park, Arvilla North Dakota - Located 25 miles outside of Grand Forks is the small town of Gilby North Dakota. Small is an understatement - population ~240 people! The nearest campground was this state park about 10 miles away. Why did we want to go to this blip on the map in the middle of farm fields and not much else? That’s easy - geocaching. We had heard about Gilby on a geocaching podcast we routinely listen to and it sounded quite intriguing. When we put together our travel plans for Minnesota, I realized that we were only going to be 150 miles from Gilby and talked Chris into heading there. This place is known as the Disneyland of geocaching mainly because of one very creative cache hider named Trycacheus.

We spend 3 full days driving all over the backroads of Gilby in search of some of the most creative caches we’ve done over our 15+ years of geocaching. Most of the hides involved some sort of puzzle that must be solved in order to open the final cache container and each puzzle was very unique. Some were complicated and required a fair amount of thought while others were simply cute and fun to solve. Brainpower was used for most of them but a few required strength or throwing accuracy. In our 6 nights there, we found 71 caches with 50 of them having over 100 favorite points. We were there a couple weeks before some big geocaching event but that probably worked out in our favor so we could enjoy the time spent solving them in solitude. There were a few other things to see in the area but not many. So if you are a geocacher, this is a must do stop, otherwise you will likely skip this part of North Dakota.

 

 Blog Post from Gilby

Giant Anvil Weathervane is a Geocache

ET Phone Home Bike Cache

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife Cache

• Black Beach Campground, Silver Bay Minnesota - This stop wasn’t planned until a couple weeks before staying there. We only decided to consider checking out this part of Minnesota known as the “North Shore” after several people talked about how beautiful it is and a tour of the state should include seeing it. It’s an area that extends about 150 miles northeast of Duluth to the Canadian border near Grand Portage all along the northern shore of Lake Superior. We worked 4 nights into our schedule to check it out. There are a fair number of campgrounds along the route and some of the state parks looked nice but didn’t have availability during our timeframe. We picked Silver Bay because it was roughly halfway along the North Shore so we could easily explore in either direction.

There are numerous places to see with lots of waterfalls and other attractions. Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse were two of our favorites. One day was spent exploring all the way up to Grand Portage just before the border crossing. We did a beautiful hike there and found lots of places to stop at on our drive back. If you do make it to the area, you should really check out Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors. Had we only known to include the North Shore as we were planning our tour of Minnesota, we would have allotted more time to explore.

 Blog Post from Silver Bay

Split Rock Lighthouse Reflection

Gooseberry Falls State Park

Black Beach

Finally Saw the Northern Lights

• Top of the World Campground, Tellico Plains Tennessee - This was our last long stop before heading back to Florida for the winter. We really enjoy spending time in the Appalachian Mountains and doing so in the fall is even better. Having spent most of our time in these mountains on the North Carolina side near Asheville, we picked this out of the way campground to spend a week exploring. We found some quirky things to see in the area including tours of Mayfield Dairy and Sweetwater Valley farms where we saw robotic cow milking equipment in action.

There are many nice hikes to do in this area but it might be most famous for Cherohala Skyway - a 43 mile stretch of road from Tellico Plain TN to Robbinsville NC. It’s a very scenic drive through the mountains and we had (accidentally) timed our visit to be near peak autumn colors. This road ties into another drive called the Tail of the Dragon and many car enthusiasts come here from far away to drive these roads. The day we drove a section of it, there was an Aston Martin car club enjoying the drive - a total of 38 from vintage ones like James Bond drove to brand new models. They would have been much more fun to drive than the Jeep!

 Blog Post Not Written Yet

View from Our Campsite at Top of the World

River View Along Cherohala Skyway

Indian Boundary Lake TN

Below is a map showing all 435 places we have camped in the past eight and a half years. For additional information on any of them, click on the link below the map which will open the actual Google Map I use. Pan and zoom on the map and by clicking on any pin, a window will pop up with the name of the location and a link to the blog post(s) for that place. Those interested in hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or nature photography, may find some of the posts useful if you plan to visit an area we have explored. Our blog posts are more about the interesting locations we discovered during our stops and less about campground reviews so don't expect to find much information about what campground is the best in a specific area.

Click HERE to Open Interactive Google Map

We still haven’t made any plans for where 2026 will take us but I’m sure we will come up with something in the next couple months.

WI to IA to Il to IN

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

We exit Spring Green Wisconsin after spending a total of 30 nights camping in the state this year. Roughly half of those nights were way back in July and the other half from late September to early October. We found nearly 100 geocaches in that time in 34 new counties. We stretched our stay up north as long as we dare. Not that the weather was getting cold yet but we know it’s coming. It’s always a trade off between how long we stay up north and how quickly we need to travel back south. We only have 24 more nights before we plan to be back on our lot at The Great Outdoors in Titusville Florida and need to cover over 1600 miles. We prefer to limit our travel days to no more than 200 miles so in theory, we could spend a couple more weeks in Wisconsin before rushing back just doing 8 overnight stops along the way. But we have learned that back to back travel days tend to be very tiring and there are some things to see long the way.

We booked three different campgrounds along the way with stays of 4 or more nights to help maintain a sane pace. One is in southern Indiana, another in the mountains of western Tennessee and the last in a state park just south of Atlanta. We will use 7 Elks Lodges to fill in the gaps between these campgrounds and this will let us have travel days that average 150 miles. In terms of the route, there were lots of options but we picked places we haven’t camped before just to see something different. In fact the campground in southern Indiana near Evansville wasn’t picked because there was something we really wanted to see in the area. It was chosen simply because there was a “hole” in our travel map. The nearest campground we’ve stayed at in prior travels was about 90 miles in any direction from the one we picked. How’s that for winging it!

Our first stop was in Davenport Iowa just across the Mississippi River from Moline Illinois - about 145 miles. Our destination was an Elks Lodge. They don’t have any services or at least not ones that can be reached if the lodge parking lot is busy but for one night it was fine to just have a safe place to park. We arrived early enough to get out before dark to find a few geocaches including an old one hidden in 2001. The next day we have just over 100 miles to drive to the Peoria Illinois Elks Lodge. This lodge has a single 15 amp outlet at the back of a parking lot. It was next to a golf course and I opted to turn the rig around from the direction I originally parked for fear of getting a golf ball to the front windshield. Since it was a short driving day, we got in very early in the afternoon and had time to explore. After checking in the lodge at the bar and talking with a few of the locals, we are ready to head out.

Peoria has a little more sentimental value for Chris than most of these midwestern cities since she attended Bradley University, graduating 40 years ago. But she has never had a strong desire to return to here and in past years as we crisscross the country, there have been opportunities to stop in Peoria but we always have always chosen a different route. This time, I think I was only able to convince her to make a stop because I wanted to find geocaches in surrounding counties. We did have 2 places we wanted to visit - obviously the campus at Bradley being one of them. The other is to check out Caterpillar - the construction equipment manufacturer - which is headquartered here. In fact, our visit was coinciding with their 100th anniversary this year and there were some special events taking place over the upcoming weekend in a couple of days. They also have a very nice visitor center in the heart of downtown right next to the Illinois River.

Caterpillar Visitor Center

Cat 950 Loader Out Front

We park next to the visitor center and head into to the desk. We told the receptionist where we had parked and asked about the signs regarding parking restrictions but no apparent meters or other way to pay. She tells us we must move our car and head to the free parking garage just to the west. Getting there was a bit more of a problem than normal since some streets were already closed off in preparation for the 100th anniversary event taking place this weekend. We find the free parking garage that is for both the Caterpillar museum and the adjacent Peoria Riverfront Museum. We head back in to purchase our tickets. Tickets were just $6 per person since we qualified as “old”.

Early Steam Tractor Scale Model

The tour starts with a video about the history of Caterpillar. It was good but the real highlight of the video is where the theater is constructed - in the dump body of a Cat 797F mining truck. This is a massive vehicle - about 50 feet long, 32 feet wide and 23 feet tall. After the video, we check it out. Since it it so tall, they have actually constructed a second floor up at the bed level where the theater resides. I suspect that some of the truck’s systems weren’t installed to save cost and weight but from just walking around the perimeter it looks like a real one may look except this one is clean. The 13 foot tall tires were definitely fake but realistic looking.

Back End of Mining Truck

Movie Theater Exit Door

One wing of the museum has a ton of displays with topics like design, modeling and ergonomics for equipment operators. The later one was neat because it an operator’s seat and a whole series of joysticks that are used on different types of equipment. Many of the displays have touchscreen monitors with lots of videos about all sorts of topics from design through use of all the things Caterpillar builds. You could easily spend a couple hours if you choose to watch every one of them.

Ergonomic Testing

Cutaway Engine Display

There are lots of old equipment on display dating back to the beginnings of the company. Another wing has a handful of brand new equipment. One corner of this wing has all sorts of equipment simulators where visitors can try out how good they are at driving a dozer, backhoe or road grader. Unfortunately there was a rather large group of guys that had monopolized them and didn’t seem to be close to being done.

Caterpillar Ten from 1929

Early Diesel-Electric Powerplant

View of New Equipment Area

Cat D8 Dozer

All the real equipment were closed and had signs telling people to not climb on them except for one. Chris did get a chance to try out the tractor/loader/backhoe combination. This one was much bigger than the one I used to own in western New York. Still the most impressive vehicle here is the mining truck. We spent 90 minutes exploring the museum and had a great time.

Chris Finds Her New Ride

Front View of Mining Truck

We debated about walking up the block to the other museum but it was going to be closing soon and it was such a nice day that we decided to to walk along the Illinois River. We started to work on a couple of geocaches but we soon realized that the one we were working on was a rather long walk that would be much better completed on a bicycle when we have more time. Since we still wanted to drive across the river to find a cache in another country and get over to campus and walk around a bit, we decide to head out.

I-74 Across the Illinois River

Artwork Along Riverwalk

We made it to Bradley University by 5 PM. Like I mentioned, it’s been 40 years since Chris has been here so needless to say things have changed quite a bit.

St Marks Church

Newman Center on Bradley Campus

Westlake Hall

We did find the Newman Center where Chris had lived for a few years was still there, but lots of other things were gone or at least Chris’ memory of them was quite different. I know that when I make it back to the University of Cincinnati, it always seems so different and I’ve made it back probably a dozen times in the forty years. I think it was good for her to walk down memory lane a bit. Fortunately Bradley has a fairly small campus so it doesn’t take too long to walk to all the spots she was hoping to see. It was close to dinner time and we wanted to head back to the lodge to eat dinner and then go back into the bar at the lodge and have a drink with some of the locals now that it was much busier.

Gargoyles Watching Us

Chris at Her Alma Mater

We were considering staying here two nights so we could make it to some of the special event being held at Caterpillar but we both decided we had seen enough construction equipment and displays about them that it made more sense to just move on the following morning to our next destination at the Elks Lodge in Effingham Illinois. It’s a 172 mile drive but almost all on interstates so it was a fairly easy drive and we were able to take advantage of several rest stops along the way that had geocaches to stretch the legs along the drive. We arrived at the lodge midafternoon and find the parking lot was packed. Fortunately their lot is connected to a strip mall parking lot and not many cars were there. We head into the lodge to check in and found just the bartender and 2 other people. We were confused as to why their parking lot was packed full of mostly pickup trucks and vans yet nobody was at the bar. Turns out they had rented one of their rooms to the local plumbers union for a meeting. We were told they would be finishing up shortly and once they leave, we should be able to move the rig next to the building where they had installed a 50A outlet. The bartender  said they don’t get a large number of traveling Elk but several a year do show up. We have a beer and get into position before dark. We have 140 miles more to get to our reservation in southern Indiana but not for another day, so we will take the opportunity to spend 2 nights here and use our day off to explore the area.

I’ll admit, when we tried to find interesting places to visit in this area, we weren’t finding a lot of possibilities. We decide to spend the bulk of the non-travel day driving the car instead and find caches in a few different counties in the vicinity of Effingham. But the whole day wasn’t spend simply driving around southern Illinois. Just a few miles to the west of town is Ballard Nature Center. It has around 6 miles of hiking trails and over a dozen geocaches in its 210 acres. We only got in 2 miles of hiking and found 4 caches. It is a pretty place but it was warm and humid and bugs got the better of us.

Pond at Ballard Nature Center

The next day we head south and east to Scales Lake Park in Boonville Indiana - just outside of Evansville. This stop was picked rather arbitrarily. It was close to the intended route we were taking from Wisconsin to Florida. It was in a location we have never camped before. We originally planned to stay at Audubon State Park just across the Ohio River in northern Kentucky which had some campsite availability. But after studying the maps and looking at the campsites on street view a few days ago, we weren’t convinced our size of rig would actually fit regardless of the information provided by the park. We later found this county park east of Evansville that seemed a better fit. The 140 mile drive wasn’t too bad although we did make it a bit more interesting by trying to stop for a geocache in the town of Louisville Illinois. A thirty eight foot, 32,000 pound motor home pulling a Jeep is tricky to use as a caching vehicle on travels days. But with advance planning, we suspected we could pull into the parking lot of a nearby school which should be empty since it was Sunday morning. We were right, made the find and continued on to Scales Lake Park.

Getting setup in our site became a bit of a problem. The sites here are definitely not spacious and there was a pickup truck parked in ours. Fortunately, the owner was in the travel trailer right next door and came out to quickly get it out of the way.  Somewhere in the process of backing up, she hit the power pedestal of a neighboring site across the road. I don’t think she realized she had hit it and just kept moving doing a good job scratching the side of the truck. They also had a lot of stuff just scattered across their site and into ours. They moved things so we could at least hook up our water, power and sewer lines but it always just seemed a bit strange since there was no way that everything sitting outside would even fit back into the trailer and much of it was stuff that you really don’t want to get wet, so I’m hoping we don’t have rain in the next 4 nights we plan on being here.

Our Next Door Neighbor's Site at Scales Lake

There were a few sights to see in this part of the country. One of them is the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial. We have already visited Abe Lincoln’s Home in Springfield Illinois in the spring of 2023. The one here memorializes the location where he spent bulk of his childhood. It’s only about 20 miles from camp but there was one possible snag. We are about 2 weeks into a government shutdown and it wasn’t at all clear whether the place would even be accessible. We knew that all the buildings would be closed and not staffed but we couldn’t determine online whether the gate in would be open. So we head out and hope we can at least walk the grounds, check out any outside displays and possibly peek in some windows.

Entrance to Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial

We arrived and found we could drive in without any issue. The main visitors center has some beautiful stone artwork and likely is nice inside but a sign explaining about the shutdown was taped to the locked doors.

Exterior of Main Visitor Center

We saw signs directing visitors to other sights north of the main building. We also had a geocache that would tour us around the grounds as well.

Split Rail Fence

Flowering Tobacco Plant

Footprint of Original Lincoln Cabin

There are multiple replicas of buildings that would have been here back in the 1820’s. I suspect that there would be interpretive rangers at some of them in normal times and likely would have some of the buildings open to explore inside as well.

There were railroad tracks running through the grounds and we could hear and feel a slow moving train nearby. After walking the nature trail to see the woods that Abe would have spent his youth exploring, we went over to check out the location of the old spring and discovered the other set of railroad tracks. There were two locomotives idling but no visible train cars nearby. We head back to the car by following the Trail of Twelve Stones. All along the trail are stones taken from buildings that were significant to Abe’s life. Maybe if you’re a big history buff, you would marvel at the stones. We found them to be a bit underwhelming but it did get us to stop at each one and read about the rock sitting there. The geocache we worked on while exploring the park has its final container a couple miles away so we had to stop there on our way out.

Locomotive

One of 12 Special Rocks

There is also Lincoln State Park on the south side of the national memorial. There are numerous hiking trails and quite a few geocaches we debated about heading there for some more hiking but opted to instead drive around the area to see other locations and find geocaches in a couple of other Indiana counties. One stop brought us to Lakeside Park in the town of Holland Indiana. It was definitely a pretty setting. We did the walk around the lake, found what we were looking for and also discovered a windmill reminiscent of those found in the town’s namesake.

Turtle Sunning on Log

View of Holland Lake

Windmill

The following day, we head into Evansville. Our first stop was to the Willard Public Library. We used to visit a large number of libraries during our travels. It was a place we could find decent WiFi to download movies and shows onto our phones or tablets for later viewing. But ever since we got a reliable hotspot, we haven’t needed to stop at them since we can typically just stream our shows. Occasionally we still visit a library but it’s almost always for a geocache. The one at this library is quite special. It is a webcam cache. One where you need to get a picture of yourself on the library’s website standing in the view of said webcam. Webcams are quite commonplace nowadays but ones tied in with geocaching are rather rare. This type of cache was discontinued in 2005 so only existing ones are still available. Worldwide there are about 200 remaining but only ~74 in the USA. We’ve found 31 previously. If we happen to be near one, we usually make a concerted effort to log it. The other, possibly more unusual, aspect of this library is the fact it is haunted by the “Grey Lady”! We did a little preliminary research and found a YouTube video explaining the history of the ghost sitings which started in 1937.

We knew this stop would be unique but we didn’t realize just how beautiful the building would be. Opened in 1885, this Victorian Gothic building is really incredible to see. The wooden front doors are massive and we even had a skeleton peaking out the transom light above - although it is just a couple weeks before Halloween so the decorations might be simply associated with the timing of our visit and nothing to do with the Grey Lady.

Willard Public Library in Evansville

Entrance Door

When we enter, we are greeted with some amazing woodworking. Lots of quartersawn white oak with intricate carvings and details. It was almost a sensory overload. It appears the library staff is definitely big into Halloween decorations as well with all sorts of spooky stuff on the walls, lights and banisters.

Staircase

Window with Stained Glass

Detailed Window Trim

We were so enamored with the inside beauty that we nearly forgot why we were really at the library. It turns out there are actually “ghost” cams in several of the rooms. From previous pictures, we can gauge where they are located and we pick one that should be easy to find. There was a librarian in the room we selected and we talked with her at great length. There are a lot of people like us coming in to get a photo so she is very aware of what we are up to. Like a lot of these webcams, there is a bit of a delay between when we position ourselves where we need to be and when we show up on the camera online. With a little patience we get the required photo.

Webcam Screenshot

With that out of the way, we can explore more of the library interior. One of the side meeting rooms was so pretty with a beautiful fireplace and a 10 foot tall set of barrister bookcases. We were so glad that this cache brought us here because we likely would not have stopped otherwise. Oh, no ghosts were spotted during our time wandering around.

Closeup of Woodworking Detail

Meeting Room

Massive Barrister Bookcase

Next we head across the Ohio River into Kentucky to check out John James Audubon State Park. We start at a stand alone section of the park called Audubon Wetlands. There is a 1.5 mile trail that both loops through the woods and has a long boardwalk over the wetlands area. Being less than half a mile from the river, I suspect that from time to time this area is completely under water during spring floods.

Boardwalk At Audubon Wetlands

After eating lunch, we headed back to the main state park area and into the visitor center. The buildings are pretty amazing. The park is dedicated to John Audubon - a very famous naturalist who lived in this part of Kentucky for nearly a decade back in the early 1800’s.

Museum at Audubon Park

Eagle Statue

We have visited a few places dedicated to Audubon in our travels. Many times the place is simply named in his memory so it might simply be called the Audubon Trail or Nature Center. This museum is truly a place celebrating all things Audubon. There is an $6 admission fee (with senior discount) to enter but they have a strict “no photography” policy so I can’t show you what it looks like. Your fee gets you a small device with headphones that will give you a guided tour of the museum. At each of the dozen or so stops, you only need to hold the player up to the number on the wall and you will get a full description of what you are seeing. He was a fascinating character that traveled all over the world finding and drawing  mainly birds in great detail. While his name is synonymous with conservation, today we realize that most of his drawings required the bird being documented to be killed, posed and then drawn with amazing realism. Regardless of the questionable methods of the time, his works are the most comprehensive ever published.

John James Audubon

There is more of the museum to explore where photos are permitted. We head around the various rooms and learn lots of interesting animal facts along the way.

Owl

Real Frog

There are quite a few hiking trails in the park. We pick the Audubon State Park Loop at just under 3 miles. It is definitely a pretty place for a hike.

Pond View

Wonderful Trail in the Woods

At one point we see a side trail with a sign for a scenic viewpoint. It will end up pushing the hike to 3.5 miles but the view was nice.

Shelter Along the Trail

Scenic Viewpoint

We had one last stop for a virtual geocache hidden on the north side of Evansville at Bosse Field - the third oldest baseball park still in use today only surpassed by Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago. Stopping here also allowed us to stop at the nearby Chuy’s Mexican restaurant. We enjoy their food and often will try to stop if we find one on our travels.

For our last day at Scales Lake Park, we stay close to home and actually explore this park. We start off by heading over to the small petting zoo that we have driven past multiple times. It’s just a short walk from the campground. We were still 100 yards away from the barn and animal pens but we saw a donkey heading our way walking along the main park road. We weren’t expecting that and wondered if someone had accidentally left him out and we should try to round him up. We later asked a staff member and found out that many of the animals are let out to wander the park unattended but they need to be careful about which ones are out at the same time since some of them aren’t real friendly to one another.

Escaped Donkey

The barn looks to be fairly new with multiple pens and stalls for the various groups of animals. Of course Chris found the goats to be her favorite and they definitely seemed to like having visitors possibly because we can be the source of food.

Barn at Petting Zoo

Curious Goat

Goats Like Other Visitor

Besides goats, there was also a miniature horse and another donkey. We checked them all out before moving on.

Miniature Horse

Second Donkey

There are over 8 miles of trails in the park with some of them designed for mountain biking. We aren’t up for a bike ride, but a walk around the lake seems like the least we can do. As we head from the barn over towards the lake, our donkey friend was slowly making his way back to the barn having finished his morning walk.

Donkey Returning to Barn

This park looks like it is very popular in the summer months. Besides the lake, there is a pool with large slide and a nice beach area. Even though it was a beautiful day, this was all closed for the season so very quiet.

Slide and Pool

Beach and Dock

View Across Lake

We continue the walk around the lake crossing the spillway that may not be accessible during all times of the year. It is a very peaceful place with no apparent visitors to interrupt our walk.

Crossing Spillway

Some Fall Colors

We eventually get to a section of the trail that is clearly meant for mountain biking. The large banked wooden structure looks kind of fun but may be more adventurous than we should tackle. We finish up with almost 3 miles of hiking this morning. Scales Lake is a nice park and campground. We may have been able to find a better campsite than the one we picked but we weren’t there very often so it worked out fine for us. Tomorrow we will continue our journey south, passing through Kentucky on our way to Tennessee.

Banked Bike Curve