We are just east of Hannibal, Missouri and we head south and east with a plan of keeping on two lane roads as much as possible. Interstates are too predictable and a bit like, “Gas, Food, Lodging” – My Home Town while back roads are where you find the small town uniqueness. Each town has its own personality with both strengths and weaknesses or in my working days, strengths and opportunity areas.
We are clueless on where we will end up tonight but expect it to be somewhere in Indiana. We plot our route so that we travel to the south of Springfield, IL through Pawnee, Kincaid, the larger town and county seat, Taylorville. Wells worked in Kincaid back in 1981 collecting detailed meteorological data near a coal fired power plant. The EPA contracted a large study to verify the air pollution models used in site permitting. The project was to have a large data set collected of both meteorological and air pollution data for six year. The first two years at a flat terrain site, Kincaid, the second two years at a hilly site near Oak Ridge, TN, and the final two years at a mountainous site, Durango, CO. Shortly after President Reagan took office in 1981 the project was cancelled. If the project went forward Wells’ life would be different than what it is today. Once the project ended Wells moved to Syracuse, NY.
We push eastward towards Indiana when we start thinking it’s time to find where to stay tonight. With Covid-19 we are finding it difficult to know what the “rules” are for each state. We discover that all Indiana campgrounds are closed. It appears we are going to break down and do something we have never done in the past. Walmart normally allows RV’ers to park in their store parking lots overnight. One must first check with the store manager. Two of our RV phone apps says the two Walmart stores, one in IL and the other in IN, closest to us allow RVs to park overnight, Great! A call to the local Walmart and the answer is that the parking lot is closed and no overnight parking. Walmart stores are not open 24 hours so they shut the lot down. Well, there goes our ace in the hole for staying in Indiana. A search for a campground in Illinois has nothing close by, but 50 miles due north there is one that can take us. We turn left and head north camping in Casey, IL. Some of you may know we live on Casey Cheese Factory Road in Sherburne and our road is pronounced Casey as in Casey at the bat. Casey, IL is pronounced Kay-Zee.
Determining what camping rules are in each state with Covid-19 is difficult, but we stumbled upon an easy fix. KOA – Campgrounds of America are not places we normally enjoy. They are a bit like Interstates, you know what to expect. They are clean and a bit pricey but overall consistent. We now can go to the KOA website for a campground in any state and at the top of the website it says what the current situation is for camping in the state.
Seeing North America 