Back East again

We crossed the full-to-the-brim Mississippi River this afternoon near Quincy, Illinois, so we are officially back in the East..  I've been away from the computer for much of the weekend, while we visited (brother-in-law) Tim and Pam in Marion, IA.

After having the RV serviced in Forest City, IA, we visited Pilot Knob State Park, about 3 miles east of town, and returned to Forest City on Friday morning to take the tour of the Winnebago factory.

It was really quite interesting to watch all those RV's being made, including all those lovely Itasca Navions!  I left there convinced that we had made a good choice with ours.

The drive to Tim's took much of Friday afternoon, and we spent the next three nights in his driveway.  Kak drove down from Madison and Erin came from River Falls, so we had a great family gathering, fueled with lots of good food. (THANKS, PAM!!)  It's hard to believe how fast all the little ones are growing, especially Reiley who is distinguishing herself with her performances in archery competitions.  Erin was kind enough to give several of us much-needed haircuts.

We awoke on Monday to thunder and steady rain. We considered options, including simply heading home directly, but decided to go with the plan to head into Kentucky and Tennessee.  So far, it's working out;.  Although we went through heavy cloud cover in Iowa, it became less and less intense as we neared St. Louis, and there wasn't any actual rain all day.  At this point, we're just taking it a day at a time.  It's really no fun to camp out in the rain, so if the weather does not cooperate, we'll head for VA.  If it's good, we should be home next Sunday or Monday.