08-12-2020 Paducah, Kentucky to Lake Wapello, Iowa

The Holiday Inn was lovely;  but we’re outta here!  We’ve got Ginger’s banana muffins for breakfast and we’re off to Hannibal, MO.  There are lots of rivers to cross and tons of flat, green fields, some with soybeans and, later on, CORN!!!  And the weather is bizarre!  There is rain, then sun, then more rain, and we even get flash-flood warnings!  It seems to be part of the Derecho or eyeless hurricane that did so much damage across the Mid-West yesterday.  We catch a brief glimpse of the St. Louis Arch through the haze! 

As the afternoon wears on we arrive at Hannibal and easily find the historic downtown from Mark Twain’s time.  We have lunch at the Mark Twain Dinette and Ginger tells me we need to have a pork tenderloin sandwich!  It’s a Midwest thing!  There is twice as much meat as there is bun!  We get onion rings and cole slaw to go with.  And they make their own Rite-Maid root beer!  The tables are far far apart and the staff is all wearing masks.  We’re just pleased that they are open.

 

After lunch we wander the town for a little while and then head for Bonnie’s campsite at Lake Wapello.  The architecture is fascinating and everything is Twain related.  You can visit his boyhood home and see his father’s law office and Becky Thatcher’s house and take a steamboat cruise on the Mississippi.  You can even see the famous fence!

 

About an hour before we arrive Ginger says she’s sleepy and I take over the driving.  Ginger’s car is a lot bigger than mine and, of course, she has a built in GPS.  I get on-the-job training and manage to get us there without the first idea of where we really are!   And I don’t hit any of the horse-drawn buggies!

 

Bonnie is home when we arrive and she is a stitch!  This is going to be a blast.  And she’s a UU and shares our views on most everything, so we don’t have to be careful about anything we say.  She’s hung a hummingbird feeder and there are rufus hummers that find it intriguing!

 

The RV is really huge!  I think our first cabin was smaller and we lived in that for a decade!  Bonnie has made enchiladas and corn on the cob and we’ve brought wine, so dinner is lovely.  And for dessert we have rhubarb and granola topping. 

 

The only drawback is that there seems to be no WiFi and the cell service is very unpredictable.  I’ll blog every night and, eventually, I’ll find a way to post.  In the meantime there is great conversation and eventually we’ll head to bed.  We’ve got a king-sized one to share.