Tag: road-trip

Day 2770

Over the river!

Sunday, the seventh day of travel on our trek back to Ontario and after yesterdays long wet day we will be taking today slower hoping this rain will clear our of our way. We will cross the Mississippi river first thing today which means that we will also be in another state, the state of Illinois and while we don’t have fond memories of the states highways. we are hoping for good weather.

Breakfast this morning is with Nick & Emily at the Cracker Barrel, they live approximately one mile away, we have known Emily since the fall of 2021 when she was the volunteer coordinator at the Arboretum. And if you have ever had the pleasure of working with this young lady, she is so committed to what ever she takes on it is easy to give what ever you can to help her succeed. Since the last visit in the spring of 2024 Nick has proposed and a wedding has been planned for the near future, they will make a beautiful couple and we will try to visit when ever possible.

So breakfast was great but they did not have any blessing for my coffee, but the company made up for it, we tied up a table for a couple of hours and it was great to catch up. The parking lot is busy with restaurant patrons so we need to get a move on to maneuver out of our parking spot and find a spot to reattach Ruby and get on the road. By 10:30 we were headed toward tonight destination just a Walmart parking lot a couple of hours away, after yesterdays five hour drive in the rain everyone needed a break. We are pushing a rain storm that just doesn’t seem to want let go and move on, so weather cooperating tomorrow we will get through Indianapolis around noon and will celebrate with another stop at a cracker barrel east of the city.

Todays drive was not without it’s challenges, as we traveled north on I-55 to the I-255 bypass which keeps us out of St Louis and its bad roads, a few mile down the highway all three lanes are closed for construction sending us onto secondary roads and me scrambling for some GPS guidance from Navi. I had started the day without the GPS system thinking I knew the route without any electronic help, and without the road closure I would have been fine, but detours are difficult with 65 feet of vehicles and are hard on fuel mileage. But we made it to I-70 east bound toward Indianapolis the next large metro area we will transverse tomorrow to our Walmart parking spot for the night.

So lets talk about solar in the rain, even on rainy days our solar array will harvest some power, the issue is that it will not bring in as much power as we have used, the last couple of days we have not quite got our battery bank to 100%, oh we got close 90 some percent and because of cloud cover today we were loosing a lot of power. To compensate I decided to run our generator for an hour to help with recharging of the battery bank, so at 12:30 our batteries were at 64% and after an hour of generator time we are now at 84%. And while not really solar the use of lithium batteries is what allows that kind of replenishment, lead-acid batteries would never accept power that quickly, and being a mechanic who only ever thought of a battery as being anything other that a necessary evil to start a vehicle, I have a whole new respect. So as much as I love our solar array a BoonDocker can survive quite well with generator and lithium batteries.

Today’s numbers: 119.2 miles (191.8 kilometers) 2:04 drive time, consumed 15.9 gallons (60.1 liters), average speed 57 mph (91.7 km/h), with fuel mileage of 7.4 mpg (31.8 liter per 100 km)

Day 2769

The (Show Me) State

So, why is Missouri called the “Show Me” State?

Well I asked Chat GPT and this is what it found: Missouri is known as the “Show-Me State,” a nickname that reflects the state’s reputation for skepticism and a demand for evidence before belief. While the exact origin of the phrase is uncertain but more research points to a number of possibilities but the one I liked the best and was the most widely recognized story attributes the phrase to U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver. In 1899, during a naval banquet in Philadelphia, Vandiver is reported to have said: “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

Happy Saturday morning. Way back in Texas we topped off Thunder’s fuel tank at the Buc-ee’s in Amarillo, and I thought I would try and make it all the way to the Buc-ee’s in Springfield Missouri some 550 miles (885 kilometers) away. And this morning we are only 80 miles (129 kilometers) away from finishing that challenge as the fuel gauge is reading just under the 1/2 mark, but I have had a change of plan because when I checked the fuel price on Gas Buddy at the Springfield Buc-ee’s it is $2.99 per gallon and with my Open Roads plan I can purchase fuel for $2.77 a gallon so I will not be buying my diesel at Buc-ee’s this time.

5:20 am was wakeup time this morning, and Mister Sam was much happier to see me this morning, so after his treats I was allowed the best part of a hour of lap time then he went to bed and I perked some coffee, breakfast was sausage patties and fried eggs with a slice of sour dough toast and some salsa on the side, and yes my coffee had a wee blessing of the Irish. Our departure time today is 9 am at the lates, as today will be our longest day yet with hopefully a break in the middle plus we need to fuel up today as well.

Today’s destination is a Cracker Barrel in Arnold Missouri, we have never been to this destination before as it is a few miles away from our normal route, but is very close to a very dear friend that we are going to catch up with. The only issue is that it will be more than four hours of drive time, it is the weekend at a restaurant so we need to arrive after lunch but before dinner to get an overnight spot. The climate has changed drastically, we both felt the change in humidity while travelling yesterday and the amount of standing water is such a change from the desert. Our overnight at the Missouri welcome center was reasonably quiet, this is a newer rest area where the RV parking is separated from the trucks making it quieter being away from refrigerated trucks that run all night long.

On the road before nine and we are going to stop for fuel in about 80 miles (128 kilometers) and it doesn’t take long to see why we normally try to avoid travel on the weekends, traffic seem heavy and the cars are either speeding or holding traffic up, we make it to Springfield MO and pull into the Buc-ee’s to top off Ruby’s fuel tank and for Miss Laurie to grab some supplies, its just after 10 am and the place is jammed but we sneak out the back and roll down the road to a TA truck stop where I top off Thunders fuel tank it took 69.747 Gallons (264 liters) the pump price was $3.329 for a total before discount of $232.19. Between the two stops we lost 45 minuets, so our ETA is now 1:54 pm, if all goes well we should have time for a lunch break.

At 12:30 we pull into a rest area for a bit of a break and some lunch, Miss Laurie made a wrap with some cold cuts and peppers, not enough to make us sleepy but enough of a break for Mister Sam as well as us before the last two hour push. We had a couple of sprinkles on the windshield before lunch and a check of the weather map shows we could hit some rain near our destination. And we did hit some rain, in fact some very heavy rain for the last fifteen minuets, if there had been a suitable spot we would have stopped and waited it out, but there wasn’t and we couldn’t so we continued on. At our destination there were no other RV’s but of course there was a couple of vehicles parked in the RV/Bus spots, who knows why, just ignorance or stupidity I guess, but I got to detach Ruby in the rain as we are too long all hooked up. I’m sure this will be a tough spot to get out of tomorrow (Sunday) morning, but that my friends is an issue for tomorrow.

Today’s numbers: 286.4 miles (460.9 kilometers), 5.02 hours of run time, consumed 36.2 gallons (137 liters), averaged 56 mph (90 km/hr), and fuel mileage of 7.9 mpg (27.77 liters / 100 km) the solar will not be one of our better days but we our batteries were at 96% capacity when we stopped at 3:00 pm.

It has been a cold wet evening, the rain is suppose to stop overnight, and we have a breakfast get together scheduled for eight o’clock tomorrow morning with someone very special, luckily it here at the Cracker Barrel.