Saturday morning we left DuQuoin a little after 8 am and headed north about 200 miles to Kentuckiana Campground in Hopedale, Illinois. We came across this campground 4 years ago and made it a point to stop here again this year. Every Saturday night the Kentuckiana Opry is performed and is included with the camping fee but if reserved seating is desired there is an additional $1.oo per seat charge. For the most part the performers, which consists of 6 or 7 regulars and usually a guest performer, put on a good 2 hour show. On this Saturday, the guest performer, a local celebrity, had a family problem and was unable to be there. The show went on with the regulars doing some celebrity impersonations. One female performer dressed as Donny Osmond sang with her little daughter dressed as Marie. That little girl really hammed it up, rolling her eyes and sashaying around.
The other female performer donned a fake front and performed as Dolly Parton. I don't think we missed anything by the guest performer not being there!Sunday morning we moved on farther north to Belvidere, Illinois to Pine Country Campground, an Outdoor World facility. We will be here for a week. We immediately noticed that there were lots of cut up trees around. We later learned that about 2 weeks ago a tornado touched down here causing this damage plus some RVs were damaged. The campground was closed for a week. The weather seems to be settled at the present time and, hopefully, will stay that way. Mosquitos are terrible here. We are advised to use insect repellent whenever outside but even that dosen't seem to hold off the attacks. Other than all those problems, this is a beautiful campground.
Monday, Tom and I went into Rockford. We wanted to go to Sam's Club to pick up a few things and then were going to eat lunch at Cheddar's restaurant. We found Sam's and picked everything but what we were looking for. We were told at a seminar at DuQuoin that Tang was a good treatment for the holding tanks (yes, Tang the drink of the astronauts) and that buying from a discount club store was the way to go. Well there was no Tang to be bought there. We found the Cheddar's restaurant but it had a notice on the door that it had been closed. So we looked for someplace else to eat. We noticed a building that looked like a farm supply store with a sign Machine Shed Restaurant and decided to give it a try. Machine Shed restaurants are located throughout this part of the country originating in Iowa. They have a real country appearence; the waitresses dress in bib overalls and red gingham shirts, drinking glasses are canning jars. The food was good with reasonable prices. The biggest temptation is the desserts; pies galore, multi-layer cakers and apple dumplings. We shared an apple dumpling served with cinnamon ice cream and can attest to it being delicious!
Tuesday we spent at the campground. We had some cleaning of the motorhome, inside and out , that needed to be done. After attending some seminars at DuQuoin on this topic we put into practice some tips that we learned. Tom got the grill out and we had steaks for dinner. The weather has been wonderful- low humidity, temps in the mid 80's and dropping into the low 60's at night and a gentle breeze much of the time. We've only used the A.C. when we left Travis behind as we went to Rockford on Monday.
