Bears Den, Grove, Oklahoma

Today we made the short 120 mile pull from Chanute to Grove, OK. We stayed here last fall for several days, it's a free membership park on the Grand Lake. We were rained on while traveling but not while in Grove, yet. Wonder what this place is like in the summer? I'll take it the way it is now, peaceful & quiet. Our neighbors are a nice mallard couple.

Chanute, NuWa & local exploration

We are still in Chanute. We have been socializing with fellow HitchHiker owners here at the city park. It varies from 2 to half a dozed HitchHikers. I have met two forum members here, Mallo & GlenH. It's nice to actually meet in person someone you have communicated with on the Internet users forum.

We took our HH into the factory service Monday morning EARLY in the RAIN. We were up before 6, broke camp in heavy rain and were at the plant at 7:10. We then went exploring, we visited one of Laura Ingle's houses on the prairie. In addition to the house is a log cabin, small post office & one room school house. We then went to see the "yellow brick road" and Emmit Kelly (the clown) museum. Ha Ha Ha......although the Kansas map and tourist book have both identified we couldn't find any "yellow brick road" (perhaps it blew away with Dorothy & Toto) and the Emmit Kelly museum looked like the last visitor was 25 years ago, then it closed. But as you can see, Judy did find the tin man. We did have a nice drive through the flint hills of Kansas. We spent Monday night in a motel and picked up our home at 2pm Tuesday & returned to the city park. Tuesday morning we toured the NuWa plant. They shut down production in January, are revamping production, service & parts and will resume production in June. About a dozen RV manufacturers (very large ones too!) have gone out of business within the past year due to the economy so we are excited that NuWa didn't join them. We were going to leave today but the weather is bad so we'll stay put & depart for Oklahoma tomorrow. Judy is busy oiling the wood work, I get to do the high parts.

Today we made the 270 mile run from Mountain View, MO to Chanute, KS. Man was it windy, hitting us broadside most of the way. Between the hills and strong headwind mileage dropped from 10.5 to 8.6 mpg. The last 35 miles was northward so we had a tail wind that almost blew us through Kansas into Nebraska. You can see the trees behind us in the above pictures blowing to the right. Judy was surfing the net and found there was a free Martin & Osa Johnson movie at the community college so we spent a couple hours there this evening. The high school girls were playing softball beside the CG so we had some action there too. We'll probably participate in more of the weekends Johnson activities.

Mountain View, MO

Today we made a casual drive (4 hours, 200 miles) from AK to MO. We took the back roads into the Ozarks so the truck was having some fun on the big hills, can't call them mountains. We are back to early spring, the trees are just starting to leaf out but it is 83 degrees at 2:30. We saw our first lilacs, lots of iris are in full bloom the last few days.

Beale Street, BBQ & ghosts

This is the campground laundry room....do you think the Mississippi River floods here? We thought this baby tugboat & barge was cute.

In the evening we did a one mile walking ghost tour in Memphis. Judy enjoyed the one in Nashville last year but this one wasn't as good. It was a very pleaseant evening and even I enjoyed the casual walk through downtown. You are right, we didn't see any ghosts. We did see the trolly cars and went for a ride.

We went to a well known BBQ joint, Interstate BBQ, in Memphis for dinner. Judy, the BBQ nut, said it was very good, better that the place on the FL/AL line. It was good and we both agree when passing through Memphis in the future we'll stop at Tom Sawyers CG & Interstate BBQ. After dinner we went to Beale Street, the home of blues & rock & roll so it says. We parked out butts in a nice little outdoor bar and listened to the music on Beale Street. On Wednesday evenings it's bike night and there were LOTS of 'em as you can see.

Congradulations to Ron & Lois, they sent me an email with Elvis' middle name!!

Graceland

This is sunrise over Memphis and the Mississippi River. We left one bedroom shade up so we could see the sun come up this morning, it was painful but I managed. The second picture is at sundown. The largest barge we saw today was 35 barges going upriver, the tugboat was really working hard against the strong current. I have trouble envisioning Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn playing on this river.

We drove over to Graceland today to see Graceland. We enjoy Elvis but not to the tune of $60 plus. We could see over the wall and took a couple pictures. It was a busy place and lots of people were spending the $$$ to go in, I didn't sense any economic problems with the US economy here. If the King would have gotten up to greet us I'd have popped the $60 and gone in to see him. Did you know Elvis had a twin brother? He died at birth. What was Elvis' middle name? I know, do you?

Good news.....we gassed the ants this afternoon and I think we have won the war.

Poor Judy still & movin' north

Sunday we decided to stay in Meridian due to some stormy weather. We went on another BBQ search, zero for three. Seems no BBQ restaurants are open on Sundays in Meridian. We settled for Quisnos sub. Poor poor Judy, no BBQ.

We also discovered that we must be parked on the ant capitol of Mississippi. We have never seen so may ants, they are climbing all over the RV, inside & out.

Monday we packed up and were on the road at 8:45 for Memphis. Oh joy of joys....we stopped for lunch and Judy had BBQ!! Finally, she's a happy camper now. We pulled into Tom Sawyers RV Park at 2:45 and have a nice site 75 feet off the Mississippi. We sat outside and watched the barges and can watch them out the back & side windows as the struggle upstream and fly by going downstream.

OK, the first picture you ask about....what does it take to make Judy happy (besides BBQ)? How about a FREE laundry facility with brand new machines!!