Day 29 -- Roodhouse, Illinois to Cape Girardeau, Missouri -- 195 Miles

Today we set out with only three things in mind: stocking up on groceries, filling a couple of prescriptions, and doing the laundry. Since we didn't have any exciting adventures in mind, we sort of ambled out of camp and down the road with no sense of urgency. Last night we stayed in the municipal camp sponsored by the town of Roodhouse, Illinois. We've been there before, so we knew what to expect. The camp is a little on the crude side, with spaces a good deal out of level, but all three utilities are furnished, which is nice. Also, the camp sits beside a small lake which makes the whole camp look very picturesque.

There's only one problem with many municipal camps nowadays, they tend to be filled nearly to capacity with long-term or permanent campers. These folks are sometimes retired seniors who are living next to the lake because it's cheap and picturesque. Sometimes they're working stiffs who HAVE to live there because they can't afford a mortgage payment in town. And sometimes they're transient workers who have come in to do a job, and when the job is done, they're on down the road. Whichever way, the spaces get filled up and folks passing through like us sometimes have a very hard time finding a place to spend the night.

Such was the case in Roodhouse. When we rolled up we didn't see the sign we expected which said, "Camp Host." That's where we stopped two years ago and paid for our night's rent on a space. This time, not seeing the sign, we just rolled on into the camp, selected an empty spot, and backed into it. It was a little steep to my eye, but I figured I had enough blocks on board to jack the rig into a level position.

Moments later a heavyset woman riding an ATV rolled up opposite our camp and stopped. In a cheery fashion, she said hello and asked if we had reservations for the spot. I told her no, we didn't. She looked thoughtful. "Well," she said finally, "the camp host is gone for the weekend and I have no idea if that spot is reserved or not."

"Are there any spots you know are open?" I asked. "We'll just be here the night."

She kind of chewed her lip and looked thoughtful some more. "You know what," she said finally, "just don't worry about it. Even if it's reserved I doubt the person will be here tonight. I'm sure it will be okay to just stay right there."

I thanked her, she waved with another cheery smile, then sped off on her ATV.

So, hoping the Davis luck would prevail yet again, I set about jacking the rig onto blocks so I could attain some semblance of levelness. In this case it would prove to be a little tough. Using my triple-height ramps I ran the rig up to the top level and checked the level indicator. No good. It looked as if I would have to get it twice as high. Putting my second set of triple-ramps back-to-back with the first, then adding an additional free block, I drove backwards and raised the rig another 1 1/2 inches. Still no good. So then I placed two free blocks on top of the original triple-ramp and drove forward. Still short. Finally, I put one more set of free blocks on the second triple-ramp and backed onto it. I hoped that would work since that's all the blocks I had with me. Fortunately it worked great. Though the rig was still off a tiny bit, it was pretty close and probably wouldn't cause the refrigerator any difficulties.

Just at that point the heavyset woman sped up on her ATV again and stopped. I thought, Oh-Oh, she's here to tell me I have to move. I looked over expecting the worst. "You're good," she said.

"What?"

She repeated, "You're good. I've been watching you out my window raising that rig off the ground. I just had to come tell you I think you're good."

"Well thanks," I said, and gave her a big smile.

"Okay, well I'll see ya," she said, and off she sped on the ATV.

Our plan for the day was to drive Illinois Route 67 all the way to St. Louis where we hoped to pick up Route 3 and drive it all the way to the southern tip of Illinois. Just before we drove off the end of the state, we planned to cross the Mississippi to the west and camp at Cape Girardeau, Missouri. We already had a couple of possibilities marked in the Good Sam book.

The day was just as perfect as you ever see on the road. The sun was shining, the air held just a hint of summer, and the traffic was light. We did have an unplanned pause in Whitehouse, Illinois, when we pulled up to a four-way stop and a Lions Club member approached the window. "Just collecting donations to help children to regain their sight," the yellow-vested volunteer said. I fished a few bucks out of my wallet and dropped them in his basket. "Thanks much," he said. "Have a great day."

Well, we were off to a good start, I thought. It certainly felt like a good day already.

At first we kept on the lookout for a Laundromat just in case the evening's campsite didn't come complete with washing facilities, but we didn't have any luck with that task. We had better luck locating a Walmart. We hadn't even gone two-dozen miles from camp when we came across one and wheeled in to get our shopping done and prescriptions filled. Sending Concetta off with the shopping cart, I moved over to do battle with the pharmacists. Although it is fairly easy to get your scripts filled on the road, it usually takes some time. They always tell you that they have to contact your home base for some reason. Today, finally, I would find out why.

When I approached the drop-off window a super-happy young lady of about twenty wished me a good morning and asked if she might help me. I told her my usual story about being on the road and traveling, and she told me "no problem." As she turned away I added, you know that in Nevada it's two hours earlier than here. She stopped in mid stride and turned back. At that point, having overheard our conversation, the male pharmacist came over. "Should be no problem," he said. "It may take a few minutes, but it usually comes through automatically."

It was at this point that I decided to be brave and ask him just why they always had to call home base before filling an out-of-town script.

It's because the prescription has to be transferred here to us from wherever you filled it last," he said. "It's against the law to do it any other way."

Now I understood. It was all those idiot drug abusers who have screwed things up for the rest of us. Nothing exactly new. Druggies would probably try and fill their prescriptions at ten dozen pharmacies if they weren't held in check.

"Okay," I said. "We have shopping to do. I'll come back." And that was that. In a half hour the scripts were ready to go, the groceries were ready to go, and off we went.

Soon we had transitioned from south Route 67 to south Route 3 and were headed toward the St. Louis area. I was starting to get hungry, and so I began looking for a nice, off-the-highway lunch spot full of green-growing things, a level spot to park, and easy access back on our recently-acquired Route. Almost as soon as I started thinking about stopping I spotted just such an ideal location. It looked to be well off the highway, was completely shrouded in trees, and, once we got in there, we found an nice level place to park. And it also had one more quality that we discovered after finishing our lunch: it turned out to be the premier stopping place of the day.

What we had stumbled onto was a small, but exciting state park known as "River Camp DuBois." If you're not up on your Lewis and Clark lore, River Camp DuBois was the location of the Corp of Discovery's base camp at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Even though the confluence has moved as much three miles south and one mile east in the last two hundred years, the state park is as close to the original location as practicable.

You may remember that we stopped at the Lewis and Clark museum in Nebraska City, Nebraska some time ago. Well, the museum at River Camp DuBois is a huge improvement over the Nebraska Museum. At DuBois they have constructed an exact replica of the Corp of Discovery's keel boat that, our guide told us, was patterned after what he called a Spanish River Galley, a term I had never heard before. Our guide went on to tell us that the boat had been built in either Pittsburgh or Elizabeth, Pennsylvania.

The thing I really, really liked about the museum's keel boat is the cleverness by which they displayed both the outside AND the inside of the craft. On the front side it looked like a normal sailing vessel, complete with hoisted sail. But as you walked around to the back side of the display, you immediately saw that there was really only half a boat present. On the back side of the cut-away hull they had packed every nook and cranny with the same supplies that Lewis and Clark would have packed in their Corp of Discovery boat. It was so very, very well done that we just thought it was genius.

As usual we stayed way too long at our lunch spot and it was getting on toward 2:00 p.m. before we tore ourselves away. By then we had toured the museum, the outdoor, mock-up stockade, which was a replica of the Corp's stockade, and a pioneer cabin complete with furnishings. We had stood and watched for a time a baseball game in progress on the grounds. This game was a bit different than you might expect in that the game was being pursued as if the year was 1860, and all the players wore 1860s-style uniforms and used 1860s-style equipment. I wanted to stay longer and try and get some closeup photos, but we really had to get moving if we didn't want to be setting up camp in the dark.

We did have one more distraction before we reached Cape Girardeau: we decided to wash the truck. We have had so much rain in the past month that the truck has become a frightful, muddy mess from bumper to bumper. It sort of looked like kids had used it for mud pie target practice. So, when we were about forty miles from Cape Girardeau and saw a huge billboard announcing services at the next off ramp included something called a "truck wash," we decided to go and check it out. If it didn't turn out to be too expensive, we'd give it a tumble.

Turned out there was absolutely no other customers when we pulled in and the resident washers agreed, for a nominal price, to roll us right into the barn, get us all sudsy, and rinse the old girl off with something they called, "spot-free rinse water." Well, this is something that I've wanted to see for a long time. And even though a very prominent sign proclaimed that drivers were not to walk around the wash floor, I got out with the camera and filmed the entire proceeding. In the process I met a energetic young man who requested that I call him "Flop." Flop (above photo, blue shirt) worked like two people and more than once I considered asking him to slow down a tad so he wouldn't be a blur in the photos. He was just great and his attitude was the best.

The most interesting thing about Flop's operation was the mobile device I'll call a "side washer." It's sort of like the fluffy washing brushes you see in a standard car wash. Except this one was on wheels. Flop would just fire it up, and walk it down the side of the rig and the machine would scrub off the bugs and dirt just as slick as you please. In the end he scrubbed and washed and rinsed and repeated until the truck shone like a new penny. Flop did get some help near the end, and together the two men spent just about the most productive thirty minutes that the old Fleetwood Jamboree had ever experienced.

Pretty soon we were on the road again, and almost before we knew it we had found our Cape Girardeau address, had set up our camp site, and were enjoying our afternoon cocktail. The laundry was tumbling in a nearby washing machine, I had finally uploaded last night's photos, and truly everything was right with the world.

And one more thing. I finally solved a puzzle that's been haunting me for a long, long time. Back when I was a kid, maybe six or eight years old, my dad used to get big shipments of some very high quality bacon that came from somewhere in the East. I really couldn't remember just where this incredible bacon came from. It was thick and dark and almost made a meal by itself. Back then, Dad didn't keep it all, even then I knew that he was ordering for some of his workmates.

I also remember from this time period that Dad used to talk a lot about Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Not until today, as we were driving toward Cape Girardeau, did I begin to wonder if the bacon and our intended destination had something in common. So, when I had checked in this afternoon, and was about to leave, I stopped and said, "Hey, I don't suppose you guys know if there was ever a place in Cape Girardeau that sold bacon and delivered it by mail?"

The married couple running the office looked at each other, smiled, and then the wife said, "Just down the street used to be a place called "Esicar Meat Market." They shipped their products all over the globe. They've retired now, but until a few years ago the business had been in the same family for several generations."

I'm sure my mouth was hanging open a mile. I just couldn't believe that I had finally solved the puzzle. "But the business is closed now?" I asked.

"Well, they sold out," the wife said. "And someone else runs it in the same location. It's called the Butcher Block now and they claim to be using the same recipes for all their meats."

Thanking the couple for making my day, I wandered back out to the rig where Concetta sat with the door open, trying hard not to grumble at me for taking so long. Sitting in the truck without the air conditioner running had gotten pretty hot. I'm usually in hot water since I get totally lost in conversations with people.

So, tomorrow we have a bit more laundry to do. After that I'd like to visit the Butcher Block, and then perhaps the local River Museum that we heard about at the Lewis and Clark Museum this noon. After that, well we're headed for Kentucky or Tennessee or someplace like that. I'll let you know tomorrow what we decide. Until then, we wish you Happy Travels!