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!

Day 28 -- Springfield to Roodhouse, Illinois -- 52 Miles

Today Concetta and I set out to accomplish not too much, and I think we succeeded admirably. Seriously, our goal was to visit the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. If you've been reading this blog since we first took our act on the road in the spring of 2014, you know that just about a year ago we came here and spent an entire day visiting the Lincoln home and the surrounding restored/recreated village that had been Lincoln's neighborhood while he was President. Back then the weather was a tad uncooperative, but we still managed to get some good photos and have a great time.

But Springfield is not a place that you can breeze into on a summer afternoon, spend a few hours, and be on your way again, especially not if you love history. Two years ago we managed the Lincoln Home as well as the Lincoln tomb just to the north of town, and came away feeling that we might never top that experience again. Even so, we knew we had missed almost as much as we had seen, including Lincoln's law office and the Lincoln library. Still, we realized that we couldn't spend a week in every town we loved, we had to move on.

Today we came back to Springfield for the Lincoln Library and Museum, and what an experience it was. Much of it left us choked up and humbled just as the tour of Lincoln's tomb had done. All of Lincoln's life was dealt with, from pioneer boyhood to assassination, as we might have expected. But we were entirely unprepared for the magnitude of artistry and historic completeness that we witnessed. Everything from holographic -- Disney-esque -- presentations, to full-room physical recreations of Lincoln's offices, residence rooms, and cabinet meetings were portrayed in stunning, lifelike realism. We were just plain blown away!

We started with the log cabin entrance, which concealed a number of rooms devoted to Lincoln's early childhood, his education (or lack thereof), and his home life. Lincoln was born in Kentucky, not too far from where my mother's father's people, the Jones family, were living at roughly the same time. From there they moved, as so many Kentuckians did, across the Ohio River into what had been Indian country as late as the end of the 18th century. They first went to Indiana, and then finished up near Springfield, Illinois, once again about 50 miles from where my Jones ancestors had also moved.

At that point it was time to see a couple of audio/visual presentations, according to a nice lady that had greeted us at the entrance. So we hurried off to the holographic room where, along with a couple of bus-loads of middle-school kids, we enjoyed just the most astounding presentation by a guy I could have sworn was there in front of us, but I suspect was never there at all. By the time he had finished his spiel on why those who study history are often accompanied by the ghosts of our ancestors, he had Concetta and I reaching for our handkerchiefs. Man it was marvelous, just marvelous.

The next presentation was also holographic in nature and dealt with Lincoln's Presidency and the trials he faced, both domestically and in the pubic eye, as our 16th President. By the time the holographic guy had finished with us there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

Once our theater time had finished, we continued our walk through the museum, which contained exhibits like anti-Lincoln cartoons that had attacked the six-foot, four-inch President, from his earliest days of running for the office, until his Union officers finally began to win a few battles late in the war. At that point the press began to give him a break. I especially liked the testimonies from Civil War soldiers that appeared along with accounts of what had ultimately happened to them. There was one room where you could watch a count of the casualties mount as each individual battle was "exploded" on a huge map of the U.S on the wall. There was one room with a myriad of personal possessions that belonged to the President and his wife, some of which had gone through many owners before coming to the museum.

All in all, we consider the Lincoln library and Museum every bit as awe-inspiring and humbling as had been the tomb that we visited two years ago. Taken as a whole, the Springfield Lincoln experience is just not to be equaled anywhere. If you come here, I would suggest planning on a stay of at least two full days. There are two nice RV camps just south of the city which are easy to find, and parking your RV near the Library/Museum is easy as they have a giant lot for buses and other large vehicles.

All too soon our museum time was up, though I managed to find a couple of irresistible items in the gift shop. You know I'm a sucker for books, but I needed to find just the "right" book. Since about 98% of the displayed copies were about every single aspect of Lincoln's life, I needed to find something totally out in left field, something that I didn't know anything about. I settled on Eric Foner's book "Gateway to Freedom," which is subtitled, "The hidden history of the underground railroad." Now that's a subject that ought to teach me a few things.

Once out of the museum, we headed back to the RV for a bit of lunch, then it was out on Route 55 South to exit what has become one of our favorite cities. Since we didn't do the fancy Union Pacific Railroad station for which we had tickets, nor did we get to the Lincoln law office, it's a foregone conclusion that we'll have to come back again. I suspect that we secretly planned it that way. And by the way, Lincoln's law office is just a couple of doors down from a really, really interesting antique book store that I saw last time.

My plan, if you can say that I ever really have a plan, was to drop south out of Springfield this afternoon on Route 55, pick up Route 67, and head south toward the town of Carrollton, Illinois. Were my dear mother still alive, she would probably be unable to contain her excitement. You see, her father's father was born in Carrollton, way back in the pre-Civil War year of 1849. John Heath Preston Jones, born to a father of exactly the same name, lived out here on the Illinois Prairie just north of St. Louis, on the east bank of the Illinois River. Just as his namesake did, John Heath Preston Jones died right here in Carrollton. Though my mother was never able to find out where either ancestor had been buried.

To that end, I planned a visit today to the Carrollton Genealogical Society, which was the reason for picking Route 67 out of Springfield. Unfortunately, we didn't arrive in Carrollton until 4:00 p.m. and the person who mans the office two days a week -- I had forgotten they were only open two days a week -- was not in the mood to extend her work hours to accommodate me. She did, however, offer to take my business card and be in contact with me at a later time. I'm not sure she quite grasped the fact that I had come all the way from Nevada to see her. Wanting to do more than just trust her to remember me, I dug into my wallet and fished out the necessary $15.00 to join the local Genealogical Society and maybe she'd be more apt to want to help me when I was a member.

But something incredibly positive came out of my visit to the Carrollton Genealogical Society. I met Neal. Neal was sitting chatting with the unhelpful lady when I walked in and put a wrinkle in her day. She wanted to go home since her shift evidently ended at 4:00 p.m. He, being quite the opposite type of personality, saw an immediate opportunity to make a new friend. Both listened patiently to my explanation as to why I had come, but only Neal perked up and really seemed to be interested. Of course, when I mentioned that I was looking for people who had been around in the 1840s, both Neal and the clerk shook their heads and professed to possess no knowledge of any Jones in the records that far back.

But here's where it got interesting. I was aware that Neal was talking to the clerk about a book he evidently had produced when I walked in. It was laying on the corner of the clerk's desk, and I could plainly see from the cover that Neal had been in the Navy. Since I wasn't getting anywhere with the clerk, I asked Neal about his time in the Navy. Since I was a Navy man, I knew we'd have a bond that might also help me establish a better bond with the clerk if she were a friend of his.

Well, Neal just exploded into conversation like he'd been looking for just such an opportunity all day. Before too many minutes had gone by I had learned that he was born in 1924, had joined the Navy in 1943, along with his brother, and had been designated a Navy corpsman, had stormed the beaches in places like Okinawa and lived to tell about it, had gotten out of the Navy unscathed, had joined the army during the Korean war, had survived that episode, and had come home to eventually become a banker. Now he was retired, looked like he was about seventy even though he was ninety-one, and was so full of vim and vigor I wondered if I'd be able to keep up with him if I asked him to show me cemeteries in the area.

All this time the clerk was looking at her watch by way of hinting that maybe we should take it outside. That's when I offered to join the society and become one of her supporters. That perked her up a bit and I think eventually I'll be able to count on her.

But Neal and I went on comparing war stories and life stories and favorite brands of cars and so forth. I learned he bought a 1946 Ford coupe when he got out of the Navy, paid $1,000 for it. His dad pulled some strings for him and got him on the automobile "waiting list" before the war even ended, Neal said, because his pop just knew there would be a huge number of people clamoring for cars.

About that time I told Neal that I was going to get a business card from the rig since I didn't have any left in my wallet. I asked him if he had one, but he told me no. He hadn't worked for decades he said. But by the time I got back from getting one of my cards, Neal had fished a card out from under the seat of his pickup, and he handed it to me. Then 91-year-old Neal said, "Do you know how to use the internet?"

I smiled. "Sure do," I said.

"Well," he said. "My email is on the back."

I turned the card over, and sure enough his address was written quite neatly in cursive. "Okay," I said. "I'll be emailing you."

By then we had almost parted a half dozen times, and each time we shook hands. Before either of us could turn and leave one of us would launch into some other topic. But finally we shook for the last time, I told him that one of these days I needed his secret for looking two decades younger than his age, which put a huge smile on his face. Then we turned and went our separate ways, both of us happier, healthier, and feeling more sure of the innate goodness of people in this world. I truly hope our paths cross again.

And that brings me to just what I got out of today's events. It's not the miles you drive, the places you see, the good deals you score, the impossible parking places you manage to snag, or the incredible lunches you got for a song, it's the people in this world and on this journey that make all the difference in your travels. The guard at the research library in Springfield that went out of his way to direct us to the proper building today when we took a wrong turn; the guide at the history museum who took the time to acquaint us with the daily schedule and make suggestions for seeing things in the proper order, then offering to take our picture together; the bus driver who sprinted over to help us when Concetta couldn't get the parking lot gate to rise; the parking booth person who sprinted over to rescue the bus driver AND Concetta when neither could get the gate to rise; to the many people to slow down when I try to make a difficult turn in the RV, knowing they have the right-of-way, but wanting to be patient; the RV park couple last night that let me buy a thirty-amp RV surge protector (photo left) at their cost since they had one another customer had failed to pick up; or just the legions of other RVers who always go out of their way to ask me how I'm doing, where I'm going, and where I've been. Those are just some of the many interpersonal connections you will encounter and enjoy as you travel this great land.

And that, dear readers, is what RVing is all about. We wish you Happy Travels!

Day 27 -- Nauvoo to Springfield, Illinois -- 130 Miles

Today was perhaps the most perfect day on the road we've had so far. Now that the sun has arrived on the plains, it appears to want to stay. Concetta and I got up at a comfortable hour, had a leisurely breakfast, and then moseyed into old Nauvoo to do some walking and photographing of the old-time buildings there. Our first goal was to visit the "Land and Records" building where I hoped to learn something new about my Mormon ancestors. We also wanted to visit some of the Chataqua-style businesses where the docents tell you how things were done on the frontier in the 1840s.

We arrived at the Land and Records office about 9:30 a.m., found a great parking spot for the rig right next to the building, and marched up to the door. There we were informed quite politely by the "sister" in residence, a self-proclaimed newbie, that we were just 30 minutes early to talk to the more experienced sister who knew all about the computers. She politely requested that we come back in a half an hour.

Okay, item one on hold. Leaving the rig right where we'd parked it, we set off to explore as much of the restored/reconstructed portion of old Nauvoo as we could before we had to reappear at Land and Records. Concetta's first choice was to visit the bakery shop, which, we had been informed by our bus driver yesterday, handed out free, hand-made cookies to all comers. Since I had no personal preference with which to counter free cookies, off we went. Naturally, the bakery was diagonally, just as far away as it was possible to get from where we were standing without falling in the Mississippi. No matter, we had to get our steps anyway.

This meant that a walk of about six blocks was in order. No problem, there were just tons of old houses and outbuildings along the way and my itchy camera shutter finger would get lots of exercise. Imagine old Nauvoo as a huge expanse of tree-shaded lawn, perhaps the size of a dozen football fields nestled in together, with maybe 100 structures scattered throughout. Most streets are pavement, a few are hard-packed earth, and all are narrow and rural-looking. RVs are classed as tour buses and are only allowed on some streets, but there's plenty of parking for your rig, well, unless you come at the height of the tourist season.

The first business that we encountered on the way to the bakery was a print shop. Oh, man, was I ever in heaven there, especially since I knew more about early printing than the docents who were printing business newbies by comparison. All the old equipment looked like it had been barrowed from Ben Franklin and not returned. They had the handset type cabinets. They had the ancient hand-operated one-copy-at-a-time printing press with the huge lever that you yanked over when your sheet of paper was in place. They had the hand ink applicator they called a "dauber," a name which I had never heard before. They even had much of the same letterpress equipment that I had been used to in the 1970s when I was a printer.

When I ended up in the printing business in 1974 it was on the tail end of working aboard a 60-foot motor sailboat for a year. Before that I had been a journeyman grocery clerk for Alpha Beta in California. But when I came to Carson City there were no grocery positions available, and I didn't even ask about any positions for boat crewmen. But when the employment office lady asked me if I knew how to type, and I told her I had worked for a time as a clerk-typist in the Navy, she stuffed a company name and address in my hand and sent me to Sierra Nevada Printing.

The company owner looked pretty skeptical when I arrived to apply for the print shop job of paste-up artist that summer of '74. "You're going to need to know a lot more than just how to type," Owner Jim Austin said.

I said, "I promise that I can master anything very fast."

Jim paused for a moment, slid a pipe out of his pocket and lit it, puffed a few moments, then pulled the pipe out of his mouth and said, "Okay, you're hired. No one has applied for the position, anyway."

And that's how I stumbled into the best job I ever had. It didn't pay well. It didn't include much in the way of benefits. But the work suited me right down to the ground. You see, I didn't tell Jim that I had two semesters of print shop, one in Junior High, and one in High School. I knew how to type, which meant I could run the computer typesetter with ease. I already had spent my youth doing paste-up in my own hobby interest areas so I was a natural for that task. And, I had a talent even more rare, I knew how to hand-set the old lead type used in 19th century print shops. Sierra Nevada Printing had at least 100 cases of handset type that they used in conjunction with their old windmill and vertical letterpress machines.

I didn't want to tell Jim that I had printing experience because then he might get his hopes up. Then, if I didn't like the job, I wouldn't have to stay. But stay I did for the next 18 months and enjoyed every second of it. But I had only come to Carson City for one reason: to earn enough money to go on another adventure. So at the end of 18 months I quit and left town and headed for the big city. But the big city turned out to be an alien place for me after living in lightly-populated Carson City. I stuck it out in Los Angeles for six months, then I moved back to Carson City and became a printer again. I remained a printer for almost nine years.

After our visit to the print shop, which I only reluctantly tore myself away from, we walked back to the Land and Records office and threw ourselves on the mercy of the head researcher. Though her manner was somewhat brusque at first, we soon saw that we weren't the only ones waiting for help. Soon all the computer workstations were filled and people were waiting in line to ask questions. Land and Record access to Mormon Church records was pretty neat and fast, though at first glance I didn't really see anything I hadn't found on either Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org (the Mormon site). But the researcher told us that we could put anything we wanted in the "stack" and at the end she would help us burn a CD. So I pulled up records for all the Mormon ancestral family names I could think of and put as many of them on the CD as possible. I even chose people of the same surnames I had never heard of just in case they had something important to say to me and were distantly related.

Once out of the Land and Records Office we once again set out for the Bakery to get our free cookie. It was a good walk alright, but before long we were queuing up for our molasses gingerbread coookie, which turned out to be a tad small for a hungry hiker, but nevertheless wonderful. Concetta learned all about frontier baking, which in this case took place in a special baking "house" in the rear yard to keep the main house from getting overheated in the summer. Then we took a tour of the grounds, saw the miller's wheels used to grind grain, and then headed for the building called the Family Living Center.

Inside the Family Living Center we were instantly dazzled! Arranged around the walls were many and sundry "hands-on" recreations of frontier skills and crafts. They had spinning, baking, candle-making, weaving, rope making, and barrel making, as well as displays of the tools used for each. Each display unit came complete with docents to gather you in and let you take part in their presentations. Concetta and I sat through the spinning session and learned even more about spinning wool and flax. It was here that I learned what the term "linsey-woolsey" meant, which I had heard and read for decades in my study of history. Linsey-woosley is simply a mixture of wool and flax, woven together. Since only the wool can be dyed colors, the resultant color scheme of a Linsey-woolsey blanket, for instance, will have blue or red-colored patterns on a cream-colored background. Flax will have formed the background and it cannot be dyed.

Next Concetta went to the baking presentation while I went to watch the rope maker in action. Most people I'm sure take rope making pretty much for granted, and never stop to think just how much industry might have gone into the craft in 1840. I was just enthralled as the demonstrator got a couple of kids in our tiny audience to help him make rope. They start by taking six strands of sissel, two to each of three hooks on a 12" disk at one end of the shop floor. The other three dual ends are tied to hooks on a much larger spinning wheel that has the ability to spin each two lengths of sissel separately. When the kid on that end spins the large wheel at his end it has the effect of twisting the two lengths on each hook at the other end until they are like three tightly twisted pigtails.

Then the instructor comes up with a piece of wood that had several hooks on it and snags the three sets of twisted mini ropes next to the smaller wheel. Then the child was asked to revolve the smaller wheel which had the effect of making the three sets of two twisted strands twist around each other. Then, as the youngster twisted, the instructor ran his piece of wood down the strands and toward the child with the big wheel. Every once in a while he'd have the child on the big wheel take a few turns to maintain tension on the whole assemblage.

I don't suppose many of you have followed this, which is probably due to my less than adequate description. But what resulted from all this "kid power" was a piece of perfectly twisted rope ready for duty on a covered wagon to perhaps tie a small barrel to the side. I was so impressed I even asked for a sample piece, which the instructor was happy to give me.

Next, while Concetta was attending the candle-dipping workshop, I went to find out how to build wooden barrels. Now I've studied barrel-making tools in the past so I wasn't a total novice, but once again I was totally enthralled with the docent's presentation of his craft. The thing that interested me the most was the fact that a cooper -- barrel maker -- used no measuring device to determine lengths of things. Since the period of apprenticeship for a cooper was four to six years, the docent said, they just "knew" what length to make barrel staves, which start out as just a billet of wood about the right length from which the craftsman splits the barrel staves.

Almost all the tools used to make barrels are specific to that craft, tools like curved draw knives and round planes for cutting the groove in the stays into which the barrel top slips. The docent told us that the two types of barrels are either wet or slack. Wet barrels will hold liquids without leaking. Slack barrels have seams not quite tight enough to hold liquids and are used for shipping goods like rice or beans.

But enough on crafts, before we left the Family Living Center Concetta had arranged with the baking demonstration to save me a piece of their homemade bread. Wow! I would really have liked a loaf of that great bread to bring back to the RV. "Nothing doing," Concetta said. "They're saving those samples for the afternoon's visitors."

Well, once again we had just run flat out of time. We either had to arrange for yet another night in our nearby camp, or we needed to get on the road. What we've found is that the places we visit are so very fascinating that we just don't want to leave. But if we did that we'd never get anywhere and would miss a lot in the process. So, after we'd had our lunch in the RV still parked adjacent to the Land and Records office, we turned our hood ornament south, picked up Route 96, and cruised back toward Keokuk, Iowa. Then, before we took the right turn and crossed the bridge to Keokuk, we turned left and headed east on Route 136 in the general direction of Springfield, Illinois. There we hope to do some more visiting with old Honest Abe, specifically the Lincoln Presidential Library that we had missed on our last visit in 2014.

Despite the fact that we didn't clear Nauvoo until around 1:30 p.m., we still managed to put in 130 miles and find a camp in Springfield by late afternoon. Now we're kicking back, bringing our travel dialogues up to date, and drinking some nice wine. Tomorrow we're off again, so stay tuned. Until then, we wish you Happy Travels!

Day 26 -- All day in Nauvoo, Illinois -- 5 Miles on a tour bus

Today we spent the entire day quenching our thirst for history as we strolled and toured by bus the 1840s city of Nauvoo, illinois. My 3-times great grandfather and his family, after they and other Mormon families had been evicted from the state of Missouri by the Governor, lived either here or near here from 1839 until 1846. Records show that he didn't live in Nauvoo city at first, but lived about 95 miles south in a place call Big Neck Prairie. Later (I think) he moved up to Nauvoo, perhaps just before the Mormons were forced to flee to Iowa and Nebraska in 1846.

So far we haven't really located any information on my ancestors, the Daleys, but tomorrow we're going to the records building which, we're told, has all the information available on each family who lived in Nauvoo, and traveled west from Nauvoo. We did get to see a book today, part of a huge, two-volume set, that lists all the prominent Mormons known, and we did not find my 3-times great grandfather. However, we did find mentioned of one of his sons, at the time living with my 3-times great grandfather in San Bernardino, California. Kind of funny they wrote up the son and not the father.

Concetta and I spent the morning just visiting the shops on main street, me seeking out books that might contribute to my research, she looking for presents for grandkids. We miraculously managed to find both. The light on the town and the Mormon temple was just wonderful today so we were able to take a bunch of photos before we started to make our way back to the RV for lunch. About then was when we decided to check with the tour company we'd seen on Mullholland Street to see what they had to offer, since a tour might be nice for something to do after lunch.

Well, that idea turned out to be the best decision we've made this whole trip. Somehow, through the dumbest of luck, we ran into just the perfect guy to tell us about the city. A resident of Salt Lake City, Utah, Bob was a visitor to Nauvoo himself just a few years ago. After his visit he and his wife compared notes and decided that Nauvoo was just the most charming and friendly city they'd ever visited. So the two packed up when they had returned home and moved here. Now they spend their time coordinating rentals for incoming tourists, running their own publishing business that specializes in historical subjects, and, in their spare time, running a small tour bus that hits all the local points of interest in a 90-minute period. Shoot, the guy also does walking tours of the town, which lets him see the history up close and personal.

Hearing that he was both an author and a publisher, I warmed to Bob right away. We asked him about the tour bus, and he told us that the bus was in not in regular tour status until the end of May. But, he said, if we wanted to go he'd fire it up and take us on the regular tour. We asked him the price, and decided it wasn't too steep. We told Bob that we'd think about it over lunch and come back if we decided to take him up on his offer. Well, we hadn't gotten twenty steps outside the door on our way to the rig when we decided that a personal tour was just too good to pass up. Since he'd followed us out the door on his way to do an errand, I turned and told him we'd decided to accept and we'd see him at 1:00 p.m. if that worked for him. With that the deal was struck.

Then, starting at 1:00 p.m., we just had the most heavenly personal tour we've EVER been on. Since we were his only customers for the day, Bob would stop the bus and let us get off to take photos whenever we asked. We didn't shoot everything, but we got a nice representative group I think. It would have been nice to be on foot for the photography part, since the sky was so blue and the red brick buildings were so, well, red. But had we been on foot we wouldn't have seen 10% of what we saw on the tour, and we wouldn't have gotten the wonderful explanations.

I was especially thrilled to get to photograph the "jumping off" spot in old Nauvoo where the wagon trains left the city and crossed the Mississippi. When the very first wagons left in February, 1846, it was so very cold that the Mississippi had actually frozen hard enough for wagons to drive across the ice. Later trains would have to be ferried across on a raft.

I always had trouble visualizing the mighty Mississippi freezing thick enough to support a wagon and three yoke of oxen, but today we learned that before the dam was built just downstream from Nauvoo the portion of the river opposite the city was known as the "Jumping Rapids" for it's extremely rough -- and shallow -- water. After the dam was built the level of the river adjacent to Nauvoo rose eight feet and eliminated the rapids.

Bob took us all over town, stopping at each historic building to acquaint us with who lived there, how long they lived there, and what eventually happened to them. Since Bob writes historic books, and is constantly researching, the facts come to him easily. We got to see Joseph Smith's house in town as well as his farm on the outskirts of town. We also got to see Brigham Young's house. And there were a couple of dozen others that had not been significantly altered since the Mormon's left. Of course, the Mormon Church now owns huge swaths of land, both under and around Nauvoo. They've done a marvelous job on restoration of many buildings. They've also done facsimiles of some buildings that had been torn down for materials by later, non-Mormon residents.

By three o'clock our 90-minute tour that had lasted over two hours had come to a close. Concetta and I had an absolutely marvelous time, but it was time to retrace our steps to our RV, that we had left in a "bus only" parking lot nearby, and be off. Our plan was to drive south on the east back of the Mississippi, cross the river at Keokuk, Iowa, and seek out that wondrous shopping emporium known as Walmart. Anyone who has done RVing knows that an RV fridge will fit only a few days worth of eatables. Since Nauvoo has no Walmart, the GPS voice told us to seek out the one in Keokuk.

A couple of hours later, and back at the camp we'd found last night, we came to the end of perhaps the best day we've had on this vacation. Granted, two weeks of rain earlier in the trip didn't do much for either our enthusiasm or our ability to do outdoor exploring, but today definitely put those feelings behind us. And really, Nauvoo is just a darn cool place to visit. Whether you have Mormon ancestors or not, it's still such a perfectly restored piece of our history that you simply must see it.

And I got one more gift today. As we were touring the western end of old Nauvoo, down where the immigrants of 1846 were making ready their wagons to cross the Mississippi, Bob stopped the bus, as I've said, to let me take a few photos. "And while you're out there," Bob said, "go up the hill to our right and check out the monument to all the people who crossed to Nebraska from here. If your 2-times great grandfather's brother died on that trip, his name will be on the monument."

Now THAT got my attention. After taking my photos I turned and sprinted up the path to the monument and eagerly began to look for the name "Daley" on the stone. To my disappointment I saw no one. But then I began to scan for other family names, just to see if any Curtis or Dibble family members died on the trip across Iowa. And there, to my great astonishment, I saw the name of my 3-times great grandmother, Ruth Franklin Curtis!

Her maiden name of Franklin comes from old Ben Franklin's line, so she's an important lady. I had no idea she'd even been on the great trek west from Nauvoo, let alone died on the trip. Naturally, the first thing I did when I got into camp was look her up on my family tree. Sure enough, she died in Council Bluffs, Iowa, just across the River from Winter Quarters. Concetta and I had driven right through Council Bluffs and had I known she was there, I might have been able to locate where she was buried. Oh, well, I'll have to look for her next trip.

Anyway, that's all for now. Tomorrow we're off to Springfield, Illinois. Concetta and I wish you Happy Travels.

Day 25 -- Oceola, Iowa to Nauvoo, Illinois -- 183 Miles

Today turned out to be kind of a catch-up day. If you read yesterday's blog you know we burned the candle at both ends, and a few spots in the middle as well. We stopped so often we only actually drove for an hour all day long. Of course, that made for lots of things to write about. Well, today we swapped ends on that scenario and did more driving then stopping. Consequently your roving reporter doesn't have much to tell you about.

Now what I haven't mentioned is that we spent much of the day on Iowa Route 2 crisscrossing, overlapping, and generally zig-zagging along the route once traveled by the Mormons when they left Nauvoo, Illinois, and began their long trek westward, first to Winter Quarters, Nebraska, and finally to the Salt Lake Valley in Utah.

Most of the morning we just rolled along enjoying the farm country festooned with red barns and Victorian Houses and had no intention of stopping anywhere unless a photo op proved irresistible at some point. Actually, Route 2 across the bottom of Iowa is so narrow that pulling over for any reason other than an emergency would be out of the question. So we listened to the last tracks of our Lincoln and His Generals disks and set our sights on making some mileage. Occasionally we'd slow down for some quietly decaying town where the glory days occurred when Lincoln was President, but most of the time we set the cruise control and just drove.

As noon approached we started keeping our eyes out for a park or other good stopping place to pull over. So it hardly took any discussion when just before lunchtime we came across an absolutely HUGE Pioneer Trails Museum in the town of Corydon. Although Concetta and I were trying to hold off visiting museums for awhile least the memories of the ones we've already seen begin to blend into each other, we decided to spend just a few minutes seeing what the museum had to offer in the way of Mormon information. Then we could have our lunch in their parking lot and be on our way.

Well, we hadn't even paid our entrance fee when I got into a discussion with the docent taking the money about the Mormon trail and just what ancestors I was trying to track as we visited city after city devoted to the Mormon trek west. I was in the process of telling her when the museum's director came over and the three of us and Concetta got into quite a lively discussion about my ancestors and the inexplicable things that happened in their lives.

"Take my 2-times great grandfather's brother, Stephen," I told them. "He and my descendant were supposedly left behind in Nauvoo when my 3-times great grandfather left in 1846, but the record doesn't say why. Then, in the summer of 1847, Stephen supposedly dies in Nevada, which I consider completely ridiculous information since no Mormon was in Nevada that August of 1847.

That's when the two women from the museum looked at each other, then back at me. Then the museum director said something that sent me reeling. She said, "you know there are other places called Nevada that aren't actually the state of Nevada."

Mentally slapping my forehead, I said, "Of course, that has to be it." And I told them that I knew there was a Nevada, Iowa, up on the old Lincoln Highway, today's Route 30.

"Yes," the docent added, "And there's also a Nevada, Missouri."

I was stunned that I had been so certain that the Mormon record was just wrong, and there could be no way that Stephen Daley had died in Nevada, especially since he had not been a member of the Mormon Battalion. The Mormon Battalion consisted of 500 men recruited in the Mormon camp of Mount Pisgah where we visited yesterday. Their job was to help the U.S. Government fight the Mexican War, and at the same time, leader Brigham Young thought, give the people of the United States a more positive view of the Mormons.

Brigham Young's hunch worked. The Mormon Battalion never actually was used in battle, but the fact that the Mormons were willing to support the united States spoke volumes about their willingness to be good citizens. I actually have an ancestor who was in the Mormon Battalion, a man named John Buchanan. Not many people know that it was actually members of the Mormon Battalion who were working for John Marshall in 1849 when gold was discovered in the mill race of John Sutter's lumber mill near the present town of Coloma, California. Some of the Battalion had traveled back to join their families after they mustered out, while some remained in California to work and earn money before treking over the Sierra and on to Utah where the Mormons had only recently arrived.

Concetta and I spent the next hour exploring the museum, which just seemed to go on and on. There was so much material to take in that we ended up just focusing on areas of history that interested us, and passed by the rest. I especially liked the little town they set up that was complete with individual furnished shops. There was everything from a photo studio and a beauty parlor, to a gas station and a furniture store.

Before we left, I handed over a check to the museum director who had informed me that she was a member, the treasurer in fact, of the Mormon Trail Association that had been described to us yesterday by Bob Brown. Bob had suggested that I join, and the museum director was more than happy to take my check for dues. Encountering that degree of serendipity is just surreal. So now that I'm a member I'll be able to keep track of the work they're doing in Iowa and maybe someday in the future the organization will help me figure out some of my family's mysteries.

The remainder of the day we just drove and drove and we finally arrived at our camp in Nauvoo about 4:30 p.m. We hadn't made any reservations -- we almost never do -- and fortunately they had about three left of the maximum of ten available. We booked the spot for two nights so that we can spend all day visiting the town of Nauvoo where my 3-times great grandfather's family was living in 1846 after being kicked out of Missouri around 1839 or 1840 (I think).

Tonight I'm feeling just a tad poorly, so I'm going to be a little more brief than I would like. But I nevertheless wish you Happy Travels.

Day 24 -- Adel to Oceola, Iowa -- 65 Miles

Well, seeing blue skies and fluffy white clouds this morning, Noah beached the Ark, ran the gangplank out, and let all those smelly, cooped-up animals go free after what must have been 40 days and 40 nights of constant rain. When the waters had receded sufficiently, the Davis family, anxious to resume their vacation without having to shop for pontoons, ventured forth from their KOA campsite near Adel, Iowa, and once again committed themselves to life on the highways and byways of America.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, though scattered dark clouds lurked above us where they could find an odd, unused corner of the sky, the heavens have been predominately blue today and our spirits have risen to heights not recently seen. After seeing to the refilling of our flagging supply of propane gas, used for the most part in trying to keep the coach warm on all the rainy nights, we spent the entire rest of our day wandering the back roads south and west of Des Moines, Iowa.

Our first port of call this morning was the tiny city of Adel, which we had passed yesterday afternoon when its vintage town square full of century-old buildings was bathed in the orangy light of the coming sunset.

I really wanted to stop and take photos then, but getting the rig set up in the nearby KOA seemed to be of greater importance since the day-long rain had begun to taper off.

It turned out that the light was every bit as beautiful as we rolled into town this morning. Finding a couple of adjacent parking spots on the east side of the town square that we could squeeze into, we parked the rig and then set off to see what we could see and snap a few photos.

Like so many rural American towns and villages throughout the country, Adel's first business district was arranged around the park-like grounds of the courthouse. Wiki says this about Adel's courthouse: "The Dallas County Courthouse in Adel, Iowa, was built in 1902. It was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and is a part of the County Courthouses in Iowa Thematic Resource. In 2009 it was included as a contributing property in the Adel Public Square Historic District. The current structure is the fourth building to house court functions and county administration."

Dallas County’s first courthouse was a cabin constructed of cottonwood logs and served the county from 1848-1853. Leaders constructed a second courthouse that served for five years when they constructed a third facility. It was a two-story brick structure measuring 64 by 42 feet (20 m × 13 m), and was built for $20,000. In November 1900, county voters authorized $85,000 to construct the current courthouse. It is four-floors and was dedicated in September 1902.

After doing a bit of walking and talking and checking out a local bakery for fresh cookies (we didn't buy them), we set off south on Iowa Route 169. Our next stop was to be the town of Winterset where we hoped to tour the home of John Wayne before setting out once again for our intended afternoon destination of Ottumwa, Iowa, located on Iowa Route 34.

But as so often happens, serendipity intervened. Though neither Concetta nor I had spent any time thinking about it, once we left the town of Adel in Dallas County, our next geographic milestone was when we crossed the county line into Madison County, Iowa. And if you've ever read a certain book by Robert James Waller about a lonely Italian farm wife and an accomplished National Geographic photographer out to shoot a bunch of 19th century covered bridges, you know that Madison County is where that love story takes place.

So it was, that as we motored south on Route 169, busily listening to our current book on tape about Lincoln and his Civil War generals, we saw in the distance one of those brown signs that usually indicate something of historic importance is approaching. I slowed down and, when I saw that it was a turn-off sign for the road to a historic covered bridge, I wheeled over and stopped on the shoulder. The sign said, "Hogback Bridge 3.5 miles."

"Well," I told Concetta, "how can we pass up an opportunity to shoot a covered bridge when it's only 3 1/2 miles off the highway?"

Concetta looked skeptically at the barely hard-packed road so recently, and so thoroughly deluged with many inches of rain. "I don't know," she said. "The RV doesn't do well on these bumpy roads."

I wasn't exactly sure how she knew that since we hadn't had the new RV off-road yet. "Come on," I said. "It's only 3 1/2 miles. It'll be a piece of cake."

And so it turned out to be. Yes, there was the occasional rut, chuck-hole, and muddy spot. But all-in-all, we sailed along on that dirt road just as smooth as you please with only a minor amount of shuckin' and jivin' to avoid the aforementioned items. And there was only one minor accident when our wicker basket full of potatoes, tomatoes, and assorted fruit came crashing down on my head from the cab-over bed where we keep such things.

Still, if you want my opinion, the dirt-road ride was well worth it, as our covered bridge destination lay in just the prettiest setting across the North River that you'd ever want. It was a photographer's dream-come-true, as I suppose Clint would be more then happy to affirm. We stayed for about a half an hour, getting mud clogged on our shoes from the muddy bridge approach, but having just the best time trekking from one entrance of the bridge to the other, and shooting the structure from all sides.

Once back on the highway it wasn't any time at all and we were pulling into Winterset, the birthplace of one of American's premier heros, Marion Robert Morrison -- John "Duke" Wayne. By the way, there are lots of covered bridges in Madison County, should you ever consider spending some time in Winterset and tracking them down. Our handout map had no less then six, and I suspect that there might be more just off the edges of the map.

When we got to Winterset we found a side street near the town square -- you knew they'd have one, right? -- and took our usual two or three spaces and then set off to stroll the square and appreciate the many surrounding Victorian buildings before we tracked down the Wayne museum that was just off the square. Just as we'd found in Adel, the commercial buildings in Winterset are just the cutiest, most historically evocative, that you'll see in the mid west. If you were to remove all the modern modes of transportation, you could easily step back 100, even 150 years, and they'd look right at home.

We'd found that the morning light was a bit flat in Adel, but by the time we'd gotten to Winterset the sun had really come out in all it's architecture-warming glory and we had a great time strolling and taking in the many photographic delights. Concetta has begun to shoot things with her IPhone and doing a darn good job of it. Sometimes she gets better shots, with better light then I do.

Once we'd done the complete circuit of the commercial buildings on the square it was time to go find the John Wayne Museum. While walking I just happened to look up at one point and saw the museum just a block south of the square. So off we went with the clock swiftly approaching the 12:00 p.m. hour. The museum is mostly brand new and looks it. I'm not sure I would have gone with architecture that looks quite as modern as they did, but once inside you don't really care. The museum is not extensive, and the entrance price is a tad steep in our estimation, but if you come all the way to the outskirts of Des Moines and don't go, you'll probably regret it later.

There isn't a lot of memorabilia to see, and the gift shop takes up as much space as the museum, but both of us really enjoyed the 10-minute film that vignetted lots of Wayne's films that left us feeling very proud of Wayne's achievements, as well as his undying patriotism. People often make fun of Wayne's acting ability, including us, but his "non actor" style I think is what endeared him to millions.

By the way, if you're a fan of Wayne's movie, "The Quiet Man," with Maureen O'Hara, the museum has the two-wheeled cart from the movie. And, the clerk hastened to tell us, they are shortly going to have Maureen's scarf, worn in the movie, that she willed to the museum when O'Hara died last year.

Everybody always wants to know how screen actors got their stage names. Here's what Wiki has to say about "the Duke:" "While working for Fox Film Corporation in bit roles, Wayne was given on-screen credit as "Duke Morrison" only once, in Words and Music (1929). In 1930, director Raoul Walsh saw him moving studio furniture while working as a prop boy and cast him in his first starring role in The Big Trail (1930). For his screen name, Walsh suggested "Anthony Wayne", after Revolutionary War general "Mad" Anthony Wayne. Fox Studios chief Winfield Sheehan rejected it as sounding "too Italian". Walsh then suggested "John Wayne". Sheehan agreed, and the name was set. Wayne was not even present for the discussion.

And here's another thing we learned at the Wayne's boyhood home when we toured after the musuem: The Morrison family dog was named "Duke." Marion Robert Morrison went everywhere with "Duke," especially to visit the guys at a southern California firehouse. Since someone was always calling the dog, and often the firefighters didn't actually know the boy's name who came with the dog. So, they started calling both the boy AND the dog "Duke." Marion Robert Morrison liked the name so much (and his own first name so little) that he started prevailing on townsfolk to call him Duke as well. Anyway, true or false, that's what we were told today as we toured the tiny, tiny -- perhaps 400 square feet -- Morrison family home in Winterset.

The Morrisons moved away from Winterset, to another part of Iowa, for the elder Morrison to take advantage of a business opportunity. Then, when "Duke" was about seven, the family moved to southern California so that the father's asthmatic condition would improve.

By the end of our visit Concetta and I were so impressed with Wayne's story that I couldn't resist buying a small biography of his life just to learn a few more details. Though Hollywood movie stars don't normally impress me, every once in awhile you have to make an exception and broaden you horizons.

Once we had departed the Wayne Museum it was time for lunch. Acting on a point-of-interest sign that we had seen when we walked to the Wayne family home (around the corner from the main museum), we located the city park and enjoyed a pleasant lunch hour with yet another barn-red covered bridge in our field of view. I might add that the Winterset municipal park has an area where they have set up campsites for RVs. I counted more than a dozen that seemed to have both water and electrical. I suspect that there's probably a dump station for the sewer, though I didn't actually see one. Had it been later in the day we would certainly have taken advantage of the opportunity to stay the evening in such a pretty town.

"Okay," I said to Concetta, as we rolled out of town. "Now we have to put some miles on so we can reach Ottumwa, Iowa, by late afternoon. And that's just what we intended to do. Only problem was that just a couple of dozen miles down the road we went sailing by a sign which read, "Historical Site, Mormon Cemetery."

For about three seconds I kept rolling on, but then I pulled over to the side of the road and turned to Concetta. "I think I'd like to check that cemetery out," I said. We were sitting on the ultra narrow shoulder of an ultra narrow rural highway. There was nowhere in sight to turn around.

"How are you going to get back there?" Concetta asked, in that tone of voice that always implies she'd prefer I didn't kill us in the process or put us in a drainage ditch.

"Well," I said, "I've got to find a place to turn this thing." And so we pulled back into the travel lane and rolled another half mile south until I reached a driveway.

Concetta looked back at the driveway and the tone was back. "Are you sure you can put this big rig into that tiny driveway?" she asked.

Actually I wasn't sure, especially if I wanted to avoid hitting the guy's all too prominent mailbox which stood just off the highway, but close beside the driveway. But nothing ventured, as they say. I pulled a bit forward some more, then started my backing maneuver. When the front end of the truck was mostly blocking the southbound lane I glanced nervously up the road, then back to see if I could see the mailbox. I couldn't see it, but neither could I get out and check its location. Fearing that I was too far to the north I pulled forward and back onto the shoulder, rolling just a bit further south this time. Checking for any oncoming cars in my lane, I began the wide sweeping backing maneuver again. This time I could plainly see that I was missing the mailbox and my passenger side dualies where still on the driveway and not descending into the drainage ditch.

Not wishing to press my luck, once I was back far enough, even though the nose of the truck was still blocking most of the southbound lane, I cranked the wheel to the left and successfully pulled into the northbound lane and headed north. Moments later we had turned into the cemetery road and were headed west.

Now unlike the dirt road we had traveled in the morning, the cemetery road had suffered a good deal more from the recent rains. Concetta was understandably anxious about are ability to proceed through the up-again-down-again undulations of the tiny road. But I figured that if the surrounding farmers had been able to get their equipment down there, we'd do alright as well. "Besides," I told here, "the UPS truck has to get down here and he's just slightly smaller than us."

It wasn't long before we came to a fork in the road. As so often happens when you're boon-docking, no informative road sign was in evidence. Choosing the road MORE traveled -- the left one --, we rolled on. Then, in just another two or three minutes, we came to yet another fork. For no particular reason, since both choices seemed to have been traveled about equally, I once again chose the left fork. Moments later we crested a hill and saw nothing before us to indicate a cemetery as near, Mormon or otherwise.

At that point I was ready to find another "impossible" place to turn a thirty-one foot rig around, and just get back out to the highway and continue on to Ottumwa. But just at that moment a red pickup, that had been sitting about five or six hundred feet ahead of us on the rutted farm road, began to move toward us. As he approached Concetta suggested that I get out and ask for directions. Though a fairly typical male when it comes to asking for directions, I nevertheless opened the door and stepped out.

The truck drew up beside the RV and stopped and a friendly looking chap asked me if we were looking for the cemetery.

I said. "How did you know?"

"Everybody is always looking for the cemetery," the young man said. "Just drive down there about a quarter of a mile and you're there."

All the time we had been talking there was an older man with a bright orange hat sitting on the tailgate of the pickup and he seemed to get ever more animated the longer the young man and I talked. Finally he spoke up. "Just go on down there," he said. "I'll come down in just a minute and tell you about it."

Wow! We thought. We just might get a guided tour. Well, as it turned, we got much more than a guided tour. We got an entire college course on the Mormon migration from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Winter Quarters, Nebraska that lasted for the better part of ninety minutes.

When the orange-hatted man arrived at the cemetery entrance where we had parked, he immediately launched into the history of his property and the Mormon settlement of Mount Pisgah that once existed there. The settlement had been set up on the Mormon Trail between Nauvoo and Winter Quarters to assist stragglers who were having a hard time making the journey.

Our new friend was named Bob Brown, and he told us the migration lasted from 1846 until 1852 and involved literally thousands of immigrants. Bob thinks there may be as many as a couple of thousand bodies buried on his property and just hundreds and hundreds of cabin sites and crude dugouts where people lived. Most likely, not many families lived at Mount Pisgah the whole six years, but stayed awhile and rested, then moved west.

A small amount of archaeology has been done on Bob's property, but for the most part he doesn't allow anyone to disturb either the huge number of graves, nor the cabin sites. The discussion of archaeology brought up what turned out to be Bob's favorite topic: Divining with bent wires to find buried objects.

I remember when I was a kid my dad used bent coat hanger wire to find buried pipes and other metal objects. Watching my dad divine the location of a gas pipe or similar object constitutes one of my earliest memories. But Bob has taken divining to a whole new level. He finds everything from graves and homesites, to wagon ruts and trails with his technique. Holding the bent wires very, very lightly in each hand, separated by perhaps ten or twelve inches and parallel to each other, you carefully walk over a piece of ground. When the extended portion of the bent wires begin to revolve toward each other, you have found your target.

Now comes the part I had never heard before: Bob believes that disturbed earth alters the magnetic orientation of the zillions of earth grains beneath your feet, which through time have become oriented in one direction only commensurate with the earth's magnetic field. So if you have dug a trench for a cabin foundation, and then eventually earth fills in that void, their exists a magnetic anomaly. This anomaly is what the bent wires are reacting to.

Okay, I buy that, even though I couldn't get the wires to behave for me at all today. I know I used to do it as a kid so my technique is probably a little rusty. But whatever the truth of the technique turns out to be, Bob told us that when he had the Mormon Church come do archaeology work on his farm, they brought with them a truckload of things like ground penetrating radar and other sophisticated pieces of gear. Before long, Bob said, they had switched to using his bent wire technique and were quite successful in finding their sought-after objectives.

Both Concetta and I agree that our chance encounter this afternoon -- that I admit I almost gave up when I didn't accomplish the backing procedure the first time -- easily turned out to be the most interesting and rewarding adventure we have had yet. It was just glorious standing on the top of Mount Pisgah, looking out across the immigrant trail as it wandered west into the distance, and visualizing the lives of the hardy Mormon settlers. We realized that perhaps as many as 2,000 people were buried in nameless graves on the verdant hillsides that stretch out on all sides of us. Perhaps none of these people will ever be known or identified. My own 2-times great uncle, Stephen Daley, may in fact be one of them.

Bob showed us a site near his barn where he has dedicated a small hillock to laying out where cabins had once stood. He's buried railroad ties in 12 x 14 foot rectangles to indicate the size of the cabins. There he plans to allow anyone who knows that their ancestor died anywhere in the Mount Pisgah area to put up a memorial stone to commemorate their passing. One stone already rests peacefully at the foot of Bob's cabin area.

In closing I just want to say that Bob impressed us so much for his love of history, his realizaton of the sacredness of Mount Pisgah as a Mormon monument, and for his willingness to continue the study of a little understood chapter of American history. Bob continues the education process by volunteering to bring school children to his farm and explain the historic events that took place there. He has also been instrumental in forming a Mormon Trail historical group to pull others into the process. We say, Bravo, Bob. Good job indeed!

It was tough to pull ourselves away, that's for sure, but as the sun began to sink in the west, we had to move on. Thankfully, we found a camp in Oceola, which we were able to find early on and saved ourselves the long drive to Ottumwa. Tomorrow? Well, who knows. If you see that little-used road off the main track, we advise you to take it. You just never know what excitement lies ahead. So, until we meet again, we wish you Happy Travels.