Hello From Mason City, IA

This will be a short blog as this has been a week of some caregiving for our TN friends before leaving on Wednesday.  It was really hard to say 'see you next time' (we don't say good bye) but it was time and so on Wednesday we headed out towards IL.

It turns out that Wednesday was a good day to leave because even though we had a lot of rain going through Nashville, along with construction, it wasn't as bad as it got on Thursday along with flooding too.  We stayed in Marion, IL Wednesday night where we had dinner with a couple we met about seven years ago when we went to Talladega, AL four years in a row for the Nascar race.  Tom & his son parked behind us all four years and we had a lot of fun times there.  They live not far from Marion so they drove over for a nice visit and dinner.

Thursday morning we were up and on our way to my brothers where we stayed until this morning.  Weather was great, the crops (corn and beans) look like they are going to have a great harvest in a few months and it was fun to see everyone twice in the same summer.

We left this morning and the drive west on I-80 and then north on I-35 was an easy one with just a little rain about 30 miles from Mason City.  My brother has always wanted to ride in the motorhome but it's just never worked out until this morning so he rode 'shotgun' for awhile and my sister-in-law sat on the sofa and actually took a little nap.....she said the road noise was 'soothing' to her.  I followed behind in their car and then after about 50 miles we stopped and they went on back home while we continued west.

We are staying at a very nice little city park here in Mason City that has a full hookup campground.  Seems to be very quiet and will be a good place to 'chill out' and regroup a bit.  We'll take the Winnebago RV factory tour tomorrow morning and then we'll see what else is around this area to visit before leaving and beginning our trek west.

One interesting tidbit was that we needed diesel today and at the Flying J in LaSalle, IL it was $3.99 and at Flying J in Walcot, IA it was $3.77.  When you get 150 gallons, it makes a difference!      Crazy!!!!!!