Casita Rojita

  This is looking out the front door of the friend’s home in Oklahoma City’s that we have been holed up in for the last day and a half.  That is ICE on the grass to the right of the front walk.  Our friends headed down to Dallas for the World Series shortly after we arrived here on Monday. Tuesday shortly after 9am we lost the electricity due to ice in trees and on lines.  The house got colder and colder and about 9pm the lights came back on and the furnace cranked up.   We have decided to head south to Dallas this morning and most likely on to San Antonia to something warmer.  After that... We had enjoyed Tulsa, the Gilcrease Museum on Sunday with a wonderful exhibit of a  Cherokee basket creator, Shan Goshorn. She uses museum grade paper, cut into to thin strips with quotes from treaties and other literature affecting native Americans lives on each strip.  Then she weaves these into titled baskets in protest. On Monday we stopped off in the Gree...

  Our last blog had an out of this world vehicle  and just the  yesterday we discovered an off this continent structure. The students and professors at MUST (Missouri University of Science and Technology) created this replica of Stone Henge with their fancy stone cutting tools (also a school of mining) even aligning it with the sun as the original, but compensating for the fact it is in Missouri and not England. A couple of nights ago we had the campsite to ourselves and it was a warm evening.  Last night we shared the Mark Twain National Forrest with an overwhelming number of four-wheeler enthusiasts driving all over the woods. It was cold this morning but the old camp stove boiled the water right off.  Coffee and tea to start the day. Next to our campsite this morning we found this old stump that had become home to some kind of fungus, I’m guessing, that looked much like a flower.   We followed this group of piggies through town just yesterday.  Gues...

  We are now out of Illinois but before we crossed the Mississippi this afternoon into Missouri we got to ride on lots of the original 66 road.  This one is concrete and we have been riding next to it for quite awhile with the train tracks on one side of us and Interstate on the other. This a brick section that has been restored and travels for several miles but as you can see is out in the middle of just about no where.  But another feature of the Illinois 66 are rather towering figures. Reportedly there are four such figures all male.  Scroll back a blog and you will see the first, Gemini Man.   Surprise we found a women making that at least five giants along the way.   This one is called Bunyon Man. The Lauterback tire man, The ice cream man, he is holding a cone. Lots of old signs, etc, in the small towns we go by relating to the heritage of Route 66 but today as we left Illinois, a state we have spent a lot of time in on this trip, we ran into somethin...

  Yesterday we got ourselves back on track and are headed down Route 66.  While much of the businesses from the 60’s are missing on the route some of the statuary remains.  This is Casita Rojita next to the green Gemini rocket man.  He use to be part of a food establishment but even the present day eatery next to him is closed.  We started in Joliet and he stands in Wilmington. Monday morning Susie got up before bright and early and went to the township hall and voted.  Her ballot showed up in Illinois on Saturday, two days after we left and two weeks after it had been mailed.  After voting we head to spend the night with a Florida friend still sheltering in western Michigan and then on to Route 66 on Tuesday. This is a renovated gas station from the old Route 66.  There is a group of Route 66 fans along with the small towns along the way that are working to keep the lure of the road alive.  Much of it has been run over with interstate highwa...

  We had avoided Indiana because we really didn’t want to see lots of you know who’s yard signs that are sometimes bigger then the yard they are in.  So we waited as far as we could to cross into Indiana.  Only to see no political signs but fields and fields of what had been or was in some state of growing corn.  There were few farm houses but several big wind farms crossing many of the large corn fields. Massive poles with new wires going up along much of the highway we were traveling.  We soon realized we were in industrialized farm country and corporations of what seemed like rather large dimension apparently do not allow political discussion.  At least not on their property. We arrived in South Bend and the home of a friend from Pan’s WAND days.  It had been awhile since we had connected so there was a lot of catching up to do.  Now that we were back in human-sized neighborhoods, just across the way from Notre Dame University where David holds...

  After eight days relaxing and helping put in the beginning of a city water system at Pan’s brothers Cross Creek place in southern Illinois we are back in a moving Casita Rojita.  Pipes that have been rolled up in large coils are not easy to get straight. This is the digger that seemed not to want to work.  It sprung a leak in just about everything that can leak and had to go back to the shop. This was to be a weekend project that ended up finishing on Wednesday.  But we are off and headed back to Michigan as Susie’s ballot never arrived and we are headed back for here to vote in Bloomfield Hills. Last night we stayed in our third town campground right next to what looks like the local minor league baseball field.             

  This is Donovan, Pan’s brother’s grandson.  We are still in Illinois as we are waiting for Susie’s absentee ballot while helping Jeff, Pan’s brother dig a water line. Pan received, voted and mailed her ballot back to Florida just a few days ago.  Susie got her glasses that she was also waiting for but her ballot seems elusive. We are in hopes it came yesterday, it was mailed to Jeff’s office and that will be checked today.  Otherwise we are thinking a trip back to Michigan might be in order. We have decided that continuing south with the hurricanes still running up the Gulf is not such a wise move.  If we do not have to head back east to Michigan, we have made the decision to head west on the Santa Fe Trail.  The bottom half of the Mississippi River Road will have to wait for another none hurricane season time of year. When we first arrived we were lamenting that we were just about a week too early for the leaf color here.  But it all seemed to start...

  Enjoying our camp fire after almost a week of rain and not fires. The sign we are following, round green one on bottom.   Huck and Tom in Hannibal. The wide Mississippi and palisades.                                                                                       The Arch to the west. Susie boarding the tram to come down from the top. Pan at the top.  Such small windows! Way down there that red van on the right is Casita Rojita enjoying a much deserved break. We finally got some pictures to transfer.  It is all in the speed of the WIFI.

 We are not sure what we would have done without our Great River Road App.  We have good old maps, an I-phone GPS and various brochures but the app has kept us on the road. We have had poor phone service since we left northern Illinois and thus you have not had a posting in several days.  This does not mean we are not here just not able to blog.  Pan will attempt to catch you up on our roamings a bit at a time. In the last blog we noted that we had success in finding a camp site for last Saturday night.  Sunday night and Monday night we found places in municipal campgrounds.  One was adjacent to a golf course and the other on the fairgrounds of the local fair.  In both cases we were almost alone.   Pan has been unable to get photos from her I-phone to her I-pad and apologizes for too many words in this blog.  But we did have a wonderful campfire at the first stop.  If the pictures ever migrate to the right devise Pan will forward them la...

 Just a short note for those that have been following.  We have struggled about every few days with finding a place to camp.  Many of the states are requiring advanced reservations only and charge an extra fee.  But today we landed a site right next to lock 15 on the Mississippi River.  It is a Corp of Engineers campground and we could sit in an empty site and go on line and register for one night only.  There are actually several empty sites here. We also drove a shorter time today after leaving our friends’ farm and stopped at lock 13 to have lunch.  We also took in an Indian mound site of the Hopewell culture.  It was not much more then some rounded humps in a field but these were our first sitings.  We plan to see more as we move down the Mississippi.  We hope today is a good omen even though it is raining again.   It is hard to see but through the middle is the dam and locks on the River.

 We left both Minnesota and Wisconsin yesterday but not the River. It had rained most of the night but we had stored enough electricity from the day before that the frig was still humming when we awoke.  Since it was still cold and rainy we opted to pull up stakes (so to speak) and delay breakfast to a park down the road. This was the view as we drove up to our campsite Wednesday evening.  Yes, that is the River looking to the Wisconsin. We had breakfast watching one of the locks on the River.  The River seems to be rather quiet to us as we have seen few barge chains.  The lock where we had breakfast had a tug and just two barges in it.  Later we saw a push boat and three tugs going up River. Lots of rail cars as the railroad runs just next to the River in many places. Leaving many towns with not only the River running through it but the railroad also.  Much of the day we spent on the Wisconsin side. The big event of the day was the detour that took us...