Water, Water, Everywhere

On Tuesday afternoon, we picked up our truck. We wanted to drive it a bit before heading back out on the road just to be sure that the problem was resolved and that the check engine light would not come on again. So we drove to Becca’s and had a nice visit with her. Then we drove to Sarah’s and visited with Sarah, a very active and precocious three-year-old Brooke, and the new baby Teddy. We had a nice visit with both Becca and Sarah, and another silver lining, were glad to be able to see them once again before leaving town for an extended period of time.

After visiting with Sarah, we decided that we still wanted to drive the truck a little more, just to be sure that the problem was resolved. So we put the truck on auto-pilot and sat back to see where it would take us. Well, what do you know? It took us to Forbush’s, our favorite ice cream place in Ellwood City. Well, since we found ourselves there, what else could we do but partake of the delicious homemade ice cream (another silver lining?).

After driving the truck and being convinced that we were good to go, we packed up (again) and left early Wednesday morning. When we left Cranberry at 6 a.m., it was 82 degrees – very unusual to be that warm that early in the day. Around noon, we were in northern Indiana, with the temperature around 64, and rainy and chilly weather. We drove through light rain off and on through the morning, courtesy of the remnants of Hurricane Beryl.

We reverted back to our normal method of traveling, covering 600 miles over 12 hours for the day. We didn’t intend to go that far, but we felt good and just decided to keep going. During these 12 hours, we made only one stop – about a half hour that we took for a lunch, gas, and bathroom.

We drove some interstate, but we like to get off the interstate and travel on back roads to see the countryside. The back roads of Indiana were very neat, clean, orderly, and straight. The grass and fields were very green, but there was a lot of standing water and some flooding in the yards and fields. 

  


   


We continued to have rain off and on throughout the day. We were fortunate, though, because the heavy rains occurred maybe 6-8 hours before we drove through those areas, (again, courtesy of Beryl), so we had mostly light rain while driving. There were lots of areas where the water was just receding from the roadways, and a couple of times we had to take detours due to closed roads and bridges that were out, so we got to see more of the countryside than we had anticipated.

We saw lots of these (High Water) signs.

And we saw this grocery store (with the misspelled name) along the way!

I wonder if we could get a discount here!

We arrived at our campground in Peoria, Illinois and set up camp in a light rain. Since we made it all the way to Peoria in one day, we decided to camp here for two nights. This will give us a chance to rest and relax before hitting the road again on Friday. We are camping right beside the Illinois River. The water level is very high, and given our proximity to the river, we are hoping the flooding is done!

   


 

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 11, 2024 at 6:56 PM

    The decision when having a rocky road is smooth it out with ice cream is always a good one! Glad it turned out good!
    Ellen Hebert Hutchinson

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 16, 2024 at 5:11 AM

    It’s funny, you don’t think of Hurricanes affecting areas so far north coming from the South, but they do.

    Beautiful river area. Looks calm and relaxing.
    Cathy

    ReplyDelete

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