West of Saint Louis

Hello from Jonesburg, Missouri|.  I am betting you wouldn't know where that is without looking it up.  But I couldn't remember its name either.  I knew there was a campground out West of St Louis along I 70, but was not finding it as we drove along after way too much time on the highway.  I was tired and a bit grumpy, but when the sign said Jonesburg, I told Loyce that's it!

This campsite is a half mile North of the highway, and the noise is way off in the distance but I can still hear it if I listen intently.  We are under the trees, and the satellite dish is blinking, indicating that we cannot find the bird.  I haven't tried the old fashioned antenna yet.

We went up town, and found a bar and grill type of a local town restaurant, and it was fairly good for that kind of fare.  I had a bud lite, since it is the first place that we could buy beer since we were in Alabama.  Red Bay is in a dry county.  Not a beer joint to be found!

We were up this morning with the neighbor's diesel engines as an alarm.  It has been that way since we arrived.  When I checked out later, the park camp host couple told me that we had 171 motor homes over night, and the park only holds 140.  They all want service!  I said so you want us to leave, right?  Well, if your done we do!

So at 9:30 we did just that, leave, not only Red Bay, but Alabama, as the city limits is also the Mississippi state line.  We drove to Memphis and arrived about noon.  The traffic was crazy.  At one point I had the scare of my life.  An older car came along side me and the front bumper fell down on the tire at 60 mph.  It sounded like a gun going off as pieces of the plastic front end flew all over the place.  Right at our new paint job.  Thank goodness for the Diamond Shield, as we couldn't see any damage.

I'm sure when we get all the bugs off , the has to be some damage in the new paint.  So that lasted about 3 hours on the road, before getting new character marks.  I was hoping for a little longer.  We are just drenched in bug insides, so that will have to be cleaned up sometime soon.

We were instructed to wait 48 hours before washing, but it is sprinkling outside as I write this.  So maybe mother nature will wash away some of the bugs.

It seemed to take all afternoon to come North on I 55 to St Louis, and we arrived right at 5 PM so we could partake of the evening drive time.  We did find I 64 and skirted much of the hubub,  once we made it about 3 miles West of I 270.  It was stop and go for about 10 minutes or so, but that is good for St Louis.

I just used Google maps to tell me the overall distance and it reports 487 miles. No wonder I am a bit tired tonight!

Retired Rod