Arriving back in Indiana

Todd and the kids had to go back home on Sunday, along with most of the other campers around us, so by Monday morning we were pretty lonely.

We’re the only one left in the full hookup loop!

We needed to fill up on diesel, and stock up on groceries before we moved to the next campground, so on Monday we were headed for the nearest Walmart, in Mattoon, where we also found

the Rural King Corporate Headquarters!  Bonus!  So, we walked around for a bit, but didn’t buy much . . . just a bag of potato chips and some Jiffy cornbread mix.

Next we had lunch at DQ where I used the free wifi to connect my work laptop and clean out my email inbox.  At Walmart, we filled up with diesel at $3.85/gallon (could have saved 10 cents/gallon, if I had been thinking and had bought a Walmart gift card to pay for the gas with!).  After stocking up on a few groceries, we headed back to the campground.

On Tuesday morning, we were packed up and ready to hit the road by 10:30 am.  We took IL-32 north to IL-133 east, through Amish country, and over to I-57.  From I-57, we took I-74 east out of Champaign, and then took IN-231 into Lafayette.  We skirted around the edge of Lafayette, through a little bit of construction and traffic, and onto IN-25, which was supposed to take us right to Prophetstown State Park, at least according to Streets and Trips.

We were doing well, and only got a little bit nervous when we saw this bridge up ahead.

Single lane bridge over the Wabash River – at least it was tall enough!

We made our way over the bridge, and according to our directions, the park should have been right there.  We saw the Park Office (not quite soon enough), but missed it and as we continued on, we went over the top of what looked like the road into the campground, but could not see how to access it.  We continued on about a mile to the little town of Battleground, where we were able to turn around (barely!) in the Fire Department driveway.

We went back to the Park Office, and Tom just pulled off on the shoulder while I walked in to find out how the heck to get into the campground.  The young DNR officer said that we needed to go back into Battleground, make a left at the RR track, go back about 2 miles and a couple of more turns would get us to the main gate.

OK, well, I’m aimed in the wrong direction on this road, so we can’t go back into Battleground, so what other option do we have?  Another DNR officer took pity on us and told the girl to just check us in and let us go through the service entrance  from their office.

Well, that worked, and soon enough we were settled into our site.

This part of the campground is on an old christmas tree farm, and the pull-through sites are tucked nicely into the remaining spruce trees.

We have plenty of room, but the trees add privacy between the sites (we can’t even see the camper right next to us!), and some shade in the afternoon – which is nice on these days that are still in the 90s.

We got all set up, had some dinner, went for a bike ride, and then later a walk to get some pictures of the colorful sky.

The southwestern sky was pretty, with the blues and pinks,

but the northwestern sky was even more dramatic with its reds and purples!

Tonight we have severe thunderstorm warnings around us, but it sound like everything is going to go north of us.  I wouldn’t mind a little rain though – maybe it would cool things down some!