LeClaire, Iowa and East Moline, Ilinois

Well, we took our longest trip so far, 238 miles to LeClaire, Iowa to visit Antique Archaeology, the store owned by Mike and Frank  from the TV show on the History Channel, American Pickers. It was smaller than we imagined, but cool to see.


Next , we took a 14 mile trip to East Moline, Illinois to Lundeen's Landing Campground on the Rock River. It was a great campground, with the friendliest people we have ever encountered. We had a beautiful site right on the river. Great views of the river and the I-80 bridge. Their were train tracks nearby, so you could hear them occasionally, a sound I find relaxing.

Thanks to our wonderful campground host, Jack was able to go catfishing with Fred in his fully equipped deluxe catfishing boat. They caught 15 catfish, one of them quite large. It was loads of fun for Jack, he enjoyed Fred's stories as well as his knowledge about catfishing. Fred even cleaned and filleted them for us. We haven't eaten them yet, but heard they are delicious. It was our best camping trip so far. Everything went smoothly.

Teddy learned that some Toll Booth Attendants give dog treats, so he was sure that whenever we slow down and open the window, it pays to look out the window and flash a cute look at them, be sure they notice you. Just one of the many things that Teddy loves about camping. It took us an hour and a half to get him out of the camper, once we got home. He absolutely loves it.

Here is their webpage.....

http://www.lundeens-landing.com/index.php?p=1_2

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

Well we had a great time camping in my cousin Leanne's yard. We parked in a nice shady spot, had a great time. We had a nice time around the fire pit, it was the first fire in the pit, what an honor ! Delicious breakfast and    Bloody Marys, then it was time to head home.......OOOOOPS, the small dip in the ditch before getting on to the road turned out to be a problem.....big time. Front tires down , then up, back tires down then......floating about 2 inches above ground, NOT GOOD !!!! We needed to get towed out. But, we can laugh about it now.....But, at the time not so funny!!!

Redneck camping

Well, tonight we're going to do a little redneck camping......gonna pull into my cousin's driveway, hop out with an extension cord in hand, asking " so, where do we plug in at ?" Actually, its my cousin's granddaughter, Grace's 1st birthday party and we thought it'd be great if we could make it a sleepover.....update to follow. I only wish we had a cool horn, to beep a little banjo music as we pull up to the house !!!

May 16th.....Back from our camping trip

Well, we went on our first trip of the year. We went to the Eden KOA Campground. We had adjoining spots with  a friend from Sysco,Mike Vorwick , his wife , son and daughter. We had a nice time, the weather was unseasonably cold and it was misting most of the time. Jack spent most of his time fishing at the pond, catch and release only. But he did catch a lot.We had a lot of good food....Mike made a great breakfast the first morning, I made fresh hot doughnuts on Sunday morning. We made some great BBQ ribs Saturday nite. Teddy did really well, loves seeing all the dogs and kids, but, he would've loved playing with all of them. When we got home, he didn't want to come out of the RV, we had to leave him in there for a while, till I guess he realized finally we were not going any place. Traveling is much quieter now that we have the vinyl blinds and Jack added air to the air assist, which really helped.

Hubert , the lion is our mascot. When we got our loan at Harris Bank for the RV, we were the very first loan they gave out in West Bend.So, they treated us very special. We got our Hubert and we told them we would take him everywhere we went. When we actually bought the RV, the previous owner actually drove from Sussex to our Harris Bank, so she could cash the check right there. So Sandy Conrady and Nikki Bernal from the bank came in to check it out. Here's a picture of  Sandy and Nikki infront of our new RV.

May 9th....getting the RV ready

Spent the day cleaning the RV.....getting it ready for this weekend. We'll be going to the Eden KOA for the weekend. We replaced all the aluminum blinds with vinyl blinds, hoping that will make it quieter on the road. They were standard widths but MUCH shorter, so I had to do a lot of shortening. Spent some time rearranging things trying to get organized .....it's going to take some time to get everything just right. I'm looking forward to staying in it again, it really is so comfy in there. It'll really be great taking a long trip in it. But, for now the short trips are good, till we get  everything set up the way we like it.