December 26-29, 2014 Chicago to Nacogdoches, Texas

 

We went to the Katie and Sadie’s English Garden Flower shop today. They have been very, very busy. They are closed today for Boxing day. We went to see the ‘Eye of the Penguin’ stained glass piece that used to hang in Dolores Moran’s house, before it was torn down. Dolores was John’s mother, she is the original Penguin that our bus is named after.

 

Patrick Moran, Parker, Ryan and Sean are helping Katie move today. This evening we went to the Moran cousins get together. This is only the part of the Morans who could make it tonight. John has 6 siblings and each of his parents also came from  large families, so there are lots of Morans.

 

This is the Moran’s and their children. I flunked the test on remembering everyone’s name. These are camper van candy boxes that I made for Christmas presents. Each one contains a flash drive with all 12 of the blog books about our almost 5 year RV experience.

Woo Hoo, my house in Denver is now on the market! We got on the road on Sat, headed back home to the bus, it is 980 miles away.

We stopped in Pontiac, Illinois to see the Route 66 museum. The  VW bus belonged to  Bob Waldmire. He practically lived on Route 66, part of the time in the VW bus, it says on the front that it is in mobile Route 66 museum. He is an artist and supported himself with art work of the road of route 66.

 

Here we are outside the Pontiac Route 66 museum. One of the museum guys took our photo and told us it would the best photo of our trip. The court house in Pontiac, Ill. It is a cute little town. Of course we are driving back to our motor home in  Texas and John did not want to dawdle, so we didn’t hang around.

 

Behind the Pontiac museum was this Bob Waldmire  road yacht.  It is a school bus he remodeled into a home. He lived in it when he was in Illinois. He was from Springfield, Ill. Below it is a mural of Bob’s map of the road, it is 66 feet long. The next museum I wanted to stop at was the Grain Elevator museum in Atlanta, Ill and John drove by the exit and claimed he did not know I wanted to stop there. We will have to  stop next time by. 

We are spending the night in Litchfield, Illinois. Of course John was delighted to go to the museum here. . . It snowed here a bit when we got here.  Boo, glad we are heading south.

Next day we blew though Missouri. The Gateway Arch over St Louis. The Welcome to Missouri sign is in the middle of the bridge over the Mississippi. I was not quick enough to catch the whole sign. The GPS sent us on a wrong turn and we got an unexpected tour through St Louis getting back to the highway.  We drove by the home brewery for Anheister Busch, then the  ball park ,Busch stadium and the Cardinal Nation. Then Arkansas, the natural state. Also called the Diamond state, we went to the only open to the public diamond mine state park and got all wet and cold looking for diamonds on our last trip through Arkansas. Didn’t find any.

  

We did not stop for diamonds this trip, but did stop in Hot Springs, Arkansas to soak in the Quapaw Baths in Hot Springs National Park.  The second set of photos is looking up and down Bathhouse Row. The park service restored the historic bath houses from the 1800’s. Back in the day people came to the hot springs to take the cure in the waters. They are very fancy,stained glass, sculptures etc. The visitors center is in one of the bath houses and besides seeing the cool bath house they also have many of the ‘therapy’' devices used back then. The green trees are magnolias. They are ever greens.

 

Finally Texas. The gas is lower priced than when we left and the sun was out for part of the way. We have been in mostly gray, cloudy skies since we left. Back to home sweet home in the RV in Nacogdoches. We can relax now.