Arrived Home Safe and Sound

Our last few days on the road were fairly uneventful.  We left St. Louis, Missouri on April 13th.  

It was a great drive with very little traffic.

Our destination was the Hunnewell Lake Conservation Area in Missouri.

  I found it online and they had free camping. 

We were thrilled with it.  We had the whole place to ourselves.  

We went for a walk to see the lake.

I stepped on this snake!!  I haven't moved that quickly for awhile.  At least I was brave enough to go back and take a picture.  Dave talked to a guy that works at the fish hatchery on site and asked him about the snake.  He said they are water snakes which grow to the size of an anaconda in the summer.  He said they aren't poisonous but they are very aggressive.  Yuck!  

Cleo enjoyed the view.

They have boats and oars on the shore which you can use for free.  

A lot of people used them to go fishing for a couple of hours.

It was such a great place, we decided to stay for two nights.  We drove to the nearby town of Marion City which is just slightly bigger than the tiny town of Hunnewell.  We were looking for a small 7 or 10 pound propane tank for our barbecue to replace ours which no longer worked.  At one store a young guy referred us to another store that he thought might have one.  As we were about to leave that store, again with no luck, the young guy came driving up in his truck to see if we'd found one.  When we said no, he offered to give us his.  We thanked him but refused.  Missouri was a very friendly place! 

It was so peaceful there, the only sound we heard was the ice clinking in our glasses. 

This bird laid her eggs on the grass and put on quite a show pretending to be lame to distract us from where her eggs were.  

We reluctantly left there the morning of April 15th.

We saw some humour in this sign.

Entering Iowa.

Luckily, all the traffic was going the other way.

We ended the day in Marshalltown, Iowa.  We had intended to stay for two nights but we weren't crazy about it there, so decided to move on the next day.

We drove to a casino in Prior Lake, Minnesota where we intended to stay the night.  They had a very expensive RV park which was full and an RV parking area which cost $15.00 where there wasn't even room to open your slides.  We decided we'd rather camp at Walmart for free so we moved on.  

Right next to Walmart we found a great patio for a beer.

The next morning, April 17th, we left Minnesota in shorts and flip flops.  Every time we stopped the truck for anything we put more clothes on.

It kept getting wetter and colder as we drove.  We intended to stop somewhere between Fargo and Grand Forks but decided to just keep on going.

We got to Walmart in Winnipeg on Sunday night and froze while we were setting up our trailer.

We were treated to a beautiful sunset.  It's great to be home!  We are leaving for Vancouver Island tomorrow, Sunday April 24th for 10 days, then we will be back for the summer.  I may do a couple of blogs throughout the summer, but don't count on it.