End of Escapade and crazy travel day

The Escapade is over and we packed up our stuff to move on. One last task was to have our rig weighed. Thursday they weighed the truck by itself and today on the way out the whole thing gets weighed. John has fretted about the weight of our trailer and truck combination from the start. Don't want to be in the position of too little truck for the trailer we are pulling. Well, good news we are under on all of the parameters. The axel weights were good, our balance from side to side and front to back was good, pin weight was good. We get the final report in a few weeks but it was good to know all our purging of "stuff" was worth it. It even leaves room for the batteries and solar panels John intends to add one of these days.


So we left Goshen and headed towards Wisconsin. Now we are traveling on a Friday which we said we wouldn't do and for good reason (the reason is forthcoming). Well, we tried to miss most of Chicago by going on I80 and that was good. Now we were told by a fellow traveler that I39 was really torn up in Illinois so we decided to try a state highway North. Where we turned off we did check out a State park, Illini State Park to be specific. Nice park on the Illinois river but the sites were not even close to level on the ones not reserved so we decided to keep going which was our first mistake. We headed north and the road meandered a little but was pretty good, then we hit a section with the dreaded sign "recently oiled" and there was no way John was taking us down that road. So are only choice was a state highway going east and the bad part was we were't going to hit another road north for awhile. Then it gets worse as we run into crazy construction, the worst we've been in. That slows us down even more. We finally get into Wisconsin and start looking for signs to campgrounds and there are none for the longest time. By the time we see any we are close to Madison so John says lets keep going and checkout the one we were going to head to on Monday. Ok, did I mention it was Friday and now it is late? We find the park it is small by right on the bike trail but guess what - no sites that weren't already reserved. So we decided to head back to a State Park we  passed on the way, only about 20 minutes away, Lake Kegonsa, did I mention it is late Friday? No sites except a handicap that he was willing to give to us for one night if we thought we would fit, we tried, no go. So now we start looking for a private park. We passed a park called Hickory Hills so I found their number and called yes they had something so 45 minutes later in the dark we pull in and luckily it is a pull through, unluckily it is 40 dollars a night. So paid for two nights. It rained hard last night and we did get set up before that. We slept in and are waiting for the sun  so we can check this place out. It is on a lake but most of the sites are seasonal but at lest we have a place.


So let's see in the two weeks we have been gone we have broken almost every travel rule we made. On the way to Goshen we spent only 1 to 2 night at each stop. Leaving Gohen we traveled on A Friday, drove too far,  too late and had to set up in the dark. Hmmm - seems like we are slow learners. I think we will slow it down now and get back to the original plan, we really don't want another day like that. The good thing now is we have nowhere we have to be until Christmas. 


Happy trails....