A Series of Two Nighters in Illinois, Missouri & Iowa. A mid-west meander.

17th June – 25th June 2023

Reminder to subscribers: I’ve still not sorted the issue of the photos not coming through on the automatic email. You can either go directly to the website at tincantravels.net, or follow the link at the bottom of the page.

Many RV people that we meet during the course of our travels drive insane distances in a day in order to get from A to B in the shortest time possible. 12-15 hours on the road can be entirely normal and then they get up early to do it all again the next day. But, as you know, that is not our style. We do have the luxury of time and we also can’t bear to fill up with petrol twice in a day. Tin Can Travels Trip Planner (aka Nick) has done some forward planning so that we are booked into places in Wyoming for the silly season of 4th of July celebrations and another town for their rodeo weekend. Now we had an itinerary in place we knew our timeframe to get across the mid-west and so we commenced our slow and steady plod. The under 2oo mile drive, arrive by 2pm, stay 2 night plan was implemented.

First stop: Mount Vernon, Illinois, is a small town that services I-64 traffic and we stopped at a camp that mainly hosted the aforementioned longhaul driving overnighters. It was just across the road from a great hardware store called Tractor Supply Co. and a short walk from a Walmart Supercenter. Big D and Tin Can needed a proper clean, a few minor things fixing and sorting and some general maintenance so we decided the next day was going to be a work day. We set off to get some supplies. In the heat. On foot. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that. Neither establishment see many customers arrive without the aid of a combustion engine, but the Hampsons like to confuse the locals. The next day, with a storm forcast for mid afternoon, we set to work early. I borrowed a set of tall stepladders from the RV park so we could reach the high bits and we washed, polished, filled paint chips, fixed a chair, lubed the slideouts, trimmed some old putty sealant, removed some tape residue and generally spruced. At about 3pm the sky blackened so we finished up and put everything away about 2 minutes before the rain started. A good day’s work.

The next day we headed off after a tank washout during which I discovered our septic pipe had acquired a hole. Not a big one, but no hole is a good hole in this department. It was not a fixable hole either, so we factored in a visit to an RV store on our onward journey. Its amazing that we have been doing this long enough now that things are starting to wear out. We also needed to replace a broken gutter spout (again) on the front right corner of Tin Can. This is always the one that gets broken or lost as it get caught on low hanging branches en route (I think the Blue Ridge Parkway ate this last one). Of course while we were there we did some window shopping and had a nosy at some new RVs in the sales area. We often wonder how different our travels would have been with a different rig.

We pootled on and arrived in Missouri. Our second stop of the day was in a very elegant town called Fulton. This is noteable for its small but influential private liberal arts college and The National Churchill Museum. Sir Winston Churchill came to this college in March 1946, as the post war, ex-prime minister of the UK, to deliver its annual guest lecture. His invitation was a bold, optomistic move by the college but because a college alum, a military man, was high up in the administration of Harry S Trumans’s government, Truman agreed to endorse the invitation and offered to introduce Churchill. Churchill accepted and thus Fulton, Missouri became the site of one of his greatest speeches and one where he coined the term ‘The Cold War’. This would be bizarre enough, but the museum is housed in a church that was built by Sir Christopher Wren. He designed and rebuilt St Mary The Virgin of Aldermanbury church after it was destroyed in the Great Fire Of London in 1666. Unfortunately the church took a direct hit during the Blitz in 1940 and was ruined. In 1965 the church was purchased by Fulton College in order to create a memorial to Churchill and to commemorate the lecture. The (mostly) pile of rubble was dismantled, transported to Fulton, rebuilt, restored and opened as the museum on the college campus. Interestingly, not long after it was completed, the college’s own chapel collapsed and St Mary’s became the college’s chapel too. (Here’s one I prepared earlier…) The museum was actually really interesting and mapped out Churchill’s life and work, obviously with a focus on the War, in a very informative way. We were impressed.

Our next two night stop was a wooded camp accessed by a 5 mile gravel road. This really undid our days work of cleaning and polishing and the bikes were just a mess. This camp was almost deserted and had a small pool which was great as it was pretty hot on our days here. Apart from the excitement of using our new sewer hose and fitting the gutter spout by standing on a step ladder atop a picnic table, there was not much to report about this place.

Onward! Westwards! In a very straight line through Missouri. The road brought us to the metropolitan area of Kansas City, but our destination was not the city itself – or it’s neighbour across the river, Kansas City , Kansas- instead it was the historic city of Independence on its eastern outskirts. Before we arrived at camp we took a short detour to find a self service car wash place to knock off the dust. This was a quick affair as there were a couple of questionable looking locals hanging out nearby, looking shifty and definitely not entirely devoid of mind altering substances. I guess if they had approached in a threatening manner Nick could have ‘jetwashed’ them to protect me. They probably could have also done with the power shower but it didn’t come to that. Finding ourselves in uncomfortable situations like this during our meanderings is very unusual so we don’t let it bother us too much. Trusting a gut feeling goes a long way. Happily the carwash was in an entirely different part of town from the handsome and historic downtown of Independence which was where we were going.

Our two nights here were in a church-owned town camp only a stone’s throw from the centre of Independence. It was spacious and well maintained and managed by a nice lady with two friendly siamese cats who hung out with her in her office. The land that the park was on had a colourful past. Initially it was the site of an impressive home owned by a business man. After he died, leaving a widow and seven children, his wealthy batchelor brother moved in with the family. A while later, in 1909, he and another couple of family members died in mysterious circumstances and the family physician was the prime suspect. Dr Hyde (yes, really), who had suspiciously recently married one of the daughters of the family, was accused of poisoning them. His motive was deemed to be to reduce the number of heirs of the fortune, thus increasing his own potential share. He was convicted at trial but this verdict was overturned on appeal. His reputation never recovered, he divorced his wife and he maintained his innocence for the rest of his life. Years later the house fell into disrepair, was demolished and the land was finally sold to The Church of The Latter Day Saints. Independence now serves as the World Headquarters of The Community Of Christ, a branch of the LDS church and they have built the most beautiful and crazy looking temple. We cycled up to it, but unfortunately couldn’t get inside for a look around. It is quite magnificent just from the outside though.

The other thing that Independence is noted for is that it was the home town of President Harry S Truman and is now the location of his presidential library and museum. We also paid a visit to this on our bikes, first passing his old home on the way. The museum and library was the first of its kind and its inception and creation was Truman’s retirement project. He had an office here and he, his wife and his daughter, are all buried here. This museum also did a really good job of mapping out his life, both personal and professional, detailing how his presidency encompassed a significant slice of world history and how his character influenced his achievements and legacy. He seemed like a thoroughly decent bloke who did a good job of being president, even if this was thrust upon him unexpectedly. Interestingly the ‘S’ doesn’t stand for anything. His parents gave him the middle initial S to honor and please both his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

It was definitely time for haircuts whilst we were here and on our first evening’s foray into town we happened upon a salon that was still open and called in on the off chance that we could get appointments for the next day. Amazingly, due to a recent cancellation, the answer was yes, and we had back to back bookings for 7pm the next day. We also had a recommendation from the hairdresser for somewhere to go for food and drinks and thus ended up at the local brewery on the main square. Here we sampled a few pints of the local brews, ate a very delicious couple of flatbread pizzas from the co-located food kiosk and listened to the offerings of the ‘open mic music night’. These were pretty much all ‘man-with-a-guitar’ acts and most did a pretty good job. One was questionable. Our haircuts the next day were both very satisfactory and finding ourselves back in town at 8pm we went back to the brewery for another drink. Be silly not to, we reckoned.

We headed north from here and managed to sneak a stay in the very south-west corner of Iowa, a state that we didn’t think that we would get to visit. Iowa has the Missouri River as its entire western border and the Mississippi River as its entire eastern border. A unique situation in the USA. The landscape to get here had been very flat and mostly given over to the growing of corn. We had found a small campsite in Waubonsie State Park. This was situated up on some bluffs, a geological curiosity of this area. The bluffs are called loess hills and are formed by the heaping up of wind blown fine soils over past millenia. There are loess hills all over the world, but only in China are they found higher than in Iowa.

At this camp we met a group of men who were four brothers in their late 50s and early 60s. They were here for their annual family reunion that was happening at one of the park’s big picnic shelters in 2 days time. Their surname was Churchill, which was topical for us. They all lived about an hour up the road in a town called Council Bluffs, all were with their respective wives and were all camping in either an RV or a cabin. They looked nothing alike and spent very little time talking to each other as far as we could see. They did, however, all engage us in many conversations seperately. They were all very pleasant, although the youngest of them, who was also the tallest of them by some considerable margin, was a bit weird. He knocked on our (very much closed and locked) door at 10.30pm at night to give us a present of a crocheted dish washing pad that his wife (who we never clapped eyes on during the entirety of our stay) had made for us. Admittedly our lights were still on, but this is a significant departure from ‘normal and acceptable behaviour’ in any situation, and especially in the RV world. What I thought was “What time do you call this ????? The only valid reasons to knock at night are medical emergency, imminant tornado or a rapidly rising river situation, but otherwise go away and it can wait until morning, you freak. But of course what I said was “Oh, thank you very much, that is very thoughtful“. So very British.

There was a great sunset lookout a short stroll from the campground. The plains to the west of here are so flat that it was like watching a sunset over the ocean, without the blinding reflection off the water. We walked up both nights, beer in hand, and shared it with a photographer chap the first evening and two younger couples the second evening. Both of the couples had driven from the campsite. I swear this was only about 350m away. (About 1000ft for our US friends). One couple even brought their big, bouncy dog in the car, made it sit to watch the sunset, then drove it back again. I despair!

The next day was hot and windless again, as it has been for days now. We waited until late morning so that the temperature had easily reached about 28 °C (82 °C for our US friends) and then set off for a nice long walk. Mad dogs again and all that. It was a beautiful route, mostly shaded through woodland with a short segment in the blazing sun along an open ridge that had that great westerly view. We marveled, as we sweated, about how we had the whole walk to ourselves, not meeting a single other person along our route of about 6 miles, the reality being that everyone else had more sense, of course as the temperature was now about 35°C. (The Americans can work it out).

We survived our exploits and made it home with only mild heat exhaustion and dehydration. Nothing that a cold shower and drinking 3.87 litres (a gallon) of refreshing water couldn’t sort out. The next morning we bade our farewells -seperately – to the band of Churchillian brothers and headed across the Missouri River to Nebraska.