Summer of 18-#7-Wildlife, and some days are harder than others!!!

May 15th, 2018

We had some wildlife visit us before we headed out on the road.  Bryan saw this beautiful moth in the kitchen when he got up this morning.  I was already up and drinking my coffee, a little while before I had seen an ordinary small moth flying around, could it have transformed into this beauty.  

I posted on Facebook to see if anyone knew what it was and my friend DaveMac replied that it was an "Actias luna, the luna moth, is a lime green, Neurotic Saturniid moth in the family Saturniidae, subfamily Saturninae. [1] It has a wingspan of up to 114mm(4.5in), [2] making it one of the largest moths in North America.  

Thanks Dave.  I read some more about it and apparently they only live a week, so I feel fortunate that we got to see one.

Then this little fella was waiting outside to say goodbye, or maybe he came by to thank us for not running over his friends yesterday!!

With that we left Redman Creek and headed toward Dam West Campground, Argyle Lake, Illinois.  After a good start to our day, the rest of the day started to go downhill. 

I didn't get a picture of the Welcome sign as we crossed the border from Missouri to Illinois so we stopped at the Welcome Center rest stop, as they usually have a nice welcome sign.  Hmmm, no such luck.  Very little in the way of signs.  

These were the best I could do, sorry!!!!

King Neptune was a pig used by a Royal Navy recruiter to raise 19 million in war bonds for the construction of the battleship Illinois.

Name of the Rest Area

A blurry picture of the only sign that said Illinois!!!   The welcome center had no one in it!!!  Not much of a welcome here.

I got a picture of a water tower with the name of the town of Marion on it as we passed through, just to prove that we were in Illinois.

We arrived at the campground and spent a long while trying to get a satellite signal with no luck.  We had an internet signal though, so we can watch sports through that on the tv, or our laptops.  We can also get local channels on our aerial.
We are in this full hook up site for 2 nights before moving to an electric only site for four nights.  We went for a walk around the campground, and realized that we wouldn't be able to get a satellite signal in the site we were moving to either. After much debate, we made the decision to move into a walk in site (You can't reserve these sites until you arrive and are ready to occupy them).  We selected a couple of the empty ones that we thought would work. We found out that there is a fishing competition here at the weekend, and the sites were starting to fill up.  We then decided that instead of staying in this site for two nights, we would move tomorrow to ensure we could get the site we wanted before someone else got it.

Overall, today was NOT a good day.  Oh well, yesterday was wonderful.  You can't expect everyday to go according to plan.

May 16th, 2018

When we got up I checked the computer, and one of the sites we had picked out had already gone.  Bryan went to the office and got the other one.  We had 90 minutes to move into it, so I had a shower, washed my hair, Bryan filled the water tank, and we packed up.  We were in it in an hour, phew!!  They refunded us the money for our full hook up, and we decided to leave a day early as we didn't want to be in a site with no water or sewer hookup for more than 4 nights.  We have to conserve our water use to ensure our waste tanks don't fill up before we leave and can dump at the main sewer dump as we go out.  The bathhouse has to be used for showers, and we try to use those toilets as well when we can.

In the new site, we struggled to get a satellite signal again, and were getting a little annoyed. We had sports this weekend and for me, The Royal Wedding, that I wanted to record as well as watch.  We moved the motorhome back and forth and had two couples opposite us sitting outside their RV's watching the show.  I felt as though we were in a goldfish bowl and the free entertainment. We were getting more and more annoyed.  In the end we decided to give up!!!          

We moved back as far as we could in the site.  We got setup and everything was fine, without the satelitte.  The two couples opposite went out when the entertainment stopped, and I told Bryan I was going to try the satellite again, now we had no audience!!!  Bryan found out that one of the switches had been knocked and it needed to be pushed in again, and we eventually got a connection.  Yay!!!!  Our moods changed instantly.  Now, while we like to watch television I like to think it doesn't rule our lives too much.  We tend to watch sports at weekends because we can go out in the week, and avoid the weekend crowds.  The main thing this weekend was the Royal Wedding, and I admit I didn't want to miss it.

Our new site with the satellite working!!!

View to the left of our site

and the right

Bathhouse opposite, not too far

It had been a couple of not so good days and I was miserable, as I had been looking forward to staying in this campground, and was disappointed with how things had turned out. We did manage to get the Illinois State sticker on our map though.  So, hopefully things are looking up.

Tomorrow, we are going to World's tallest arch, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.