2 days, 633 miles, mostly via I-44. I-64. I-57 and I-75
Day 1: Branson, MO, to Benton, IL
GTE Hop 4, Day 1
This was the longest day of the GTE – 359 miles, almost 6 hours of driving. With a refueling stop lunch break and a nasty construction delay in Illinois, we were on the road for over 7.5 hours. Fortunately, it was almost all interstate, except for MO 165 that we took north out of Branson, and that was divided highway. Very hilly divided highway. The truck struggled to climb some of those hills.
Crossing the Mississippi
We had had almost no rain on the QTE to this point, but we expected that to change once we crossed the Mississippi near St Louis. The east coast had been inundated for weeks and the forecast for Kentucky was for rain. This time the forecasters were right: intermittent rain appeared the moment we got into IL and continued through the night. We had to break camp (at the Benton KOA) in a steady rain.
Benton is an interesting little town, if you ever get a chance to stop there. The downtown looks like a set from Back to the Future. with a central square dominated by City Hall. We did takeout from the local Applebees and it was packed. I asked a waitress if it was always packed like that at 6:30 on a Saturday night and she said no – it must be due to “the fireworks down at the lake” and the “street metal” show. Well, I don’t know what a street metal show is and had no interest in fireworks (in the rain) down at the lake, but apparently Benton is the place to be on a Saturday night.
The campground was small, but our drive-through site was spacious, level and quiet. It was a very satisfactory place to spend a night. But if you come in from the north, be prepared for a very narrow, dark road with an obscured sign for the campground. We really wondered what we were getting into. But it turned out fine.
Benton KOA sign
Set up at the Benton KOA
Day 2: Benton, IL, to Georgetown, KY
This day began with 45 miles on IL 14, a 2-lane road that cut some 10 miles off the alternative route: back up I-75. Jett does not like hauling the rig down 2-lane roads, but I knew it would be flat and not too curvy. I had also checked (twice) for low bridges. But we encountered two railroad underpasses that at first looked too low. They weren’t, but they also weren’t marked with a height, so I had to carefully eyeball them as we approached. Jett just closed her eyes.
More rain, intermittently, this day. Fortunately, there was no rain between 2:30 and 5:50 while we were stuck in Louisville, waiting to get our flat tire replaced.
Yes, another flat on the RV. Our fourth. This was the same wheel that had gone flat in MD on the GTW. The tire was less than a year old and had fewer than 10,000 miles on it. But it wasn’t a tire failure; it looked like I had encountered something on the road that took a chunk the size of a silver dollar out of the tread. Fortunately it was not an explosive blowout. Fortunately a woman got my attention as we were driving through downtown Louisville and told me that my tire was going flat. Fortunately the tire held out until I could get to an exit (there was no breakdown lane in downtown Louisville on I-64). Fortunately the next exit was in a nice area of town. Fortunately there was a large parking lot at a medical building near the exit. Fortunately the building was closed on Sunday and the lot was empty.
Another flat tire
I immediately got on the phone with Paragon, our emergency RV roadside assistance service, and told them our situation, explaining that we had a flat “on the trailer”. For some reason, the doofus on the phone thought I was towing some little U-Haul or something and sadly informed me that I wasn’t covered. It took me 20 minutes on the phone, finally speaking to a supervisor, before I successfully communicated that the flat was on my RV, which was fully covered by my “RV Plus” coverage. Annoying.
Waiting for the tire guy
Then it took then another 20 minutes to find someone, on Sunday, to do the tire change. That person would not be free until 5pm, so we had 90 minutes to kill. Fortunately (again) we were in an interesting area and we had an RV, so Jett went in to take a nap while I took the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood, looking at the interesting buildings. I estimated that most of the building were antebellum, probably built in the 1820-1850 period. Turns out I was right, as I learned by doing some cell phone research later. The neighborhood was called “Butchertown” and it became popular with German immigrants around 1850 when a re-routing of a stream made it a good place to butcher animals: their carcasses could be tossed into the stream. I think the EPA would object to that now, but it apparently worked back then because the area thrived.
The nice tirechanger finally arrived just as I was dozing off on the grass with the dogs. He got the tire changed and we got on our way again. We arrived in Georgetown, KY, at 7:45, just 15 minutes before the campground office closed.
Our home for the short July 4th week (5 nights, Sunday to Friday) was the Whispering Hills RV Park. This park was, to me, a puzzle. It was new – probably less than 5 years old – yet its roads were in terrible, shape, with potholes and disintegrated blacktop everywhere. It was large (over 300 sites) and was built in the Big Rig era, yet fewer than 70 of the sites could accommodate large rigs. Our site, one of the 40 pull-throughs, was cramped, with barely enough room to park the truck, and with neighbors uncomfortably close. To make matters worse, the site was not level – we had to put the port side of Patience up on our two 2-by-10s to get it close to level, and it rained every day when we were there so we were surrounded by mud. Jett hated the site (and I can’t say I was a big fan, either), and got mad at me when I refused to move to another site. There just wasn’t any site that was so much better as to justify an hour spent – in the rain – to move the rig.
Fat Boys BBQ
We had dinner one night at Fat Boys BBQ, just down KY 25 from the RV park. It came “highly recommended” both by the RV park and by the people that we chatted with as they left the restaurant. It certainly looks interesting – a shack where you might find the Hatfields and McCoys bickering. But the meal was a huge disappointment. I had the pulled pork – one of their featured items – and it was bland. The homemade iced tea was so weak that I thought at first that it was a glass of water. My pulled pork was served with coleslaw that probably came from a jar and a flat piece of cornbread – like a cornbread pancake – that was actually both bitter and bland. Worst cornbread I have ever had. Jett’s chicken was also uninteresting. Needless to say, we are NOT highly recommending the place.
Memorabilia at Fat Boys
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Fat Boys were the outbuildings. They really looked like authentic log cabins.
Outbuilding at Fat Boys
Georgetown has at least two claims to fame. One – the Kentucky Horse Park – seems to be Ground Zero for Kentucky horses. It has some interesting programs – none of which fit our schedule – and looks like it would be worth a visit. The other is the Toyota assembly plant, a colossus of a manufacturing facility not far from the RV park. I clocked the size of the plant when I drove by one day and it measures 1.3 MILES north-to-south and maybe half a mile wide. If you think your Toyota was built in Japan, come to Georgetown and see how wrong you are.
July 4th was a deluge. There were flash flood warnings in every county within 50 miles of Lexington. We spent the evening at the laundromat. We were in no mood to celebrate anything. Mostly we just wanted to get out of Georgetown.