Next Illinois, and then on to Cliffside Park in Wisconsin!

The Drive to the Double J campground near Springfield Illinois was 357 miles or about 5 and a half hours if your driving a car at the speed limit. Since I drive no faster than 65 mph, and since we make fuel and potty stops for Eva; add at least another hour to the trip. Since we got out of the Memphis KOA at a pretty decent time, we were into the Double J Campground and done setting up by 3:00 PM.

The Double J is one of our favorite private campgrounds. It is always well maintained and they have a huge area for dogs. New for 2022 – the dog area is now enclosed. So if your puppy likes to run around, it will love this new area. After five or more hours of being on the road, we know Eva needs to burn off some energy, so this is a major improvement to their campground. They have also installed gates that prevent folks from entering the campground without a pass-code.

The only downside that I see at most campgrounds that have dog runs is that the grass is just not short enough. This makes it really hard to know whether it’s safe to let your dog roam freely. Some folks seem to think it’s just fine to leave their dogs waste behind. I don’t want my dog finding it. The shorter the grass, the easier to spot anything that might be a problem. Please, pet owners, pick up after your puppies!

We stayed at the Double J for one night only. As usual I really have no complaints about this campground. The next morning we pulled out about 10:30 AM, because check-in at Cliffside Park in Racine is at 3:00 PM.

Now the day before we left on the trip I received a phone call from the Cliffside Park administration office. When I saw the caller ID I turned to Tammy and said “Cliffside is calling – that can’t be good”. As it turns out they are repaving the roads inside the campground that run by our site. They told me that I would not be able to drive on the roads for two days after they were paved and wondered if we wanted a different site until the construction was completed. Since the days they were doing the paving were August 30th and 31st, we said we would just stay in our site. As it turned out, the road crews told us we could drive on the new roads after one day – so this was not a big deal. More about that in a minute.

FYI – Cliffside Park has no formal check-in process! You simply drive to your reserved site and set up. So Tammy and I backed the trailer in and leveled it and then put the slides out. Next, I set up the satellite for Dish, and we assembled the screen room. I could have taken my time setting up, since we would be there for two weeks, but I wanted to push through it so I could relax with a beer under the awning.

Later in the week, my Son-In-Law Bob and Grandson Trent would be adding a tent to the site so they could come and camp-out with us.

Now this is where the trip gets interesting because I start to find things that need to be repaired.

1. A shelf in the floor cabinet next to the couch collapsed. I pulled the shelf out to see that there is a bundle of wires under the shelf that go to an outlet, and a set that go to a running light. I have to say that the construction of this cupboard is some of the shabbiest work I’ve ever seen. I’ve built furniture in the past and this is really substandard.
2. The Front of one of the pantry shelves has come loose. Not a big concern, but it needs to be repaired. I think I will reinforce all of the pantry shelves while I make that repair.
3. The slide motors on the door side of the unit sound tired. These will need to be repaired when I get back home…if they don’t fail before we get there.
4. The brand new recliner has no power to the control box. Lippert is sending a new one but they are back-ordered until November. I am not impressed.
5. The shower plumbing access panel has a screw that is stripped. Again, no big deal but I need to fix it, since the door opens each time we move. I have not decided yet how I will fix this. My plan is to try a screw insert first and if that doesn’t seem adequate, then I will epoxy the hole with a metal backing plate.
6. I found some water in a pan under the bathroom sink. I thought at first that it was a loose water line, but it is actually a crack in the sink at the drain. The sink is 14×17 Lippert plastic sink, not the standard 17×20 that you can buy at any RV store. So I ended up ordering one and will replace it when I get home. No idea why that sink cracked by the drain, but if it happens again I am going to cut a larger hole and go with a more substantial sink.
7. Little bits of odds and ends maintenance items such as cleaning AC filters, vacuuming out furnace area etc.

So as you can see, this trip is a little reminiscent of our 2018 trip where we had a series of things go wrong. To read about that trip click here!

There is a nice trail to an overlook of lake Michigan. I have always taken our girls (Shepherds) to this spot each time we visit. It’s about a fifteen minute walk from the campsite but well worth it. I noticed this year that the dead trees that have stood at the overlook for years are now falling down.

Eva and I made the trek again this year, and of course she enjoyed it. Even though she is two years old now, she still has a little “puppy paranoia” when we walk; as she turns around frequently to make sure no one is sneaking up on us.

This year Eva was actually interested in going down the bluff to the Lake. However, that is an incredibly steep incline so I wasn’t having any of that.

We also had a strange visitor come through the woods behind our site. It was a person, not on a trail but just pushing brush out of his way. I could hear branches snapping and a male voice. Then he appeared and came over to where we were sitting. No normal person would approach a family with a German Shepherd, and Eva wasn’t amused but she stayed calm. He told us he had just got back from the lake and had found some interesting stones. “Stoned” might have more accurately described this guy, who left us with some of his rocks and then he left. We never saw him again, but it makes for an interesting story anyway.

Then on the 25th, our third day there, the rain came. The road was torn up at this point and there was no pavement yet, so it created a muddy mess. Fortunately we had no plans, so we just waited for things to dry out. We would get a pretty strong thunderstorm on the afternoon of the 28th; then no more rain until the trip south.

On the 30th and 31st of August, the repaving project went into high gear (see video above). As with every trip to a campground, there are some folks that don’t think the rules apply to them. In this case some folks with a travel trailer that had been there for over a week decided to drive on the asphalt after just a few hours. Everyone in the campground knew this was not supposed to happen. The campground was for the most part empty and if these folks needed to leave that day, they could have easily moved to a different spot the day before so that the new road construction wouldn’t be disturbed. Instead they opted to drive on the fresh asphalt, and this required the construction crew to come back and repair that area.

The crew then came to me and asked if I had any plans on leaving my site to which I replied “I wouldn’t do that to you guys”. Unfortunately, there are too many people that think the rules apply to everyone else, just not them. We saw many examples of this on the trip.

In one campground at 4:30 in the morning some folks decided to get an early start on leaving the campground. They had their camper door open and were shouting back and forth as if it were noon as they packed up their gear. This was not just a violation of the campgrounds quiet hours but just incredibly rude with no regard to fellow campers. Quite frankly, Eva and I were already up so I was unaffected but I sure felt sorry for their neighbors. Another case was a woman who decided her dog did not need to be on a leash or tether at her campsite. Her dog has been returned by a KOA staff member, but they did nothing to enforce the leash/tether rule. Again, there seems to be some sort of “for thee, but not for me” going on at campgrounds.

Tammy and I went to the Village Supper Club while we were in Wisconsin. I highly recommend you try their food if you are near Pleasant Prairie. We think of the owners and their kids as family. The food is beyond spectacular. If we still lived up there, I know where we would be eating each week!

We took Trent Bowling one day, and I hadn’t thrown a ball since my shoulder surgery. To my surprise i had no pain or discomfort at all during or after we bowled. Trent loves bowling and is on a bowling league.

We also went to Trent’s soccer practice twice while we were there. I can say with no hesitation that Trent will be the star player on that team. More importantly, he loves the sport. So between Bowling and Soccer, I see a very busy fall for Trent.

Needless to say, there were campfires and baggo, and just general relaxing. But then it was time to pack up and head to our next destination – The Brown County/Nashville KOA. This would be just a one night stop over on our way to the Clinton Knoxville North KOA. That will be the subject of our next blog post!

To continue to the next stop on this trip click here!