This is the fourth installment in the Solo Trip with Eva. Today we head to the double J campground in Chatham Illinois. It us about a five-hour drive from Marshfield MO, our previous stop.

We left the RV Express RV Park at about 7:30 A.M., mainly due to their entrance/exit location. It is about 20 feet from the main road that we need to turn on to get to highway 44. I was really concerned that if we didn’t leave early, we might get stuck trying to get out of the campground for a long time—or end up blocking traffic.

Since we left early, getting out of the campground onto the main drag was easy. What wasn’t easy was the horrible condition of the highway from Marshfield to Rolla. Long rough patches of previously patched highway in the right lane made for a horrible ride. This went on for about 40 miles. When the left lane was clear, I would use it just to escape from the crappy right lane.

After that fiasco, we fueled up and headed further up the road to my least favorite part of the trip – St Louis. The highways in St Louis, and the bypass around St Louis, is a mess. There is construction that is going on that prevented me from using the bypass. They’ve also shut down part of Highway 55 in the opposite direction. In short, I would almost rather drive anywhere else than St Lous. It has always been bad but the last two years has been horrible.

I am always happy when I am past St Louis. Then the ride becomes much less stressful and the road conditions improve. Eva and I made such good time that we actually spent time at a wayside having some lunch and relaxing prior to reaching the Double J Campground.

Our Wayside Stop – a nice break before the Double J

The Double J has been a frequent stop for us and has been on the second owner for probably three or four years. We have seen it go from a medium campground to a large campground. It is not an inexpensive campground. The staff is very nice, but there are some draw backs now. The campground roads and sites use small, round gravel, which makes walking difficult wherever it isn’t compacted. I don’t understand why they didn’t just pave the roads and sites. On top of that, for what you pay to stay there, it was disappointing to find that using the pool costs extra. Not that I would use it, but I think that is a real disadvantage for families camping there. Frankly, I have never found a campground that charges their guests to use the pool.

In addition, they have started putting some cement pads in, but they want to charge an extra $10.00 per night for that. Seems like it’s becoming an à la carte campground. They are already charging $63.00 per day so are you going to pay $73.00? Seems like it’s getting too pricey when you figure you’re going to pay to use the pool, min golf etc.

Note the deep pea type gravel.

It is very clean and is a very secure campground with security gates that can only be opened with a pass that they give you at check in. If you are looking for an enormous dog park – this is the place. As I mentioned, the staff has always been great.

We arrived a bit early despite taking some time at the wayside. Arriving at the campground at 1:30 P.M. We set up and fired up both AC units because once again it was a very hot day.

The next morning, we dumped our tanks (full hook up). That is when the first problem reared its ugly head. Their sewer connection was threaded, however that part was freewheeling on the PVC pipe. It should have been glued to the pipe. This cause some back flow issue around the pipe. It wasn’t horrible, but nasty anyway. Nasty enough that I threw an old pair of shoes away. I cleaned what little mess was by the pipe and Eva and I continued on our trip.

Since trouble comes in threes, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise when i couldn’t find my wallet when trying to fuel at Loves in Normal Illinois. There was no semi behind me, so I jumped in the travel trailer and began looking frantically for my wallet. I came up empty.

So, then I started doing some worst-case scenario planning. I knew I could make it to Elkorn Wisconsin on the fuel I had left. That would mean that Tammy would need to drive an hour to meet me and fill up the truck. I decided to pull out of the fuel lane and back into a truck spot, open the trailer and continue my search. After going through all of that, I found my wallet under the bed. I went back to the fuel lane, got my diesel and headed onto Wisconsin.

Click here to continue on our solo journey to Wisconsin.