Western States 2012 - Day 1

June 5, 2012 - Tuesday

We left Louisville on Tuesday afternoon, June 5, for our trip through several western states. Our plan is to take about 35 days to make the loop before getting back to Louisville.

This will be our first trip in our new-to-us motorhome, a 2000 Airstream Land Yacht XC, that we acquired in April after selling the Holiday Rambler Endeavor. A photo is shown below that was taken after hooking on the Honda.

Our trip will take us west to New Mexico through Oklahoma. Then we turn north and go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We’ll continue through Salt Lake City to Yellowstone. From there we'll head eastward an go to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore areas. Our homebound leg will take us through Springfield, Illinois where we’ll go through the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

First Stop

We left Louisville in the early afternoon. Our first stop was at Sam Dale Lake, a water conservation lake built in the 1950’s and named after a long-time state representative Byron’s family knew when he was growing up. In fact, the Dale family attended the same church in Fairfield, Illinois. At the lake we had dinner with about 20 of Byron’s relatives on his mother's side. The restaurant, “Middle of No Where” is run by one of Byron’s cousins.

When it came time for photos Byron suggested we do it the “old fashioned way” and separate the women and men.

It was a beautiful afternoon and very peaceful along the lake. We had a great time “catching up” however, leaving turned out to be interesting, to say the least, because it added a bit of a wrinkle or two to the day.

Having gotten the motorhome into to tight a spot to turn around, we unhooked the Honda and Martha moved it in front of the motorhome. As Byron came around, just a little too close, he accidentally cut-in too soon. Now the Honda and the Airstream are sporting a few more wrinkles and some skinned places (Honda worse than the motorhome but definitely drivable). Of course, no one was hurt since he was driving all of maybe 5 mph. After the embarrasment of doing this little number in front of relatives we moved on our not-so-merry way. We assume we'll laugh about it some day.

Since this isn't a total vacation for Martha, who had a couple of hours of work to do, we didn't stop until getting past St. Louis when we ran out of mobile broadband service. We spent the night at a Pilot Flying J in Pacific, Missouri near I-44/US 66. Yes, we were parked in among the trucks. This wasn't our first time to do so and it won't be the last.