Got another early start (though not 5:15 :-), packed up and out of the campsite by 8:00. Headed north on IL 1 until we came to a little cafe that Hubby had noticed when he came out for generator gas over the weekend. They had been closed on Saturday, but open M-F. What a fantastic little place!! It was called the Crossroads Cafe and the SE corner of IL 1 and 13, it just opened up a few weeks ago, apparently, and it was clean and cozy, and had the best home fries we’ve had in AGES! The waitress was attractive and charming, and the cook did a fantastic job. Highly recommended to anyone in the area or passing through! From there we headed east, crossed the Ohio River again, stopped in Evansville IN at a farm supply store called Tri-State Pet and Vet Supply, who, remarkably, had lots of horse boots of all kinds and sizes in stock, so Hubby picked up a pair of Boa’s for Clio, plus other things we needed, like a new manure rake, fly spray, and a replacement bridle throat strap for Clio as well. East again to the Walmart at Tell City, where we did grocery shopping and picked up water for the RV, as we were told by the Hoosier NF office that all they had at the German Ridge Camp was a cistern with non-potable water. Followed a crude detour around some road constuction on IN 66, and soon found our campground, tarmac all the way, for a nice change. We circle the campground scoping it out, and discovered it wasn’t a cistern at all, but numerous spigots scattered around every few sites. Unfortunately, they were the kind of spigots that had been intentionally adapted so that it was difficult to use them. In other words, the threads were incompatible with a garden hose, and most of them had a spring-loaded handle, which meant you had to hold it open manually, you couldn’t just open it and leave it, which means you need two people to do any job dealing with water. One to hold the handle and the other to let you know when the tub (or whatever) is full. We’ve only seen it in a few places, but it truly is dumb, and obviously designed to keep people from "stealing" too much water, which I’m sure is a BIG problem in some campgrounds....NOT! Of course, a little clever engineering with a bungee solved that problem. Most of the sites weren’t level in the least, but there were some fairly large ones. After awhile, we settled on Site 14, next to a vault toilet and a spigot. There was a highline already there, but the previous occupant had apparently decided that cleaning out their own horses’ manure was too much for them, and it looked like an entire weekend’s worth of non-shoveling was left behind. I started to clean it up, but there was so much there, I decided it would take longer than I was willing to make my horses wait in the hot trailer, so we just picked out a couple of trees and set up our own highline. Really, folks, there nothing more rude than not cleaning up after your own animals, expecting someone else to do it. I can’t remember seeing a site this bad since the corral at Wild Mare Horse Camp in Oregon. We managed to get settled in, Hubby managed to find a partial satellite signal, and we relaxed the rest of the evening.
Got another early start (though not 5:15 :-), packed up and out of the campsite by 8:00. Headed north on IL 1 until we came to a little cafe that Hubby had noticed when he came out for generator gas over the weekend. They had been closed on Saturday, but open M-F. What a fantastic little place!! It was called the Crossroads Cafe and the SE corner of IL 1 and 13, it just opened up a few weeks ago, apparently, and it was clean and cozy, and had the best home fries we’ve had in AGES! The waitress was attractive and charming, and the cook did a fantastic job. Highly recommended to anyone in the area or passing through! From there we headed east, crossed the Ohio River again, stopped in Evansville IN at a farm supply store called Tri-State Pet and Vet Supply, who, remarkably, had lots of horse boots of all kinds and sizes in stock, so Hubby picked up a pair of Boa’s for Clio, plus other things we needed, like a new manure rake, fly spray, and a replacement bridle throat strap for Clio as well. East again to the Walmart at Tell City, where we did grocery shopping and picked up water for the RV, as we were told by the Hoosier NF office that all they had at the German Ridge Camp was a cistern with non-potable water. Followed a crude detour around some road constuction on IN 66, and soon found our campground, tarmac all the way, for a nice change. We circle the campground scoping it out, and discovered it wasn’t a cistern at all, but numerous spigots scattered around every few sites. Unfortunately, they were the kind of spigots that had been intentionally adapted so that it was difficult to use them. In other words, the threads were incompatible with a garden hose, and most of them had a spring-loaded handle, which meant you had to hold it open manually, you couldn’t just open it and leave it, which means you need two people to do any job dealing with water. One to hold the handle and the other to let you know when the tub (or whatever) is full. We’ve only seen it in a few places, but it truly is dumb, and obviously designed to keep people from "stealing" too much water, which I’m sure is a BIG problem in some campgrounds....NOT! Of course, a little clever engineering with a bungee solved that problem. Most of the sites weren’t level in the least, but there were some fairly large ones. After awhile, we settled on Site 14, next to a vault toilet and a spigot. There was a highline already there, but the previous occupant had apparently decided that cleaning out their own horses’ manure was too much for them, and it looked like an entire weekend’s worth of non-shoveling was left behind. I started to clean it up, but there was so much there, I decided it would take longer than I was willing to make my horses wait in the hot trailer, so we just picked out a couple of trees and set up our own highline. Really, folks, there nothing more rude than not cleaning up after your own animals, expecting someone else to do it. I can’t remember seeing a site this bad since the corral at Wild Mare Horse Camp in Oregon. We managed to get settled in, Hubby managed to find a partial satellite signal, and we relaxed the rest of the evening.
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