2 RV's to NY

... spending the night at Ottawa IL

This AM we are out of the house within an hour of when the alarm goes off.

1st stop is in Northfield at the Flying J for fuel. Their high sign said one price, their low sign said another price. We paid the higher price.

2nd stop was Wendy's in Medford for breakfast. Bacon croissant for each of us.

3rd stop was the shipper in Forest City. They are down under 300 RV's in the lot and it shows. A few people were moving RV's from one lot to the other, not sure the purpose of that. There is not enough room to get them all into one lot yet.

No issues but it took us a full hour to do our inspection on these small RV's. I did notice that there is another new person in the office, they seem to be going through people pretty quickly, most of them we do not even find out their names before they are gone.

On the way down to the shipper this AM I remembered that they are working on the road near Floyd were we stop for fuel. I said 'just in case, we should have a backup plan.' BB said they would never close it ... until she looked. The computer had all kinds of directions to get us there.

So we had looked at the options and I had picked a route without really looking closer at all the options. When we get to the detour signs, some of the traffic is going past them which doesn't add up but we go the opposite way as the detour as planned. But what was not planned was that 'our' detour was a gravel road.

... and for 15 miles there were no blacktop side roads, only gravel. At one point I had lost BB on a two lane road but by the time I got stopped she was coming again. High road, only a couple of feet of shoulder. We do talk when we get to Osage ... which is on Hwy 9, which runs through Forest City. Our little detour added 30 miles to our trip ... and ran BB down to 'E' on fuel. She had to add a couple of gallons just to get back to Floyd.

4th stop is for BB's fuel at Casey's in Osage.

5th stop is at Love's in Floyd for fuel and food from Godfathers. As I am looking for a pump I can see the main road ... traffic is traveling in all the directions we need to go. After we fuel we both use our phones to run routes and ... the road isn't closed anymore. No detour. ??? That was fun :(

6th stop was at the Casey's in Centre Point for a break, it splits it more evenly than at the rest area near Cedar Rapids.

7th stop is the Loves in Davenport for fuel, $.10 cheaper than the posted at Flying J or Speedway.

From here we decide where to stay. The Comfort Inn in Ottawa has gone down in price by $30 since we looked earlier today so that makes it within our range.

Just before we get to our exit, there is a cop on the shoulder ... turns out he is just there to slow traffic down, traffic is at a stop under our bridge but we do not have to slow to get to the ramp.

8th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Ottawa. Food is from the Cracker Barrell next door.

When we check in BB makes sure we are not sitting over the 'party' area like we were one of the last times. We are not, but they are here, a crew that has been here for the last year and a half. Likely the same people that were under our window before.

The person at the desk said there have been two major accidents on I-80 west bound (we are heading east) today near here. When BB tries to run routes for tomorrow she has issues because now there is an accident east bound so the map won't put us on the freeway.

Lots of transporters today but I am not counting.

Load board

US - 385

IA - 193/188

Tomorrow we plan on doing 500+ miles and getting into NY. Then we will be only a couple of hours from BB's drop for Thursday.