Blogging in from Illini State Park near Marseilles, IL

Today is Saturday and Nancy and I are in the White Tail campground area of Illini State Park near Marseilles, IL. We arrived here on Friday around 11 am. We met our friends the Hartleys here. We’re camping side-by-side in sites 5 & 6. Our site is great. We’re nestled back into the trees. It’s really private. We’ve got a nice cleared area as well. The picnic table and fire grill is there.

Last night was our night to make dinner. We grilled salmon, asparagus and potatoes with garlic. It all turned out great. Jackson has external speakers for his trailer and each is connected to a 100′ spool of wire. He strung them over to our site and we had lovely music all evening.

Today was the Hartleys turn to make breakfast. They made a wonderful spread of scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, blueberry scones, multi-grain toast, preserves, fruit, juice and coffee. Wow – it was great! Tonight the Hartley’s are making dinner. I think Jackson is grilling a pork roast. We eat better camping than we do at home!

After breakfast today, the 6 of us (Ruby and the Hartleys’ dog Cody) all went biking. Ruby road in the “Toto” basket on Nancy’s bike and Cody ran on a leash next to Jackson as he biked. Cody keeps a pretty brisk pace at about 10 MPH. We stopped a few times to rest and give the dogs (and owners) a drink. We biked on the I&M Canal bike path, east from the town of Marseilles. We biked about 7 or 8 miles, then dropped the girls and dogs off at one of the cars. Jackson and I continued biking, this time west out of town. We added another 9 or so miles. That on top of Jackson and my ride from camp into town yesterday puts he and I over 22 miles thus far. My butt is sore!

We may bike some tomorrow or maybe we’ll just find a walking/hiking path.

As I type this, in the background, I hear the whining of a nitro fueled scale model car and 4×4 truck. A couple of brothers are camping here and they brought their toys. Expensive toys. The truck cost $700. These things go really fast. Took some pics and vids of them too. Funny – the other night we were over at Jeff and Brenda’s looking at their new Landmark 5th wheel trailer by Heartland, and jeff showed me his scale model helicopters. He also showed me his 4×4. It looked just like this guy here’s 4×4. And Jeff and this guy are both from Aurora!

Well, time to upload this post as I never know how long I can stay connected to the internet with my cell phone. Cool that I can do it at all.

Here’s a picture of our camp

taken with the cell phone: