Our fun with the airstream, selling cookbooks and seeing the country continues . . .
Saturday (Day 6) we drove across Iowa to a fabulous national park called Fisherman’s Corner on the banks of the Mississippi River, which was actually in Illinois (the river is the state line). It was a very small campground run by the Army Corps of Engineers, with beautiful, roomy sites:
We had a delicious dinner, planned by Robert – grilled bison dogs with chili, and broccoli slaw on the side, Yum – and super easy as we purchased an organic, vegetarian chili at Whole Foods:
Note our new picnic tablecloth and matching bench covers from Camping World – highly recommended, as picnic tables in campgrounds are often very dirty!
The next morning (Day 7) we headed back across the river to the darling town of Le Claire, Iowa.
If you are a viewer of a show on History Channel called “American Pickers”, you will be familiar with Le Claire as this is home base for the shop that is the central focus of the series. We went there – it’s called “Antique Archeology” – and no, Danielle wasn’t there. After our visit there, we explored the cute little town.
The favorite for us was a visit to the Mississippi River Distilling Company. They make their own vodka, “artisan spirit” (basically a vodka with a bit more ingredients in the process), gin, and whiskey in very small batches. And, the vodka and artisan spirit were great! The latter reminded me of liquor in Holland called gineveer. We bought a few souvenir bottles:
We stopped for lunch (that turned out to be brunch) at the Faithful Pilot Cafe. Robert’s crab cakes with poached eggs and hollandaise were not that great, but my fried egg tostada with chorizo sausage and cilantro was delicious:
The weather was starting to change (rain on the way) so we headed to the Laundromat to do a few loads of wash, then back to the campground for a dinner of chicken and beef kabobs with ginger couscous (the latter recipe is in A Well-Seasoned Kitchen).
Later that night, the heavens opened up to a most amazing thunderstorm, complete with lot of lightening – for several hours! It rained most of the night and the next morning. Once the rain stopped, we packed up (now day 8 of our trip) and headed to Indiana to Turkey Run State Park.
What a fabulous campground and park – including an Inn, canoeing on the Sugar Creek, and several miles of hiking trails. We took a night off from cooking and dinner at the Turkey Run Inn – quaint, kind of quirky but fun (I wouldn’t go there for the food however). Next morning we hiked a bit then headed for our next stop – Cincinnati.
More to come!
