Glamping Days

About an inch of snow fell overnight just as it did last year. The same friendly folks in the farm market sold me some lovely salsas & other items to take to a Christmas party, & reminded me that I-70 west to Indianapolis is quite rough with lots of construction. Taking the parallel US-40 through a half dozen old mid-western towns suited me just fine.  First up was Richmond where my brother-in-law met his wife when they were college students there.  This mural in the town of Pershing is presumably of the WWI General Pershing for whom the town is named, though I couldn't find his connection to the town.  This lovely mural is on the Lakeview Restaurant on the edge of Cambridge City.  About an hour east of St Louis near the town of Vandalia were a group of active oil wells. I don't associate Illinois with oil, but there they were.  Tonight finds me camping behind a Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Columbia, MO. 

After getting a shot in my knee late this morning, I drove west on the first leg of my trip to Kansas for Christmas with my daughter, her husband, & his family.  Packing the last items inside the truck this morning was most interesting. Besides the usual camping-related things that fill quite a bit of the back seat area, I had the following for this trip:     - a large box of Christmas presents      - the "works" for the tall clock that  was shipped to KS last month along with said daughter's piano      - a pillow that goes with the loveseats that also shipped to KS, but somehow didn't get  packed     - 2 violins & a viola going to KS (I think her old student violin & viola will be donated to the program  at the high school where she teaches. She's just been playing her fiddle, but now will have a proper violin as well.)    - a mounted wheel from my trailer (It was the second spare that I took to...