Sewage, Mounds, & Bluegrass

SEWAGE

Last night when we got to our campground, we backed into our spot and as we started connecting our electricity, the sky opened up and poured tons of water on us. Consequently, we did not hook up our sewer line and figured we would hook up in the morning and dump our tanks. No problem. Except this morning we pulled up to the dump station, Scott connected our hose to the sewage line, and as he opened up the black water tank to empty it he heard strange noises coming from the ground and suddenly saw the pipe overflowing. Thankfully, because he heard the noises, he was ready to shut the tank. But that still left a hose full of sewage with no way to get it back in the tank and nowhere for it to go. This was one of those moments that required video. I did take it, but have no idea how to post it on the blog. The week before we left home, Scott and I rented the movie RV with Robin Williams just to entertain ourselves. This moment could easily have been part of that movie.

We weren't sure what to do. But we knew there was also sewage dumps in the camping spaces so Scott (as best as he could) capped the full sewage hose, got in the car and drove the trailer over to another sewage pipe with Jo holding the full hose, still connected to the trailer, up in the air! When we got into one of the campsites and opened up the sewage pipe to dump the hose into, they looked in to find it was also full.

Apparently, the extreme amount of rain that was poured down upon us last night overflowed the septic system in the campground. There was just enough room in the second pipe for us to empty our hose.

After cleaning up a bit, we took off down the road to find somewhere else to empty our tanks.

MOUNDS

So, we've heard of these mound building civilizations and today we got to see the ruins of the Spoon River Mississippians along our drive toward Springfield. At this point (after all the drama), Springfield was not going to happen today, so we figured we might as well stop and check out the mounds. 

It wasn't what I thought it would be, there was a museum built on top of one, the parking lot built on top of another with brick buildings that housed three excavation sites of former ceremonial buildings of the mound builders.

But it didn't really feel like we could see the mounds. There are some other mound builder locations in northern Illinois that we may try to stop at on our way to Wisconsin.

BLUEGRASS

Lincoln's New Salem is a state historic site reconstructed to commemorate the six years President Abraham Lincoln spent living in New Salem when he was a young adult.

We had plans to stop here and perhaps camp here if we liked it or move on and camp in the city if we didn't. The city is only 20 miles away. But after our late start this morning, we had pretty much decided to camp here. On their website, I had seen that there was a bluegrass festival this weekend, but since it's after Labor Day and it's not the weekend I figured with 200 spots available it shouldn't be a problem to get one. I was wrong. Apparently, this is the only weekend every year that their sites fill up. And people start arriving on Labor Day to get a spot! But, when we arrived, someone had just left because after all the rains he wanted to go home and check on his basement.

So, we got the one open spot. 

And, as a bonus, we get to listen to bluegrass music all day and all night, which we are enjoying. (You can see in the background, as were eating, people are starting to gather at the campsite across the road for an evening jam session - though I'm sure that's not what they call it). 

Basically, every rv here has at least one instrument to contribute. 

And all of our neighbors are seniors. So there's some super cute grandmas toting stand up basses and banjos and mandolins around the campsite joining in the music at different places. 

Scott took me on a date tonight. We saw 3 "bands".