Boulder Campground in Carlyle, Illinois April 23

We left Dixon Springs State Park on Wednesday, April 23rd and drove 2 1/2 hours to Boulder Campground in Carlyle, Illinois for a 7-night stay.

Forgetfulness Comes With Age

This was our second stay at Boulder Campground. We were here back in August of 2021 when we first started RV’ing. But both Cindy and I looked around, looked at each other and confessed that neither of us found anything familiar to remember. Granted, we were only here for a 3-night stay as our major reason for being here was to visit the Arch in St. Louis. But it felt weird not remembering anything about our stay.

Well, maybe a couple of things. Cindy said she vaguely remembered that marina we passed as we entered the campground.

And I found a photo on my phone of the site next to us back then. It had pink flamingoes and I had posted it with a story about flamingoes being a secret signal to swingers on my Facebook page way back then, before we had this blog. But apparently I had not taken photos of our site as I usually do now.

So, it was weird knowing we had been here but not remembering much of anything about it.

Our Site

Our site was a fairly level asphalt pad with electric service only. We had filled our fresh water tank before leaving Dixon Springs and had bottled water for consumption, so we were good for a week. The site was nice, but very hard to get into. I was on my 5th or 6th try of backing into it when a guy from two sites down came out to me in the truck.

He said, “I’ve stayed in that same site a few times when I had a rig your same size. It’s impossible to get into it from this direction. If you’ll follow this road down it loops back and you can easily back into the site from the opposite direction.” I thanked him, took his advice and got backed in on the first try.

There are no trails here, just the campground loops to walk Bella on. Lots and lots of birds and bugs. The birds are nice (except when they’re singing in the morning before I’m ready to wake up), but the bugs were awful. Mostly Mayflies, but also lots of mosquitoes and gnats. Sometimes we were walking through thick swarms of them while spitting them out of our mouths and blowing them out our noses.

This and That

Thursday we drove 14 miles into Carlyle for groceries. Friday began with heavy rain at 3 am and it rained off and on throughout the day. Our time was spent reading, writing and watching the final season of “The West Wing” on DVD.

Saturday and Sunday were also dreary, rainy days. We watched the final episode of “The West Wing” Sunday night, then I watched the first episode of season 2 of “The Last Of Us”.

Monday we spent the day running errands and visiting some spots because there was not just rain but thunderstorms forecast for Tuesday. While I was in Carlyle doing laundry in the morning I got a FLOOD WARNING alert on my phone for the area I was in. I put a screenshot of it in the photo album for this post.

After lunch, Cindy and I drove over to visit the dam spillway and a historic bridge in Carlyle.

General Dean Suspension Bridge

What is now known as the General Dean Suspension Bridge was originally built in 1859. With a structural span of 280 feet and four 35-foot support towers, the suspension bridge was quite an engineering feat for its time and it allowed passage over the Kaskaskia River. The bridge stood for 65 years, serving such well-known Illinois residents as Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Horace Greeley, and William James Bryant.

The bridge fell into disrepair, but in the fall of 1953 restoration was completed and the bridge was now named after Carlyle’s native son; General William F. Dean. General Dean was a prisoner of war for three years during the Korean War and received the Congressional Medal of Honor. In 1973 the bridge was added to the Federal Register of National Historic Places.

Then in 1989 funding for more needed restoration was approved and the work was completed in 1991.

When we visited, the Kaskaskia River was in the FLOOD WARNINGS zone I had received an alert for earlier in the day and had overrun its banks in Carlyle. You can see photos in the album and some in the post video of us crossing the bridge and how the banks were flooded.

After touring the bridge we decided to go ahead and do our grocery shopping for our next stop and gas up Voyager, since Tuesday was forecast for more storms in the area.

That night we were having “The West Wing” withdrawal, so we watched “A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote”, a special reunion episode of the TV series. It was a recreation of the season 3 episode “Hartsfield’s Landing” but was performed on stage at the Orpheus Theater in Los Angeles, CA. HBO released it on October 15, 2020 as part of the Get Out The Vote effort before the 2020 presidential election. It was interesting to see most of the series’ regular characters 14 years later, when a couple of nights earlier they had been so young, lol.

Monday was also National Superhero Day. I wrote a little about it on my personal blog.

And, after watching the West Wing reunion, I finished reading “Fight”, a timeline/behind the scenes book about the 2024 Presidential election. I wrote a review of the book on my writing and book blog.

Tuesday was another rainy day and we spent it relaxing and reading (both of us), writing (me), and tatting (Cindy).

The Americas

That night, we started streaming “The Americas” on Peacock and watched the first two episodes entitled “The Atlantic Coast” and “Mexico” before hitting the sack.

If you’re of a certain age “The Americas” will remind you of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” that aired on Sunday afternoons in the 1960’s or the nature documentaries on “The Wonderful World of Disney” that aired in roughly the same time period. I well remember as a kid enjoying both on Sundays, but especially the nature shows that Disney broadcast. Particularly one about a coyote growing up near Los Angeles. Anyone remember that?

For younger viewers “The Americas” will remind you of “Planet Earth” or “Our Planet” but I can assure you the cinematography is so, SO much more advanced than any of those aforementioned shows. I swear they must be using 10K cameras to film some of this stuff. In addition, it is very educational. Some parts were reminders of what we already knew, but some were full of new information for us.

Topping it off is some wonderful narration by Tom Hanks (the writers of this stuff play to his tone, cadence and pitch) and some amazing musical scores by Hans Zimmer. We’re looking forward to watching the rest of the episodes in this first season.

Thank you for following The Wandering Wetheringtons.