Fort Massac State Park – Metropolis, IL June 8- 15, 2023

As mentioned in the previous post, we arrived at Fort Massac State Park on Thursday, June 8, 2023 and spent the first 3 1/2 days doing almost nothing but attending the 45th Annual Superman Celebration. The remainder of our time was spent enjoying Fort Massac State Park and getting some errands done.

Monday morning we took Bella on a 1.2 mile hike around part of the trails in Fort Massac State Park and recuperating from the go-go-go of the Superman Celebration. Then, in the late afternoon, disaster struck! Our countertop ice machine died. There’s no way we could survive the summer without ice!

We’ve had this ice maker for 2 years and use it almost every day to make ice for our drinks and Cindy especially likes to make smoothies with the ice. Still, I would have expected it to last more than 24 months. And I couldn’t even figure out how to take the thing apart without ruining it. Not sure if that’s the product design/intent or just my inability to grasp how to dismantle it successfully. In any case, it left us without the ability to have ice without buying it by the bag and trying to fit it in the small freezer of our RV refrigerator. That hasn’t worked well in the past.

So, Cindy went online and found that the Best Buy over the river in Paducah, KY had one in stock. It was a different brand than ours but had good reviews and hopefully it would last more than 2 years.

A plan was devised.

Tuesday morning we hiked around other parts of the park and then visited the rebuilt fort, which sits on the banks of the Ohio River. All you can do is take exterior photos as the buildings are not open and even the windows and doors are boarded up and nailed shut. Then I drove 8 miles over the river to Paducah (sorry if I offend any natives or residents of said city, but that name sounds like a noise you make when hacking up a loogie…just sayin’) and bought a new ice maker at Best Buy.

Sometimes Best Buy confuses me with their product placement of stock and this time was no exception. After searching all over in the kitchen small appliance section and even extending out to the larger appliance section, I was unable to find the ice maker. I finally had to ask the lone worker in the general area where it might be and he walked me over to…the vacuum cleaner section. I kid you not. They had four of them on the shelf with vacuum cleaners. SMH.

I also picked up a black ink cartridge for our printer and looked for the special Torx screwdriver I still need to take the battery-powered fans apart, but they did not have any in the store.

Then I found a laundromat and did our laundry before heading back to the park and Nomad. When I got back Cindy told me that the woman in the site next to us had walked to the edge of the trees behind both our sites, backed up against a tree trunk, pulled down her pants and proceeded to do her business right there! There were nice toilets less than a 3 minute walk away, but I guess she couldn’t make it.

Wednesday morning we hiked around the park again, and then took a little drive to the massive billboard of Superman welcoming visitors to Metropolis for a photo. We also returned to Superman Square in downtown Metropolis so I could get a photo of the statue without people in the shot and to return Cindy’s defective Superman T-shirt to the Chamber of Commerce, which they exchanged with no problem. Then we pretty much relaxed the rest of the day in preparation for traveling the next day.

Thursday we had breakfast, shut everything up, hitched everything up and headed to the park’s dump station to unload our galley, gray and black tanks and fill our fresh tank before hitting the road, since we were going to have several stops with no water.

And here is why I don’t like to talk to people. An older guy walked by with his bag of garbage and, trying to be more friendly because Cindy says I need to be, I said “Good morning.” He said the same and walked to the dumpster. Then he walked back by us and started talking about his solar set up and boondocking. I’m still flushing our black tank but mentioned my rather meager solar set up and he headed back to his RV. Then he stopped, turned around and said, “There’s one more thing I want to tell you” and then proceeded to inform me that he is over 65 and that more than 900,000 people over the age of 65 died due to Covid. “Republicans want to eliminate Social Security” he said (I can’t argue with that) “so they unleashed Covid in the U.S. in order to kill older people and reduce the number of people on Social Security.” All I could do was stare at him for a few seconds and then I said, “You have a nice day” before turning away from him so that he knew the conversation was over.

I NEVER should have said “Good morning” and opened myself up for that hit of craziness so early in the day, lol!

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