Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Rushville, Illinois

Monday October 27…9:30pm

Never did get a shower at the spot in Gibson City. I took those big shower key tags and checked out the facilities, but they looked like they hadn’t been used in weeks, and there were a bunch of dead worm looking things on the floor…it was nasty, so we waited until tonight.

Another windy day, although not as bad as yesterday. Both days we’ve had a really strong headwind, and although a headwind is not as bad for driving in as a crosswind is, it’s not good for fuel mileage either!

We saw some more corn. Lots of it. I can understand why there’s not much of a tourism industry around here! But there is an ethanol industry, and that’s what they need all this corn for.

The drive is nice though, even if Sherman has to fight the wind at times. Speaking of Sherman, his brake pedal has been acting up…feeling a little spongy, and so when we got to our destination at Rushville, Illinois the first thing I did was check the brake fluid. Of course the brake fluid reservoir is really hard to get at…they’ve even cut an opening in the left wheel well in order to access it, and even then you need a flashlight and a mirror in order to see how full it is. Turns out that the front section is fine, but the rear section is nearly empty. I visually checked the brake lines and they looked okay, so this leads me to believe that we probably have a leaking rear wheel cylinder. For now, I walked over to the gas station across the road and bought a little jug of brake fluid and refilled the rear reservoir. The brakes feel good again, but I doubt it will last. Going to have to stop at a garage over the next day or two and get the rear brakes looked at.

Rushville, Illinois (pop 3,200) does not have a municipal campground, but we had read online that there is a county run campground about 3 miles south of the town. We probably could have found a suitable free spot somewhere in town, but the weather forecast is calling for record low temperatures around here…a low of 23F (-4C)…so we drove to nearby Schuy-Rush Park. They charged us $12 US ($15 CAN) for a site with electric so we will be nice and warm tonight. And, we were due for showers, so we took advantage of their dump and refill station. Not the nicest park, because most of the sites are taken up by seasonal trailers packed really close together, but most of them are vacant at this time of year. We did take Whiskey for a walk in the forest and we all enjoyed that.