St Louis, day 1

Yea! Our first mo-Ho trip of the season!
And I'm late with this post because I had no wi-fi where we stayed. But more about that later!
We left friday after work, driving for 2 1/2 hours in rain, wind, and even a period of sleet. We arrived at a KOA campground, near Ft, Wayne, Indiana. There we spent the first night. On Saturday, we drove for 7 hours, with occasional rain, and a lot of wind. And let me just say, it's not much fun driving a big box in wind! Not to mention the toll on the gas millage! But, we finally made it to the Casino Queen RV Park in East Saint Louis. We were right across the river from Downtown St Louis, and the Arch, What a view!(click on the pic for a larger view of Craig at our site) And apparently, the winter weather decided to follow us down. It was 45 degrees when we arrived at 2:30. And that was as warm as it got! And did I mention the rain and wind! Bone chllin cold! But we got settled into our RV space, and then I worked on a problem with our water heater. That morning, when I turned on the hot water, I'd get very hot water for about 10 seconds, and then it would turn cold. Our water heater will run on electric, or propane, and I had it on electric.(always use campground power before your propane, save yourself money) So I turned it to propane. After letting it heat a while, the best it would do was very hot for about 10 seconds, and then barely warm. So I took a quick shower, and woke up Craig. He decide no shower was better than a cold one, so we got ourselves together and hit the road, figuing we'll deal with it in St Louis. So First thing I thought was the tank wasn't filling all the way. Air must be trapped or something, so I manually drained the tank and refilled it. That didn't work. Same thing, hot for about 10 seconds, than cold. We thought and thought. There's something that's not right. Than Craig said maybe there's some kind of bypass. And it hit me! When you winterize the mo-ho, after you drain the hot water tank, you turn off the inlet, and outlet, and open the bybass, so you don't fill the tank with antifreeze. Well, I forgot to close the bypass when we un-winterized it! So when I turned on the hot water, I was sucking cold water thru the bypass! How stupid! But it is our first trip in over 5 months. Let's hope that's the worst thing I forget! So Craig took himself a nice hot shower, and we left to meet a couple of guys for dinner that I've been stalking(okay, just reading) online for about 2 years. John and Derek. They are fulltiming in their motor home and are currently living and working in St Louis. They are staying at the St Louis RV Park. Since Craig and I have thought about fulltiming some day, It's been interesting following them and seeing how they're doing it. We've also e-mailed back and forth as I explored and probed their thoughts and ideas. So that was 1 of the 3 reasons we chose St Louis for our first trip. 2. Was to enjoy warmer weather,(that f#%&ing didn't happen) and 3. I lived here for a couple of years back in '71'-'73', And wanted to reconnect to part of my past. Well 2 out of 3 ain't bad! So John and Derek invited us over to their mo-ho to visit a little before dinner. Well, they're just as nice in person as on they're blog. We had a fun visit, and they took us to a neighborhood micro brewery for dinner that you probably wouldn't find being a tourist. I'm not much of a beer drinker, but always an adventerous diner, so on Dereks recomendation, I tried a light wheat ale, and liked it very much! Dinner was also good and apparently we didn't bore them too much, as they invited us for breakfast the next morning. But that'll be another post, as I've rambled on long enough today.
It's good to have the internet again!