Saturday 18 July Joliet IL

Did a bit of shopping to fill in the day, at Ricks RV (disappointing and no hub caps) and Walmart – of course!  Illinois State is mainly mining and agriculture.  Seems also to be a bit of a rail and road hub from all compass points.

Tonight we are staying at the Hollywood Casino RV Park in Joliet IL.  For $31.64, incl. tax we have water and power – necessary to run the aircon as it’s bloody hot – another 91F day!!  Plus we get a free all you can eat buffet brekkie at the hotel in the morning and the limo shuttle will take us to and from the actual casino as we wish.  It’s not too far to walk, just too hot to walk it.  Plus we have perfectly clean restrooms with shower and laundry.  Tonight ‘Howl at the Moon’ is the live entertainment, no cover charge so we plan to head over there this evening, have dinner out for a change and enjoy the show.  Perfect day!  Might chuck a few coins in the pokies for good measure.

There are about 70 odd RV parks available here and at lunchtime on Saturday there are less than a quarter of them being used.   They all look to be shut up too, there’s nobody around, so I assume their owners are in gambling.

Come 5pm the park is much busier and they are still coming in.  We have a slight mishap with one of the fridge doors – it fell off.  Well not entirely 'off' in the beginning, but it did later as we were trying to fix it.  So we took it off properly and rescrewed the hinges in place and it is better than ever and even seals better too!  Off to the casino now!  Need to de-stress.

Sunday July 19 Joliet to Elgin IL

Had a lovely buffet dinner last night and Howl at the Moon were really good, they played requests all night so we enjoyed a great mix of music.  Even stayed up late, it was after 11pm when we got back to the coach.  Enjoyed the buffet brekkie this morning and we are on our way.  Intended to get to a State Park on the beach up in Wisconsin.   However once we got on the road found the coach is making a new funny noise. Hmm, is it getting worse?  We pull over to buy some double sided tape to restick the panel of mirror back on the wall in the dinette and (another wee fix it job)  and Kim climbs under to have a look for the cause of the noise.  It is NOT good news!  It’s the rear suspension trailing arms, both have let go and the axle has moved out of alignment.  One of these arms was re welded by the previous owners and we knew there was a recall on them, so we kinda thought we might have to replace them some day.  Short google later we find the agent is less than 20 miles away but being Sunday we can only leave him a message to say we are arriving on his doorstep first thing Monday morning.  As luck would have it (hoping it continues to be kind - so far we have not been stranded on the roadside) we found a campground in a Forest Preserve in the same area so we are there for the night.  It’s nice too, quite new and lovely people, the sun is out, its hot out and the aircon is on inside.