We are in Nebraska. After leaving Illinois this morning, we drove 538 miles through Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska. We drove by the Arch in St. Louis and after that we saw cornfields, cornfields, and more cornfields - all the way to Nebraska. While we anticipated this stretch to be fairly monotonous, we were surprised by the beauty of the cornfields and the wide open sky. We arrived at the campground late in the day and enjoyed a relaxing evening, sharing travel stories with our Californian camp neighbors. 
Unfortunately, our refrigerator issue is not resolved yet. When we checked the refrigerator at a fuel stop, it seemed to be running; however, the refrigerator door had unlatched and was wide open. We secured the door again but when we arrived at the campground many hours later, the refrigerator still did not seem cool enough. We are not sure what the issue is, but at this point our food has been without appropriate refrigeration twice and we will have to discard most of it. There will be lots of peanut butter sandwiches in the next few days. 

We are on the run again after a long day of packing and loading the RV. When considering what was transported from the house to the RV, our neighbors might have thought we are moving out. I call it "being prepared". Nevertheless, I found a space for everything, although I am sure there is something we forgot. There always is and it is just a matter of time until we find it.
Today we drove 438 miles and made it to Benton, Illinois. We passed through 4 states: Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. Tennessee was beautiful with its rolling hills, and Kentucky delivered some scary moments as we were caught in a massive thunderstorm. The cloudy skies turned black and it was so dark that our navigation system switched to nighttime display at noon. The heavy rain made it extremely difficult to see the road and we were worried about the strong winds that were picking up debris and hurling it through the air. I hung on to my seat for dear life until we found a place to pull over safely. We left Kentucky with our RV still upright and made it to Benton in the afternoon, where we found out that our refrigerator had stopped working at some point during the trip. We did not know how long it had not been working, but, as an infection preventionist, I immediately recited food safety guidelines and reminded everyone that food poisoning is probably the worst that could happen to us in our RV, which has one bathroom. Surprisingly, the general opinion among the crew was "we will be fine"  and it was decided to keep all the food and pre-cooked meals and move on with the day. The refrigerator was working again once the RV was plugged in, but we will have to check it during the trip tomorrow to make sure it still works while driving.
Our campground here is nice, but it is very humid. We cannot wait to leave this humidity behind and enjoy the drier air out west.

July 17, 2023
​The countdown to the Audinet RV Trip 2023 has begun. Three more days and we will take our RV on the road again. This year we will drive 2500 miles to Glacier National Park in northern Montana, visiting Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks on the way. If you followed our travel blog last year, you already know our travel set-up: Cliff is our driver, who puts up with me, the overly anxious passenger. Our two youngest boys, both in their last year of college now, are tagging along again; for the national park experience only, or so they think. We, on the other hand, are finding it useful to have unlimited access to free labor during our trip and have welcomed them to join us again. 
Like last year we will share our road trip adventures and pictures on this blog and and we invite family, friends, co-workers, and anyone else who is interested, to follow our journey to northern Montana and back to Atlanta. 
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