June 27th and 28th, 2017

Yesterday was a very long day. We left Poplar Bluff  and went to the Mingo National Wildlife Sanctuary for a short hike. We thought we would spend the night in Owensboro. While looking for hotels we discovered Owensboro and nearby locations were full. We decided on Campbellville mostly due to availability. It was not the most pleasant stay. In fact it falls in the bottom two. This morning we were up early and headed for Virginia. Since this is our last night on the road before reaching Roanoke we decided to splurge. We are stay at a historic hotel in Marion Va. This hotel made the National Geographic top 150 list of places you must stay and we are enjoying it. We really didn’t plan our return trip well. Next time I think I will put more effort into the return too. For excitement on the way back we have been locating quilt shops participating in the 2017 Row by Row experience. This has been lots of fun. You collect at least 8 Quilt panels designed around a common theme from participating shops. Once you have completed 8 panels you bring your finished project to a participating store and get lots of fat quarters. I have collected rows from  Colorado, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Virginia so far. Looking forward to arriving in Roanoke tomorrow.

As we walked through the Mingo Wildlife trail we saw some very different wildlife as you can see from the strange fellow below.

There was a white ball from some plant with a pretty flutterby crawling all over it.

The swampy area had some weird flying critters that came in different colors.

The leaves had some shadow patterns on them.

I believe this is the only turtle we saw on this trip.  He was soaking up some rays and he seemed to be saying so long until the next trip.  Hope everyone has enjoyed the past 7 weeks.