Sorry we've been out of touch!

After we departed Cumberland Gap, we spent the night at Wolf Dam. The Army Corps of Engineers are hard at work there on a 7 year project to fix the dam. We stayed at their campground with nice facilities. Jason and the kids went over to see the fish hatchery that was located on the premises. Pictured above is Jack next to a batch of trout eggs. Trout are not indigenous to the Cumberland River area but the creation of the Wolf Dam drastically changed the water temperature. All the bass, crappie and catfish died so now they've sucessfully introduced the trout.

As you can see, the Wolf Dam area was really starting to bloom. All through Kentucky we saw beautiful purple buds on trees.

We left Wolf Dam in a rainstorm and headed West again. We eventually turned north and crossed the Ohio River on a ferry over to the Illinois side at a place called "Cave in Rock". Those folks in Illinois really know how to name a place because there is, in fact, a Cave in a Rock there.

Crossing the Ohio was another milestone for us. This was the first time that we intersected the route of the Lewis and Clark's Westbound Expedition. Meriweather Lewis actually departed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1803 and floated down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River. He later met up with William Clark later in 1803 near to St. Louis.

After exploring Cave in Rock, we headed toward St. Louis and stopped at Rend Lake in central Illinois. We were only planning to spend one night there but we were greeted on arrival by kids that became very friendly with Hayley and Jack so we spent two nights there.

Pictured above are Hayley and Jack with their friends Katelin and Ashlyn. They are from Evansville, Indiana and were on spring break. Hayley and Jack also went canoeing on Rend Lake. The weather was so warm that Jack went swimming in the lake too. The second morning we were there Jack came down with some type of stomach illness. He was feeling pretty bad but soon started to improve and we moved on up to the St. Louis area. This turned out to be a bit foreshadowing.