October 3rd through October 4, 2025
We are heading towards from Kansas north to Nebraska as we’ve been on the road for over 2 months and we are heading towards the barn- slowly, but prefer interstates for this leg of the trip. Why Nebraska you may ask? Well, we have three interstates to choose from. Interstate 40 stays down low going from Nashville, through a portion of Arkansas, then Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arid-Zona. That route has us traveling to Kingman, AZ then north 557 miles to Reno for a total of 2249 miles. We’ve taken that route many times and it is not our favorite.
The second Interstate we could take is I-70 from Kansas City KS. That route puts us going over the Continental Divide and through the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel at 11,158 feet. This time of year the weather can turn rapidly at that altitude and travel by RV with no tire chains, or even with tire chains can be iffy. Home from Hendersonville through Kansas City, over the Rockies and up to Salt Lake City on Interstate 70 to I-15, and I-80 is 2194 miles. By the way, snow has been reported in the higher elevations of the Rockies already this fall.
Our chosen route home will be Interstate 80 via a few US highways to get to the that interstate. The most direct route which utilizes Interstate 80 is 2146 miles from Hendersonville to Reno. Of course we can’t just blast on home so we chose to visit Poplar Bluff, MO, Lake of the Ozarks MO, Clinton State Park, KS, then on to Mormon Island State Recreation Area in Nebraska. From Mormon Island we’ll be hugging Interstate 80 all the way home for a grand total of 2249 miles. So between all three routes the distance only varies about 50 miles as routed by Google Maps; in our case we added 103 miles and got to see some new country.
We left Clinton State Park in Kansas and headed towards Mormon Island SRA in,Nebraska. We are routed onto I-70, our third toll road of this trip. Just on the west side of Topeka we join Highway 75 north. This is a beautiful highway, the southern section is four lane and the northern is two land. We are traveling through beautiful farm country. Corn fields predominate followed by hay and canola/soy beans. From Highway 75 we head west on Highway 2, then miss a turnoff due to vague instructions from Mr. Garmin.
The garmin doesn’t even recognize that we are still on a road after the miss and shows us traveling is space………No matter…… well kinda does matter as we fail to use our intuition and rely on Mr. Garmin and confusing road signs and turn the wrong way on Hwy 77. No matter Jil’s Smarty Pants Phone tells us to make a U turn a mile down- remember Miss Smarty Pants doesn’t do big rigs. “U turn”, with big RV? It was tight but we made it and took Highway 77 up to I-80 near Lincoln Nebraska- we could see the high rise buildings.
Mormon Island was once a thriving gold mining camp during the height of the gold rush. As the name implies, the residents were primarily Mormons. At the height of its popularity, the town had 2500 residents, 4 hotels, 7 saloons, and 1 school. The town itself is credited with the inception of the gold rush – a Mormon entrepreneur learned of this profitable camp and went to San Francisco to spread the word. He eventually made a fortune selling mining supplies in Sacramento, and left the hard labor to the prospectors.
Let me tell you Mormon Island SRA is drop dead beautiful. Located between two lakes, the mowed grass sites have wonderful views of those lakes and are spacious. There’s plenty of room to walk the doggies.
The camp sites only have electricity, not unlike other state recreation areas we’ve visited. After leveling and extending the slides I check our water level- it’s pretty darned low as we didn’t hook up to water at Clinton SP. We look across the street and there’s a water hydrant. Do I have enough water hose to reach or do I have to move the RV? I get out the 50 footer, the 25 footer and the 10 footer and stretch them from the RV to the hydrant and by golly they reach- with 3 feet to spare. The water tank is now full!
We went into nearby Grand Island because we needed to retrovision. And guess what, they have a HyVee market! This one is not quite as large as the one in Osage Beach. We love that store…….
The campground is only one feature of the SRA. Boating, swimming and taking advantage of a beautiful day use area are others. We stayed two nights at Mormon Island SRA. If we lived closer we’d probably frequent this beautiful park. And we’d be sure to bring a full tank of water with us!
So we’ll be following Interstate 80 all the way home. We will try to abide by the “250 rule”- not more than 250 miles of travel on a travel day. We’ve been doing pretty well, only slipping up to 280 miles once this trip.
We’ll see you at the next stop. Peruse your maps and you might just figure where we might stop for a couple of nights.
Travel With Jil and Mike 