Even with a visit to the dump station on our way out of the campground, we can get on the road pretty fast in the morning. With just a car, we might have driven all the way to the coast with one or two more overnight, but pulling the camper adds time and days can get really long. That left us with 3 more overnights and 4 reasonable driving days. We finished off Kansas and flew through Missouri, heading for a camping spot south of St. Louis in the Shawnee National Forest.

But, we needed an Atlas Obscura visit! How about the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle? This 170-foot tall water tower (70-foot bottle on 100-foot legs, holding 100,000 gallons) from Brooks, once America’s #1 tangy catsup, was built in 1949 in Collinsville, IL. When the property was sold in the 1990’s, The Catsup Bottle Preservation Group was formed to keep the structure. We were able to pull into a nearby strip mall and grab a few pictures. You used to be able to smell the catsup when the factory was in operation – I guess there are worse smells to encounter when leaving the house (but I still miss the jello from the east side of Winchester).

On to our campsite at Johnson Creek Recreation Area, a National Forest Service campground in the Shawnee National Forest in Illinios. Tucked well off the main road, we saw only one other camper that night. This was an honor system check-in, where we filled out a form and dropped it in a locked box with our $10. The campsites were large and spread out, although that didn’t matter with no one else around. Another quiet, uneventful night – just what we wanted!