Almost Roadside Rampage

The day started out peaceful enough .....

This is a beautiful farm at the western side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The buildings on the farm are authentic, but have been moved from different locations around the park to this place so that visitors can get a feel of a real working farm of the Appalachian region. Fourth graders studying NC History come here for Living History lessons.

I remember going here when I was about 14 ... remember, Mom & Dad? One of my favorite pictures was of this stream, probably taken about where I took this picture today. I always thought I would love to have a stream run through my property. Not going to happen when you live in the desert!

When we were going back to camp we stopped in Maggie's Valley to look at this log home builder. I really like this look and the layout of the rooms.

After asking a lot of questions of the builder we were on our way back to camp to get ready to leave for Dave and Doris's home. We actually left the I-40 route for this trip and headed southeast toward Charlotte. Lunch time came and we decided to try Cracker Barrel. Mark's in-laws, Jerry and Susan Eyler, talked about how much they loved the restaurant so we chose to try them out. We actually had a nice time, nice waitress and good food. I even spent some time in their "country store" and found something for one of the grandkids.
Anyway, we hadn't been back on the highway for too long when a warning buzzer went off. When it came on the second time in 10 seconds Gary checked out the reason - not enough coolant and our engine was getting too hot! We immediately found a place to pull over under a bridge ..... a coolant hose had split and ALL the coolant was now on the highway.

Lots of phone calls back and forth to AAA left us with NO COVERAGE in North Carolina! I called Good Sams Emergency Road Service even though we did not have their coverage to see if we could get any help. If we paid cash we could have a tow truck from 75 miles away come and get us, but their estimate was $1500. Not going to happen.

Gary spent a long time working out a temporary fix and we were able to get back on the road after 3 hours! He can fill you in on all the details and we do have to do a permanent repair job, but he saved us the time and especially the money.
We were able to get safely to Dave & Doris and had a lovely dinner of chicken enchiladas waiting for us. The dogs played, Gary & Dave got our RV set up, and we made plans for tomorrow. I guess you could say we had a peaceful ending to the day, we just have to ignore the middle part!