September 11-12, 2023 - The Natchez Trace Parkway; Vehicle Troubles

MONDAY MORNING:

We left home Monday at 10:00 a.m. headed for the North terminus of the Natchez Trace, South of Nashville. It was 278.5 miles from home to the Natchez Trace Parkway. The parkway is 444 miles long beginning in Natchez, Mississippi, and ending South of Nashville. After just a couple of miles on the trace we crossed the Double Arch Bridge. Here is a picture from below and some information about it.

At this first stop I had to take the obligatory pictures. It is hard to get a good picture looking into the sun.

As we traveled down the parkway we stopped at two scenic overlooks to take in views of the hills of Tennessee. Beautiful greenery stretched for miles in all directions.

The park maintains three campgrounds along the parkway. The most Southern, our destination for the evening, was the Merriweather Lewis Campground at mile marker 385, about sixty miles from the entrance. The campgrounds are free and have no electric, water, nor dump stations. We arrived at 6:00 p.m. and found a nice site for the night. It was a long day so, instead of cooking anything, Kelly made sandwiches for supper. We were lucky enough to find some wood to make a campfire. Here I am enjoying the fire and an adult beverage as Homer relaxes on the pavement.

It was a warm evening so cooling off Homer for sleeping, with no electric, took some ingenuity. We had opened all the windows and vents upon arrival but at dark it was still 80 degrees inside. We carry a 12-volt fan but getting it situated so that it blows up in the bunk area for sleeping has always been an issue. Unfortunately heat rises and the bunk area is always warmer. This trip Kelly came up with a great idea. She put the fan on top of the folding plastic end table we use outside and then put that table on top of the dining table. With the fan up high, it worked like a charm to cool off the bunk area. Between the fan and a couple of stiff drinks, I was able to fall asleep. By 1:00 a.m. it was cool enough that I needed a cover. I got up and turned the fan off because I was worried about battery capacity. At that point the fridge, the fan, and my CPAP, had all been on about four hours drawing off the batteries. At 1:00 a.m. the batteries read 12.3 volts, not bad. (Homer has two 6-volt golf cart batteries which provide more capacity than 12-volt deep cycle batteries.) I went back to bed and slept until 7:30 a.m., which is very unusual for me.

TUESDAY MORNING:

When Kelly got up at 8:00 a.m. I turned on the generator to make coffee and so she could curl her hair. The generator started right up but we had no power. What? It had been running fine at home and putting out power as it should. My first thought was the circuit breaker on the generator must have tripped. But before I went outside to check it, I had the good sense to check the house circuit breakers. I found the main breaker and another breaker had tripped. I reset them and then all was well. I have no idea why these two breakers tripped since no electric had been on all day.

I made each of us a cup of coffee in the Keurig. We decided to make another cup and head down the road. We would stop later for a brunch in the park. I tried to make another cup of coffee and I got an error message to the effect that these K-cups were not approved K-cups for a Keurig. The message contained a phone number to call if this happened. These were the exact K-cups I just made coffee with, and the same ones we have used for several years. I tried another K-cup with the same message. What the heck? I put the Keurig away for travel. No second cup of coffee.

We headed out of the campground and rounded the bend to the Merriweather Lewis home, burial site, and part of the original trace. Here is a picture of the home and a picture with Homer in it so you can get an idea of the size of the building.

There was a monument nearby explaining the significance of the trace. Here is a picture. I hope you can read it.

Next to the monument was a part of the original trace so we walked part of it. Of course, originally the trace wasn't graveled. LOL. I can't imagine what an ordeal the trace would have been for travelers back then.

We then headed South on the parkway but within ten miles the transmission started to act up again. GREAT!

There is no cell phone service on most of the parkway. We decided it was not a good place to be stranded so we turned off at the first state highway. It was Tennessee Highway 64. I programmed the Garmin to take us home, hoping Homer would make it. I had no idea where we were and luckily the Garmin routed us on U.S. Highways most of the way, which all had a lane to pull off on if your vehicle broke down. Here is a map I copied off my Atlas. (I'm going to have to learn how to get better maps for pictures.) The pink is the trace parkway, the yellow is the route we took across Tennessee back to Missouri.

It was a very LONG trip home. The transmission slipped into neutral at least fifty times in two hundred miles. Several times it appeared it wasn’t going to go back in gear and that we would be stranded out in the middle of rural Tennessee. We took Tennessee Hwy 64 to U.S. Hwy 641, to U.S. Hwy 412, to Interstate 40, then back on U.S. 412 to Dyersburg, Tennessee, then I-155 to I-55 in Missouri. I had never driven these roads before nor been in this part of Tennessee. I was shocked at how desolate Tennessee was, even along major U.S. highways. Towns were about twenty-five miles apart and most consisted of little more than a gas station/convenience store. We trudged on hoping for the best. Kelly just kept patting Homer's dash telling him he could get us home.

Early in the day Kelly's arm rest pulled loose from the door. It had been fixed once or twice before. It is only made out of foam rubber covered with vinyl. The foam has deteriorated due to age, which makes it hard to fix it well enough to be pulled on all the time to close the door. Here is a picture.

Also, while riding along, all of a sudden, the window blind behind Kelly fell down. We just laughed. Kelly took a selfie with it as we travelled on.

At least ten times throughout the day we thought we would be sitting on the side of the road flagging someone down for help. Once we made it to I-55 I felt we were back in civilization if Homer crapped out. As we approached Cape Girardeau it dawned on me that we would be better off driving Homer directly to the transmission shop rather than home and then there. Cutting across from Cape Girardeau to Leopold, Missouri, was only a thirty-three-mile drive, versus going home (which was a thirty-five-mile drive), followed by a forty-eight-mile drive back to the transmission shop. Driving to the shop and leaving Homer, however, would necessitate finding someone to come and get us, and all of our stuff including food.

We stopped for lunch in Cape Girardeau and called John and Carlene to see if they could pick us up in Leopold later in the afternoon. They said they could, so we finished our lunch and headed to Leopold on two-lane state country roads with no shoulders to pull off on. This plan ended up being a good one because for the last couple miles before we reached the shop in Leopold, the transmission was jumping in and out of gear regularly. I must say I was never so glad to see a shop parking lot in my life.

While we waited for Carlene and John to arrive from Perryville, we started packing into Walmart bags all of our food, clothes, medicine, CPAP, etc. You pack an RV for a trip there and back. You aren't prepared to empty it and leave it somewhere on the road. I had asked John to bring a cooler for the freezer and some refrigerator items. We had so much stuff everything would not fit in their large trunk. One box had to sit in the backseat with Carlene and Kelly. I hope we remembered to bring everything we need. We arrived home at 5:00 p.m. and quickly put everything away and chilled out for the rest of the evening. 

What a trip!

This was our second attempt to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway. The last time we didn't even make it to the parkway when a front caliper locked up and we turned around and came back home. This time we traveled about fifty miles of the 444 mile parkway. I say we don't ever try to drive the trace again, Kelly says completing the trace is now a goal!

While waiting for our John and Carlene to arrive I looked at the window blind, which now laying on the table, to see why it fell down. On the end that came off I found a hole and no peg of any sort to hold it in the bracket.

Here is a picture of the other end. You can see the spring-loaded peg is a fairly large piece. I couldn't believe that in quickly looking around I didn't find it for repair and reinstallation. Crazy.  If I don't find the piece once Homer is back home I will have to improvise a fix.

Finally, many thanks go out to:

John and Carlene for taking time in their day to drive forty-eight miles to pick us up and haul us and our stuff back to Perryville; 

to

Homer for making it back to the shop;

and to

The Good Lord for watching over us the entire way home.

Being stranded anywhere along the way would have been quite challenging, stressful, and expensive. There would have been an expensive tow, an issue of finding a shop to fix Homer, maybe a motel room for a day or two, and a car rental to get us and our stuff back home, and a trip back to get Homer. It was a bad trip but could have been much worse.

P.S. Once home and settled in, I plugged in the Keurig to get the phone number to call when it didn’t recognize the K-cup. It recognized the K-cup and was ready to make coffee. It figures.