Day 18, Radford VA to Knoxville TN

We knew this would be a short day, it was a mere 220 miles from Radford to Knoxville where we planned to meet with Nance's sister Holly for the afternoon.  Our war with trucks on I-81 continued with some relief: A lane or two got added on some sections and quite a few trucks were siphoned off onto I-77 which headed SE.  The net effect was a much friendlier day of driving.  We particularly enjoyed a stop at Chilhowie VA convenience store.  Here we found a very friendly restaurant inside the store with a great short order menu.  The "Hey Y'all it's Fall" apple festival was the event dujour. Folks gathered around to check out the visiting LaSalle and ask questions about New Mexico and the VMCCA.

Entering Tennessee, we took a short diversion to the Bristol NASCAR track.  This enormous aluminum bowl is a NASCAR icon.  It features a rather small oval at its apex and many steep rows of grandstands that put the spectator very close and above the racing surface.  It is known to be an raucous sonic and visual experience.  Alas, there was no race today, so this coliseum was quiet and abandoned.  Stopping at Bristol is becoming a tradition; we did it with the Mercedes on the Maine trip in 2014.  After the usual photo op we moved on.

As we continued, we could see that this sliver of Tennessee and western VA was booming.  We drove through miles of box stores, hotels, and Wal Marts.  We both wondered what drives the economic engine here. Is it education, mining, scenery or ???

Around 3 pm, our GPS navigator found the O'Connor Senior Center in Knoxville. There we

Nance, the center director
and Holly meet and greet

connected with Holly who is a regular volunteer.  After a tour of the excellent facility and a brief LaSalle Q&A with some seniors, we went to dinner and stopped for the night at a very rough Executive Inn near Holly's home.

LaSalle report:  Bill has been quiet about the LaSalle for quite some time.  To paraphrase a Mercedes commercial: "Sometimes the best cars deliver to you simply nothing.  No problems, no issues, just steady enjoyable performance day after day, month after month". Well, this is not the case with the LaSalle or any old car that we have.  They all have their moments that put you on edge: a new rattle, a strange vibration, an odd engine surge or stumble. Most anomalies like this just come and go, but any one can expand and turn into a quick show stoppers. But so far there are none. We don't want to jinx the car, but we must say the competence of this LaSalle continues to amaze us. She just runs and drives so smooth and strong that we forget we are in an 80 year old car. Still, there are a few issues. The engine's oil consumption really bothers Bill. She takes at least a quart every 200 to 300 miles, way too much for a car with new pistons, rings and fresh cylinder bores. Not sure what's going on here, but she does not smoke much, just a puff or two at the bottom of a long hill. We are still doing fine without our generator, but the starter turns over very, very slowly when the engine is hot. She always starts right up, but it feels like it is all the starter can do to turn this monster over. We also have lost our LED brake light, a casualty of the generator failure: without the generator working, the battery voltage is too low to trip the relays that turn on the LED's.

We are now a mere 1400 miles from home. Much of our remaining trip will be on I-40 or secondary roads in parallel.