Day 19 Disaster Day, Knoxville TN to Kuttawa KY

What could go wrong on our trip today?  Let me count the ways.

Actually the day started well with a nice good-bye breakfast with Nance's sister Holly. We got cleared out of the Executive Inn 1/2 star hotel and were on the road by 8:30. Shortly we gained another hour as we passed into the Central time zone.

It was smooth sailing until the LaSalle started to have some vapor lock issues on the rather modest hills that surround Nashville.  We have an auxiliary electric fuel pump we hardly turned on since we left the high country of NM.  When we did turn the pump on, the car had no problems dealing with long grades.  We even  drove up Mt. Washington in that mode.  But suddenly in Nashville, even with the pump on she could barely hold 50 mph on Tennessee's mild hills without surging and stumbling. We did not want to take on Nashville's traffic this way, so we pulled off to try to find ethanol free gas and see if we could bypass the city. Did we tell you that Nashville was experiencing a gasoline shortage due to a pipeline failure to the south?  Fortunately, a bit of regular gas was left, but no ethanol free variants were found.  Still, we topped up hoping this new batch of ethanol laced gasoline might work better.

Cooling off in the I-24 jam.This car
never experienced this in 1937

The potential for more gas shortages and hotter weather in the south pushed us to consider vectoring to the NW via I-24.  The road was wider, and cooler with fewer trucks. On the way to I-24, Nance noticed a small electronic sign saying something like "I-24 closed 20 miles ahead" that Bill discounted. He thought it was probably some old advisory and surely they we will get road open soon. NOT!  I-24 came to a nearly complete stop that lasted about four hours. Nance read her book by the roadside while black vultures, common in these parts, circled overhead.

Vapor lock complicated our attempts to inch forward. The LaSalle could only deal with the crawling traffic for 10 or 15 minutes. After that she would heat up enough to boil her ethanol and the engine would die.  Once that happened, the only option was to find the shoulder and wait an hour for the engine to cool. We made some new friends with all the bored folks who crawled by in the traffic offering us water, sympathy, and compliments to the car.

Unfortunately, a trucker was killed about five miles ahead in the major accident that caused this jam. When the multiple wreckers and hazmat folks finally finished their jobs the dam broke and we were able to get the LaSalle rolling and headed to Kentucky.  For some reason, vapor lock was not a problem once we got up to speed again. Darkness ended the journey at a very comfortable Comfort Inn in Kuttawa KY.  We only managed a frustrating 280 miles this day.

We mismanaged some of our consumables today.  We didn't have as much water as we needed, Thanks to those folks who gave us some more.  Bill didn't recharge our booster battery and its voltage dropped to the point where our Garmin died and we couldn't charge Bill's phone.  No harm, no foul, but we are busy recharging all this stuff in this comfortable hotel room tonight.

Wonder if we'll have vapor lock problems tomorrow...