Our plan was to leave NC Friday evening and arrive in Jacksonville sometime around 3:00 p. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. We were still unloading things from the house - to put on the curb - late into the night. Raymond ran a quick errand to Lowe's and when he returned he noticed the fan on the van was still running to cool the engine down long after the had shut the motor off. Finally, it did turn off and we were glad until we found out why it turned off. We got in the car and turned the key....nothing! The battery had died. Well, our landlord made it clear that if we stayed one day longer we would have to pay another months rent, so we decided to stay in the van until we could get a jump the next day. Praise the Lord our neighbor had worked late that evening and around three in the morning he came home and Raymond flagged him down. It took about two hours; but we got the batter fully charged and officially headed out on Saturday morning around six. We gassed up and noticed the temperature signal come on in the van - it was about to overheat. Raymond removed the sensor - and everything was fine for a while (45 minutes) until we reached the Raleigh area and it started to overheat again. We made a pit stop and Raymond worked on the van for a few hours until we got everything fixed and the vehicle was again trip ready (or so we thought). ( I didn't mind because we got to go eat at a great Thai restaurant and I got to go shopping at Trader Joes:)
By this time it was late and we were tired, so we booked a hotel - that allowed pets - and headed out again next morning after church. All was well until we heard a loud BOOM! - a tire on the trailor blew. Time for another pit stop. Raymond put on the spare, then we went to the next town we saw and shopped around until we could find a place that carried the right size tire for our trailor.
On the road again, no more vehicle incidents (unless you include the top blowing off our trailor in the mountains of NC during a rainstorm!); but once we reached Nashville, Tennessee we learned that the Wolfe river had overflown its banks. We - along with hundreds of other travelors - spent the night on the side of the road hoping it would be safe to travel I-40 sometime early the next day. It wasn't. We had to take an 8 hour detour through Kentucky and down to Arkansas.
We finally made it to Jacksonville sometime around 10:00p.m. Monday evening!
What a trip!!!
