Tom's National Park Adventure

My original plan was to visit GSMNP on the back end of my trip to Florida. However that trip had to be adjusted so I could go to Kirksville, MO to see my son get his award from Truman Sate University.

I rebooted and made reservations to visit GSMNP and Mammoth Cave National Park over a ten day period starting this past Sunday. Well…… plans sometimes don’t go the way you would like. I left the house bright and early and ran into a little hiccup!

When I started Ethyl up she was running rough. I drove towards the highway and suddenly the Check Engine light came on! This is definitely not a good thing! She kept on running rough so I turned around and drove back home.

Since it was Sunday, there weren’t any repair places open. I had to wait until Monday morning to see if someone could look at her.

Monday morning I went to a local repair shop to see if they would be able to work me into their schedule. Not happening…… The earliest they could look at Ethyl would be a week and a half. While discussing the situation, the owner of the shop had a couple of suggestions. Since Ethyl had been running fine before I turned her off and then suddenly started running poorly after a couple of days he suggested to check out the wires to the injectors. So I went home and did just that. I found that the two wires to the #8 cylinder had been chewed though by some type of rodent! There were acorn shells right in the area where the wiring was located.

So I repaired the wires, hooked everything back up and voila….. Ethyl was running just fine again.

So I loaded everything up and hit the road.

I made it to the east side of Nashville last night and spent the night in a rest stop. I got up this morning and made it to the park around 10:30am.

I got my stamp for the passport in the visitors center and then found my campsite.

I did a couple of hikes today. One included a short time on the Appalachian Trail!