April 30  through May 6, 2004

Friday April 30:

It's raining this morning in Elizabethtown, moderate but pretty steady.  I'm glad we fixed the roof seams when we did; no drips in the shower now!  :-)  The way the weather looks, it will be a few days before we can find decent weather to grease the chassis.  We must shop, but hopefully the rain will stop to let us stay dry doing it.  I call the home town to see if they know how much excise tax we owe on the new car; they do, and we prepare the letter to mail.  It is annoying that they do not have any way other than US mail to let us know about tax bills. We must call THEM during business hours using prime cell minutes to find out...  :-(  The drive through the mountains is pretty, even on this overcast day.  

I'm happy for the large cuts thru the mountain that lower the steepness of the road;  it is steep enough as it is.  We take the most direct path on secondary roads to Beria, an artists colony of interest to Claire.  The Berea Walmart had no overnight parking signs posted, and 5 bar analog cell service.  We decided to continue on to London 30 miles further and found a nice Super Walmart with 5 bar DIGITAL service, non Verizon.  We chose to park away from the store, at the bottom of a hill.  We were soon hit by two shopping carts rolling down hill;  YIKES!    We got a dent in some trim on the side of the coach before we moved to the top of the hill.  Cars were getting BADLY dented too.  We moved 4 carts  that were resting against the car parked uphill from us to the cart cage.  This lot is NOT adequately designed!!!  

Saturday May 1:

Shortly after midnight found that we could CONNECT to QNC, but not to the net thru it, as there is a DNS error.  We could connect by dialing into Access-4-Free, and got the email.  The webpage is not ready, and we will not upload it this week.  We contacted all the folks we had to, then noticed lively bluegrass music playing; a small festival was happening across the street at a farm tractor dealer.  Perhaps it is to celebrate the Kentucky Derby that runs today? It featured live bluegrass bands on an improvised equipment hauler trailer stage.

There were displays of antique tractors.

This John Deere A looks like it may still be in service; the bolts for attachments look like they are not rusted.  It starts, and noisly with much smoke. :-)  The owner verifies it will burn kerosene as fuel, but it does have electric start, and no manual compression release valves.  It appears more modern than John Deere B that I operated working on the farm as a kid.   :-) There was the constant irregular pop-pop of the running antique stationary engines.

These engines are interesting, as most operating parts are visible, including the skirt of the piston as it reaches the end of its stroke, the connecting rod , the bearings and the heavy double sided flywheel.  The operating speed is low, the block is heavy cast iron, and the running life is long, but this engine that would break your back to lift (hence the wheeled cart) produces only 3.5 horsepower, about that produced by a modern day small push type rotary lawn mower engine. Cooling is supplied by the open red painted cast iron tank on top of the cylinder (with the white trademark insignia on it) into which water is poured through the large square hole. The cooling water is visible, and steams as the engine runs, but the owner says it does not boil, and does not need frequent replenishment, as does the high tension spark engine next to it which gets hot enough to boil water, and starts hard when the owner tries to demonstrate.  The governor on these engines is a mechanism of weights and springs that moves on one of the main flywheels as speed changes, moving a black rod visible on the lower side of the engine on and off a cam on the flywheel, which appears to prevent the exhaust valve from closing when the set speed is exceeded (overhead valve springs are visible protruding from end of black cylinder head on left of picture; the muffler is mounted on the pipe that comes out of the bottom of the cylinder head). The open exhaust valve prevents the intake stroke from sucking fuel air mix in, preventing compression, and thus preventing firing until the engine slows. Thus, the distinctive pop-pop.....pop.......pop sound of these engines as they regulate their speed under light load. Under fiull load, they would fire every time.  It appears the intake valve operates by vacuum in the cylinder on the intake stroke, as it's spring is much lighter and there is no connection to the cam.   The black assembly on the side of the engine is a low tension electrical ignition system, with a coil that generates current that flows through a movable contact inside the cylinder that is moved by the cam to open the circuit and create a spark at the right time to ignoite the fuel air mix. There is no spark plug.  Lubrication for the flywheel bearings is supplied by grease cups, one of which is clearly visible inboard of the leftmost flywheel on top of the axle. These must be periodically turned a bit to force grease into the bearings, and refilled when they are turned tight.  There is no oil pan nor forced oil circulation.

Lubrication is supplied by oil dripping onto the piston as it moves in and out of the cylinder from the gravity feed oil container (the glass container on the pipe sticking out of the cylinder casting just to the left of the cooling water tank in the above picture).  This oil must be replaced as it is used, and most running engines have tin cans on the ground to catch the excess oil as it drips off.  The fuel flows from the tank through the pipe along the lower part of the picture, and enters the cylinder via the pipe on the upper near side of the cylinder head (black part on right of this photo). There must be a crude carbuerator in there somewhere!  :-)  Below is a similar design engine, with intake and exhaust ports reversed from the other one.  

Somewhere in the pushrod linkage between the flywheel cam and the exhaust valve there is a mechanism that only pushes the exhaust valve every other cam revolution, but I could not understand how it worked, as it moved too fast when the engine ran, and was not easily understood with the engine stopped.   I am also intrigued by the washing machine engines that were used to power wringer washing machines in areas that had no electricity.

This one from a Maytag washer is spinning away making a bit of smoke and a bit more noise. A step on the pedal would start it.  This engine has no moving parts exposed other than the flywheel, which doubles as the belt pulley to drive the washing machine [these drove old style wringer washers, not today's automatic models :-) ].  This is a high tension spark engine with spark plug and behind the flywheel magneto, and appears to have a crankcase containing oil for lubrication. Another bluegrass band comes out to play for us.

The lady singer on the bass is quite an accomplished yodeler as well.  I am standing in front of them until their session ends.  I imagine they are some level of professionals, getting paid for their efforts today, but do not know that for certain.  Vendors selling "stuff" are ever present at such affairs. This enterprising miller combines the antique engine with an antique corn mill.  

We did not see it run, but did not want any corn meal either.  This engine appears to be an old oil field pumping engine designed to run on waste gasses coming off the wells.  At this show they run on propane, as we see a similar one doing.  These are more adsvanced designs that were intended for long periods of unattended operation. They have closed cooling systems with radiators, and pressure lubrication systems.  There are teens moving around selling various goodies for the benefit of local organizations.  I am now the proud owner of a Southeastern Kentucky Antique Tractor and Engine Association T shirt.  We ate brownies supplied by a local church group.  Claire bought two small tomato plants from the Future Farmers of America folks, who almost INSISTED on giving us more and bigger plants than we had room for on the RV for our $1.25.  :-)   We must move to Middlesboro near Cumberland Gap today, and it is already past 2PM, so we pack our goodies up and return to the RV on Walmart's lot. The drive along a scenic route through the mountains takes us past a Super Walmart in Corbin and another standard Walmart in Barboursville before we find the no overnight parking signs in Middlesboro's Walmart;  we know of no good alternative other than turning back, so decide to ask if we can stay.  I see an immediate advantage to owning a Southeast Kentucky Antique Tractor and Engine Association T shirt, and try it on for the shopping/asking trip to Walmart. :-)   We receive permission to stay overnight easily, and shop and put money on the shopping card for gas too.  The cellphone is strong analog, roaming light flashing yellow, but it is good for phone calls if not internet.  We find the Derby is running at 6:05PM, so turn on the TV a few minutes before; predictably the first station we find is showing the pre-race activities, so we watch as Smarty Jones is enticed to enter the starting box, and goes on to a come from behind victory.  I think we had a better view of this race than we would have had in the grandstands, and we are $80 wealthier too.  :-)  Dinner is left over noodles and squash soup, preceded by a delicious fresh salad.  

Sunday May 2:

It rained continuously starting around dawn, at times quite hard.  We took our time getting out, and called folks arranging the schedule for the rest of our trip.  We shopped again, then filled gas and headed toward Cumberland Gap National Historic Park.  We found the park visitors center easily.  The weather was improving, but is still heavy overcast.  I am attracted to this restored cabin on display in front.

After viewing their interpretive film about Daniel Boone and his contributions to America's westward expansion, we talked to ranger about a campground; they said they had a campground a few miles away in Virginia that would take us, $7.50/night with electricity with our golden age passport.  WHY could we find no information about it in our guidebooks?  The ranger said the details of this park are hard to find, mainly because the park covers 3 states.  He showed us where we could park to hike the 2 mile trail to the top of the original gap trail taken by Daniel Boone, followed by hundreds of thousands of westward bound immigrants to Kentucky in the late 1700's. We decide to stay here two nights and hike tomorrow.  The clouds drifting around the mountains bordering the Gap are quite intriguing.

We drove from the visitor's center in Kentucky, through the Cumberland Gap Tunnel that opened in 1996, into Tennessee for a few tenths of a mile, then into Virginia.  We find the campground nice and sparsely occupied; we check and cell service is DIGITAL, and VERIZON.  We chose a high loop, and a level site near the shower room.  It seemed marginally level enough, but the fridge warmed steadily until I leveled with three blocks on the passenger side.  Oh well......leveling takes only a few minutes, and Claire talks on the phone through it and does not realize what has happened.  :-)   Dinner is jambalaya, as usual, delicious!  It is getting cold outside; near freezing lows are predicted for tonight.  We turn the furnace on,  set for night time 60 degree temperature, for the first time in many weeks.  It is good we have electricity; no worry about the battery running down tonight.  :-)

Monday May 3:

It's 43 degrees under the RV at 6:30AM.  I had set the remote thermometer to read the temperature in front of the windshield curtain, to check if tomato plants will safely stand cold weather kept over night there.  That temperature is actually a couple degrees LOWER than outside under the RV!!  Wow, never would have thought THAT....we will continue to bring the plants into the main section of the RV at night.  The interior temperature is set at 60 and furnace runs sporadically.  The indoor temperature on exterior wall reads 53.5.  Over the fridge where some heat from the fridge drifts out through the crack, it's 57.4.  It is fleece snow suit weather in here this morning.  :-)  The computer crashed losing 4 hours of unsaved web page work.  :-(((((((   I finally took the time to go into the program help and find there is an autosave option that was not set to operate by default.  Now it will save every 10 minutes!  I cannot think of saving while I work on this, despite several previous experiences with significant loss of work; it also seems more likely to crash when I do LOTS of work. Now maybe I'll lose much less if we crash.  I started to reconstruct the lost work, but decided a hike to the saddle of the Gap would be much better for my present state of mind.  :-)  The parking place at the iron furnace seemed closest to the trail, but the maps we have been given always seem to leave a question of exactly where the trail is, or where it goes.  If this is intentuonal on the part of the park service to maintain the "exploring" feel of the Boone era, it is not very funny when you drive a 33 foot motorhome into places that are really kinda tight for it....  If it is simple incompetance, we deserve better after paying for the tunnel to get the highway going UNDER the gap, so trails could be returned to something like the wilderness viewed by Boone!  We find a trail, and it leads us to the old iron furnace.

The availability of iron ore and limestone in the area made smelting a natural industry here, and this furnace dates from around 1820.  It used the cold blast process and could make about a ton of iron at a time, and could be reloaded six times a day. By 1880 newer methods of smelting made this type furnace uneconomical.   The fast flowing mountain stream next to the furnace provided water power for the furnace bellows and a 500 pound hammer to shape ingots and forge iron products.  It still provides very pretty background for pictures...

Beyond the furnace a sign indicates the Tennessee Road, the trail to the gap saddle.  The weather today is far from clear, and long distance visibility from the top suffers.  This view from the very top of the gap shows progress toward restoring the trail to wilderness.

This gap wilderness restoration work is still incomplete; even the knowledgeable ranger in the visitors center did not know how much of the old paved road remained on the trail to the saddle.  We found NONE, just evidence of recently (apparently within a year) bulldozed terrain sprouting fairly new grass and flowers.  The GPS showed a railroad here too, so it seems that has been bulldozed away as well.  The rock cuts made to level the terrain when the modern roads and railroad were built remain, and probably always will.

 That rock is not going to grow back!  The best they can do is try to make it appear as natural as possible.  :-) As we neared the top of Cumberland Gap, the GPS showed us right on US25E; we are directly over the tunnel going under the gap!  We could hear and see nothing of it or the traffic whizzing under us. :-) .  There are monuments erected commemorating Boone's trail, and this marker placed in 1915 identifies Indian Rock on Daniel Boone's 1775 trail.

The haze obscures the distant view, but we can see outlines of the mountains dimly; this would be spectacular on a clear day!    We return to the RV intending to grease the chassis in this paved lot.  There are regular patrols through the lot in this town of Cumberland Gap TN, so we decide this task might be better done elsewhere.  We return to the RV and pick a different site in the campground.  It requires more levelling blocks, but is harder surfaced so we need not lie in the mud, so we greased the 13 fittings (3 passenger side front, 6 drivers side front, 4 driveshaft U joints) on the chassis here, and cleaned a black streak off the side with cleaner/wax.  The gap in the rain gutter is now sealed, and that streak should not reappear.  I am quite tired after the hike and greasing effort, and retire early.

Tuesday May 4:

I worked the web page in the AM before showering and washing the windshield.  It seemed a shame to drive through this scenic mountain countryside with windows too dirty for pictures.  The roof washing had left a haze from chalking roof pigment on the windows that encouraged the camera to focus on that instead of the subject.  We dumped again and replenished water before leaving for Kingsport TN on US58. The magnitude of the barrier the mountains presented to westward travel on foot and horseback became clear when the steep ridges continued unbroken for many miles along this road.  

 A gap is certainly needed for traveling any distance here....  This was shown as a scenic highway on the map, but we had no intention of taking the longer alternate but more scenic route until we got on it by mistake at Jonesville VA, returning to US58 by US421.  This view from Powell Overlook, over 2300' high shows the terrain, ridge behind ridge, and the difficulty this must have presented early travelers.

Goodness knows it slows our travel in the RV, with either steep upgrades at low speed, or scary downgrades to negotiate that require slower than normal speed for safety with our vehicle.  We arrive in Kingsport to find the expected Walmart building from Street Atlas has been closed, so we must fish for the address and find it several miles away.  It is new, and we find a satisfactory level site parked lengthwise at the low end of the lot near the road.  Dinner is split pea soup.  After news and dishes, I turn in and fall asleep quickly.

Wednesday May 5:

It's 57.1 degrees under the RV at 6AM.  The furnace did not come on, but Claire did put the heavy quilt on the bed sometime during the night, and I welcomed it.  Today is a "working" day;  we need to do laundry then shop at Sam's on our way to Johnson City, so charge up the Walmart shopping card on our remaining credit card to cover the expense.  This beats the debit card we have been using, as the credit card has 1% cash back for purchases, the debit does not.  Sams will not take our mastercard credit card, only Discover credit or a debit card. Two ladies in Walmart had recommended the same laundromat about 4 miles away, and we were able to find it despite references to "THE hill" in their directions.....it seems like there are only hills here.  :-)  We should have at least asked if it was "up" or "down".  :-))  Laundry went very well, with much more than the usual amount to do.  This laundromat had many 35 pound horizontal axle machines, ideal for washing our heavy blankets, after we figured out the doors needed to be resoundingly SLAMMED to close them.  I HATE to abuse machinery that way, but the attendant said that is the approved way. The doors do remind me a bit of the waterproof bulkheads on navy ships.  :-)  Sams is about 6 miles away as the crow flies, but in this mountain country we cannot follow the crows, and I pick a route that has numbered highways. We find Sam's here has no wine, and we need wine....but buy a load of stuff anyway.  We continue on toward Johnson City.  There are pretty things to see even though we drive the interstate road.

This wide mountain river is brilliant blue green.  We find the Walmart where advertised, but at the top of a hill, at the end of a switchbacked driveway with a "No Trucks" sign....the only level parking spot is at the very bottom of the lot, and we grab four open spaces lengthwise and settle in. I do hope folks are careful with their carts!  :-(  The sun is hot shining in the windshield, and the overhead fan runs continuously.   We need a few more things at Walmart, but there is still no wine here.  We decide to walk to the wine store we noticed at the bottom of the hill.  The road up had been quite a distance on the driveway ramp, but walking down the steep grassy hill proved MUCH shorter.  

I volunteered to play "mule" on the trip back up, and carried the pack with 6 bottles of wine.  We were both puffing a bit upon reaching the top, but did not stop 'til we got there.  Dinner is apple salad and left over split pea soup.  After the news and dishes are finished, I decide to try to fix the fan on the inverter.  It has been noisy for a long time, but now it is refusing to start without rapping the unit.  Tonight I rapped the unit several times and caused a red fluid leak leak in my thumb. :-((  A bandaid fixes that, but I MUST fix that fan or buy a new unit. The fan is a very small one that looks similar to a computer chip cooler, and I find that they are assembled similarly.  A sharp knife cuts an large"X" in the center of the label on the front of the fan that covers the bearing cover, the label is pulled back from the center so the plastic cover can be popped out, exposing the simple bronze "oilite" bushing that supports the fan rotor. Two small drops of 20 weight "3 in 1" oil are placed on the bushing with a small wire, then we reassemble the bearing cover and replace the label in position before covering the cuts in the label with a circle of plastic electrical tape.  The fan is replaced in the unit after starting the generator to vacuum the dust out of the internal components of the inverter.  A quick test at first convinces me I have failed, as I hear no fan running.  I feel at the fan, and air is flowing from the unit; the fan is running so quietly now that I barely hear it.  :-))   That finished, I spend some time on the web page before turning in.  The weather is so much warmer tonight that no spread is needed on the bed.  

Thursday May 6:

PLANS: We are on our way north now, after visiting Cousins Charlie, Peggy and Randy in North Carolina.  Our plans are firmly scheduled, with visits to friends Ron and Elizabeth in Lexington VA,  Claire's brother Matt and Theresia who we meet in Winchester, VA for 6 days touring northern VA, and then a stop to visit my brother Bob and Kathy in PA before returning home on Tuesday May 18th.  I'm not sure if there will be another update to the web page before we get home, as we're moving fast....if not, we'll see you next trip.

Until then, ENJOY!!