Glad to Report We're Safe Update

We left north Georgia on Monday the 23rd to do our little loop trip for about a month, and our first stop was Marion, NC, just west of Asheville, NC.  We had reservations there for 10 days.  

Jan and I are big believers that things happen for a reason, and our experience is another example of it.  On our trip over to Marion, I noticed that the boost on the engine was reading high sometimes, way higher than I had ever seen it in 200,000 miles, something not right.  Normally the max I see is about 41-42 pounds, but often I was reading 49!  We got into our site and did some research and the next morning Tuesday I called around and found a Detroit Diesel shop in Charlotte that sounded pretty good.  Although I thought it was the turbo$$$$ at first it is now my and the tech I spoke to's opinion that it is probably the waste gate, controller, or actuator.  We'll see and our fingers are crossed.  It drives fine, normal power although it does pour out some black smoke at higher boost pressures.  Later we went into Black Mountain for a great lunch, then took a ride down through Chimney Rock and Lake Lure on the way back, great day.  The next day Wednesday, we went into Asheville to have a wonderful lunch at one of our favorite places, a Vietnamese restaurant, Wild Ginger, then went over to Biltmore Village to a nice cigar shop we like, talked with the clerk about cigars, etc, picked up a couple sticks and came back.  Now of course we had been watching the progress of  Helene, but it was still south of Tampa, although the forecast in our area was for hard rain with a possibility of 8-10 inches, and even though it was raining pretty good there was no wind so we were able to go outside under our awning to have a drink and a cigar.

And though it was raining, we went to bed without another thought, until at 1am I woke up to pounding on our door.  Got myself gathered together enough to see what was happening and there were two emergency personnel telling us we would have to evacuate right now!  It was pouring hard, so Jan and I pulled ourselves together got everything loaded up, flag and weather station down, and then what?  Where were we going to go?  Luckily we had been in this area before and knew there was a large parking area about 3 miles away, we figured we'd get there, hope it wasn't flooded, and try to figure out what to do.  We parked there, the rain is pouring down, and we try to lie down and get a little sleep before the dawn.  That didn't work very well as we were worried the parking lot could flood.  We got a nap maybe, made some coffee and had breakfast, by now the sun had come up, still raining hard, so we looked and looked for somewhere to stay in the area that wasn't flooded, no luck.  At 9am, we jumped in the truck to go back over to the campground to see what was up.  Half of the sites were already under water.  We stopped in the office and amazingly were offered a full refund!  Great folks and customer service, especially since it was in no way their fault.  So now we felt we could easily move on down towards Charlotte to be closer for our appointment.  We weren't finding anything close in, so finally we found a park in Statesville, NC, about 35 miles north of Charlotte that had room.

Off we went, I tried really hard to keep the boost down, but it was difficult in the hilly conditions and pouring rain, and now we were really blowing black smoke with any boost over 30, but it was running fine.  We got into the campground and got settled in the rain.  The next day was very windy and still raining, and we wanted to go see where the service center was and, of course, find some lunch:-)

We were laughing at how we wouldn't be able to go back to the Vietnamese restaurant in Asheville the 2 or 3 times we were planning, so it was astounding that when I looked up restaurants in Charlotte on TripAdvisor, that of the 1600 places, the very first one was a Vietnamese restaurant Lang Van.  So off we went, we couldn't believe all the damage we saw even in Charlotte, downed trees across homes, downed power lines, flooded closed streets, etc!  We found the service center, won't be too bad getting there, and then the restaurant, oh wow, amazing!  Service and food wonderful, so we found a great replacement.

By Saturday the rain had stopped and by Saturday night the wind had stopped.  We are counting our blessings we moved out of the Asheville area.  I'm sure by now you've seen the reports and videos of that area, I mentioned Chimney Rock and Lake Lure, they are destroyed.  Biltmore Village where we bought the cigars and walked around under 4 feet of water.  All roads in western NC are closed to anything but emergency traffic, the interstates are closed, and in some cases wiped out, bridges are gone, whole towns are gone.  It is hard to imagine the destruction this storm brought to this area!

The next post will tell what we find with our engine, how much our plans will have changed, and what we plan to be doing in the next several weeks.  Hope all of you are safe.