We did make it back home. It was not, as always, without some adventure. As we were leaving Arkansas, construction and poor signage caused us to go a different route. While we could have turned around and gotten on our regular route, we decided to just vary things a bit.
That worked out fine, but there were a few stressful moments when we realized they had snookered us.
Then the next evening as we were approaching our exit home (only about 4 miles from our house actually), the car suddenly began to die. There was no warning light, no overheating, no banging or bumping. Just sudden death.
Ever heard of vapor lock.
Apparently, when it is quite warm (and particularly when your car is warm after, oh, say, traveling all over Tennessee and North Carolina mountains for example)
and your gas tank is low (because you're, oh, I don't know, about to turn toward home and just plan to use the station that is a mile or two from your house) somehow the buildup of the vapors causes your car to die. If we had opened the tank to release the vapors or filled it up sooner, there would have been no problem. Or if we had been willing to sit in the 100 degree heat on an asphalt highway until the thing cooled down enough that it would go, we would have been fine.
Instead, being the intelligent beings we are, we called a tow truck before we melted completely away. And promptly took it to the trustworthy repair shop our friends work at the next day.
However, we did arrive to find that no one had broken any bones, no tree branches had fallen on anything, and our cat was fine and dandy. So I guess I can't really complain, huh. :)
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