We left bright and early Monday morning. Our plan had been to stay at Land Between the Lakes but with the oppressive heat we decided to skip LBL and stop at Lake Carlyle then home.
Lake Carlyle is one of our favorite places to stay. The campsites are huge and park-like. 
The following morning we connected the car and were leaving the campground and had travelled about 50 feet when the car’s transmission popped back into gear–not a good thing. The car shuddered as the tires caught and the motor home dragged it a few feet. We stopped and Tom put it back in neutral. There were no further problems with the transmission and it appears there was no harm done.
As I described in a previous entry, when towing our car, it must be started and put through the gears at least every 200 miles. This mixes up the oil in the transmission and coats the parts to prevent the transmission from burning up. Well, we left Lake Carlyle and were heading home. It was a total of 300 miles home, so we tried to find a rest area about mid-way to stop. The map showed one south of Bloomington, IL at mile marker 145.
Now, that day was as hot as any during this trip. We stopped at the rest had lunch then Tom went out to start the car. Well the car's alarm went off and the car wouldn’t start. So we had to disconnect the battery cables. Of course first you must dig to find the tools to do so. So here we are, the temperature felt like 100 with the air temp and heat from the pavement, struggling to get the battery disconnected so we could figure out what was wrong.
During our travails a “Country Coach” motor home pulled in next to us. The phrase,”If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” That’s a Country Coach--45 ft. of luxury motor “coach.” Why these people even pulled in next to us is a mystery to me. The rest area was one of the largest we’ve been in. There were only us and one or two semis in the truck/RV area. So they are parked next to us, spewing diesel fumes and more heat toward us. They went to the rest rooms and came back and sat in their air conditioning having lunch spewing and spewing and not asking if we needed help. I was certain they were sitting behind their tinted windows watching our struggles.
We determined that the car battery was dead. We don’t know why it drained but it was dead. So we had to jump the car with the motor home. It would have been a cinch if there wasn’t a spewing (I like this word) behemoth next to us. Tom could have backed the motor home next to the car and ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom that would have been it. But that was not to be, the Country Coach did not move. So Tom had to pull out, turn around, go against traffic and pull in nose-to-nose with the car. Fortunately there was room to do that and no traffic to get in the way.
The green rectangle is our car, the blue dot is the Country Coach and the red line is the movement of our motor home.
After the car was running we had to back the car out of the space to another one and pull the motor home in front to reconnect. WHEW!!
After we got home we decided that the battery problem was caused by the brake buddy being too close to the brake pedal and then possibly shifting when the brake was applied. We will need to prove this theory next time out.
This was a very rough trip on us mostly due to the extreme heat. We were planning to take Audrey and Emily camping but we just didn’t feel like it. We also had planned to go to Potosi, WI with our camping group and decided not to go. Saving our strength--and money for our upcoming trip—three Samborees, the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and tour of southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico.
The adventure continues . . .
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