Day 2

Yesterday we left Asheville, North Carolina and headed west into the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. We headed into Tennessee and George and Renee parked the Yukon off highway 40 and jumped into the motor home with us and we headed to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, “The Gateway to the Great Smokey Mountains.” A very cute touristy town. It reminded me a lot of Estes Park, Colorado which is the “Gateway to the Rocky Mountains.” We were going to ride up the big gondola to get a better view of the mountains but we decided against it because we had just missed it and it was going to be another 20 minute wait before the next one left. We had taken our time eating lunch and we knew we wanted to see some of the park before heading west. We stopped at the visitors center inside the park and watched a short film about the park and walked around the museum. Sophia and Brett loved it because they had all different kinds of real animals, birds and insects stuffed and on display for our viewing pleasure. After getting all the stuffed creatures we could handle, we began to make our way back towards the highway to get the truck and head to Nashville, Tennessee for dinner and sight seeing.

Driving up and down the mountain passes the trailer was starting sway a bit so we decided to take some time during a gas fill up stop to move some of the heavy things around inside it. Once the weight was distributed a little better, Lance came across a can of lubricant from one of the crates inside the trailer and decided to spray it on the generator in the motor home since he hadn't been able to get it started for the past few days. Not that we needed it for any specific reason, but if you know Lance, you know that if something isn't working properly, he needs to find a way to fix it, no matter what its priority.

This is where the story gets interesting!

I'm driving now, Lance is in the back with the kids getting them something to eat and decides to start up the generator. It powers the microwave and the air conditioner in the back without a problem at all. It stalled out a few times but started back up again each time, no problem. Lance was all excited he had gotten it working and I was fine with it because now they could stay cool in the back without me getting frostbit having to blast the AC from the front seat.

I should have known better when I first started to smell something burning. Lance just said, “yeah, its electrical burning,” and just kind of shrugged assuming something we drove past was the reason. The next thing I know, I see the Yukon barreling up beside me with Renee's body hanging out the window with her arms flailing, screaming, “PULL OVER!!! YOU'RE ON FIRE!!!” No sooner did I see the smoke and flames bursting out the side of the motor home, I pulled over off to the side of the road. Lance had the door open and was ready to jump out with the fire extinguisher before I even came to a halt. And Wouldn't you know it, he pulled the pin and went to spray the fire and NOTHING came out! I was screaming, “GET THE KIDS, OUT OUT OUT!!!” Call it a mother's instinct, I don't know, but all I wanted to do was get the kids out of the car. I could have cared less at that moment if the motor home went up in a ball of flames as long as we were all out of it! And of course all in those split seconds I'm picturing in my head the most frightening of situations. Sophia, who's usually quick to get out of her car seat the moment the car stops, sat strapped into her seat staring at me wide eyed as I'm yelling at her to “get out, get out, NOW” and unbuckling Brett. I grabbed the two kids up in my arms and ran as fast as I could up the hill away from the road, somehow grabbing my phone somewhere in the scurry. I quickly dialed 911, which took a surprisingly long time to connect, probably 15 seconds which felt like eons. I had no idea where we were except that we were in Tennessee on I40 westbound. I could see a McDonald's sign and a Shell gas station sign above the tree line but the exit sign was just far enough away that I couldn't make out the words. The operator informed me that he was just getting another call and he had my location and was sending the fire department on its way.

Meanwhile, a man in a black pick up truck, ready for work in his Lowe's smock, stopped to help but only had a BIG GULP of Hi-C and a shovel. He threw what he had left of his drink into the flame and went to go scoop some dirt from the side of the road to try to smother it. George came running from the Yukon with a gallon of water that he had just purchased at the gas station a few miles back and was able to put out the fire.

By now a state trooper had arrived and also had been carrying a few gallons of water, in a red fuel can of all things. Lance, in hind sight, was upset that I didn't get a picture of him pouring “gas” on the fire!

And here come the fire trucks, and the police cars, and the ambulance, and all the volunteer firemen within the dispatch radius. Because, you know, we are in the “Volunteer State.”

After a lot of what seemed like a bunch of men standing around watching as one guy put the fire hose to the side of the vehicle, me, Renee and the kids climbed down the hill to thank the men from the Gordonsville, Tennessee Fire Department for coming out to our rescue. We were back on the road.

At this point we knew we were not going to be making it to Nashville for dinner. We wanted to find the nearby Lowe's, not only to thank the man who stopped to help and to return the shovel that he left at the side of the road, but to buy a new fire extinguisher. We bought 2.

We went to O'Charlies for dinner where I got the first drink I could see on the menu. Some kind of fruity margarita, and we sat and laughed about what had just happened, thanking God for letting us live to see another day.