Moving along east... with just a few bumps in the road...

.... both literal and figurative bumps in the road...

While the rig was at National Indoor RV Center (NIRVC), it developed a problem associated with the engine batteries and/or gauges... at some times, some of the gauges just stopped working. It first occurred when they were doing testing on the auto gen start module - the generator stopped running before they expected it to, and they wondered if it was out of fuel - when they checked the fuel gauge, nothing was showing -- for fuel, DEF, battery charge, and RPMs. In doing debugging, they found that a fuse had blown and thought that was it, and it did correct the problem initially, but... the problem continued to happen, seemingly randomly. They found that it could be corrected just by disconnecting and re-connecting the engine batteries (which is a switch in the battery compartment). It wasn't happening all the time, so it wasn't possible to get it debugged while we were there.

Well, it has been happening very consistently since we left there Wednesday morning - every time we turn it off, we have to disconnect / reconnect the engine batteries to get the gauges working. And... honestly, we could "live" without the gauges, but when it is having this problem, it has a wonderfully annoying buzzer that sounds continuously. We don't think we could drive with that buzzer... well... not and maintain the small amount of sanity that we have left!

After our lunch stop... doing the battery disconnect/reconnect didn't fix the problem... so we decided that we needed to check the fuses and see if the fuse that had been replaced had blown again....

Carl checking the fuses... he may be praying too... I was!

Schematic / labels for one set of fuses

... and for the other set of fuses

While Carl was looking at the fuses and pulling ones that appeared likely, I called back to NIRVC to ask which fuse they had replaced. We needed to wait for the technician to get back from lunch, and in the meantime, Carl decided to try to start it up again, and, it started. Even though he did not find any fuses that needed to be replaced, maybe removing and re-seating them corrected the problem, at least temporarily.

The service advisor from NIRVC called back and said that the fuse was the "instrument cluster" fuse in the bottom set... I didn't have my picture to look at to say, "there isn't one with that label", but we figure it is either "INSTR IGN POWER" or "INSTR BATT POWER".

We decided to call our private RV on-call technician (otherwise known as my brother Jimmy) to get his opinion of whether we should try to find a Freightliner dealer to try to help us with this problem that has become persistent instead of transient... his recommendation was to turn off the rig as few times as possible and to hope that the various techniques we've been using will continue to allow us to start it and drive it - and get to the farm where we can do additional debugging and research - so that's the current plan.

The other "bumps in the road" are literal ones -- wow! coming into Tennessee in Memphis, well, let's say that the gas tax funds are *not* going to fix the roads around there!

A view of some of the other vehicles on the road with us... almost all trucks except right in metropolitan areas. Excuse the bugs on the windshield - even though I washed the windshield when we stopped for fuel, we are collecting a large number of bugs. Carl thinks it is a very large number considering how early in the season it is... I said that it is because there are so few vehicles on the road that fewer bugs are getting hit by other people, and therefore there are more bugs around for us to hit!

Coming up to the Mississippi at Memphis - still quite flooded.

Entering Tennessee

Interesting building right across the river.

Turns out it is a Bass Pro Shops retail store with the Ducks Unlimited Waterfowl Heritage Center inside: https://www.ducks.org/conservation/national/welcome-to-the-du-waterfowling-heritage-center
Sounds interesting - but I am sure it would have been closed... and we didn't stop...