Donna and I rode the Spyder into town on Monday. We parked by the Department of Public Safety across from Watkins Glen State Park. Everyone told us we had to hike the Gorge Trail there.

The Gorge at Watkins Glen State Park was created through erosion of the mostly soft shale stone. There are some areas of harder limestone and sandstone, but the geology is mostly shale. Glen Creek cut the shale and formed the 400-foot deep gorge. The gorge is narrow and the trail takes you along the creek. This is the famous Gorge Trail. We hiked it from bottom to top and back – the bottom entrance is right in the village while the top entrance is in a forested area. You can hike it either direction. There are more than 800 steps made up of stone stairways on the trail.

We came back on another trail – the Indian Trail along the north rim. Then we crossed over to the south rim on a pedestrian suspension bridge and went down Couch’s Staircase to take us back to the lower entrance. Water seeps through the shale at many areas. The trail is wet with standing water along the way. Good shoes are a must and plan to get spray in a couple of places.

We had hiked for about an hour and a half. There are other trails and you can certainly walk a lot longer, but we had enough. I knew my legs would feel all of the stair climbing.

Donna took the kayak out for one more run before we started packing the trailer in the afternoon. On Sunday, she had made beans and greens with the beet greens she bought at the farmers’ market and crabcakes with the lump blue crab meat she bought in Abbeville, Louisiana. On Monday night, she served the leftover crabcakes on a toasted ciabatta roll with tartar sauce.

That was the good time. We pulled out of Watkins Glen around 10:45am Tuesday morning.

We weren’t in much of a hurry. We only planned to go as far as Cobleskill and spend the night at the Elks Lodge there. Coming out of Watkins Glen on highway 79, we immediately pulled up a long, steep grade to the village of Burdett. Our coolant temperature ran up to 200 degrees on the climb. It’s not unusual to see temperatures of 195-200 on a hard climb. What was unusual was how long it took to cool back to a more normal operating temperature.

Soon I found the temperature climbing alarmingly on some of the grades. The Finger Lakes region is very hilly. It got progressively worse as we went. FInally, on one grade, I had to pull onto the shoulder and stop to let the engine cool. I checked the coolant level and radiator but didn’t see anything out of sorts.

I began to think maybe we had a stuck thermostat that was restricting the flow of coolant. We limped our way up the grades moving slowly on the shoulder of the highway to avoid overheating.

We were in the rural southern tier of New York. I managed to find a truck repair shop off the beaten path. I was concerned about turning down the street the GPS showed as the location – it was a narrow farm road. I called the shop on the phone and they told me I was on the right street and I could get turned around at their place.

It turned out be a small shop where the proprietor mostly worked on farm equipment. After checking things over, he told me my radiator fan was the problem. After shutting the engine off, the fan didn’t run when I restarted the engine. He crawled underneath and gave the fan blades a push. The fan started running, but I was pretty sure it was running too slowly. He pinched off the bypass line to see if fluid was bypassing the motor – it wasn’t.

The fan is turned by a hydraulic motor. A hydraulic pump on the engine forces fluid through the turbine of the hydraulic motor, spinning the fan blades. He thought the problem was either the pump or the motor. I didn’t think it was the pump. The pump provides hydraulic pressure for three lines –  the fan motor, the power steering and the ABS brakes. I didn’t have any trouble with the steering or brakes, only the fan.

Each of the three systems supplied by the hydraulic pump have a filter in the line. It’s possible the filter for the fan motor line is plugged or I have a bad fan motor.

After he got the fan turning, he thought we’d be okay to go. But if I shut off the engine I would probably have to go underneath and prod the fan to get it going again. We got back on the road.

We went east on Highway 206 through the village of Greene, New York. Then we climbed again and immediately overheated. The fan was turning too slowly. I limped along on the narrow shoulder – it wasn’t wide enough for the coach and there wasn’t any place where we could safely stop. Eventually we saw a sign for a roadside parking area. It turned out to be on the north side of the highway and was little more than a long turnout. It was 4pm by then.

We decided to sit tight and spend the night. A county Sheriff’s Deputy stopped next to us after a while. Donna talked to him and he said it was fine for us to stay overnight. This morning, we weighed our options. I started the engine and checked the fan – no go. It wasn’t turning and I had no reason to believe it would be any better than yesterday. We decided it was too dangerous to carry on.

We’re now waiting for Coach-Net to arrange a tow of our rig and trailer to Binghamton where there’s a truck repair shop. Yesterday was the bad time.