Washington State to Atlanta by 1940 Plymouth

Tom and Peter hill

double click on the pictures below for a larger view

 

Copyright
Last revised: November 04, 2001

When we were visiting my folks in La Conner, Washington, we saw a 1941 Plymouth sedan for sale at a small lot in Sedro Wooley, and it gave me a new bug (my first car was a '41 Plymouth coupe). I tried to buy it but it had sold two hours before. The next day we were to fly home to Atlanta, so I asked my dad to follow up on it, just in case the buyer changed his mind. Turned out the dealer said he had another one, but in better shape. My dad paged me to say the car was nice, so he bought it, but doing the paperwork he realized it is a 1940, not a '41 is that okay? That was fine with me, so I started to learn about the differences (minor) between them.

Two months later Peter (12 years old) and I flew out to drive it home. We spent four days checking it out (the restored speedometer arrived while I was underneath it) and doing routine maintenance (it had seen fairly regular use), then we headed east, intending to stick to surface roads as much as possible. I had been told that 50mph would be an appropriate cruising speed and it was fast enough for me (at least until I rebuild the steering box and find an overdrive transmission!)

Peter isn't old enough to drive yet, so he took some notes as we went along. Here is his story:

Stevens Pass is steep, chilly, and has lots of trees and mountains surrounding it. Most of the time we were in third gear, but near the top we had to go into first. We smelled gasoline most of the time but couldn't find any leaks. The car is running great, and Dad is getting used to the steering. Also, the hesitation that was so irritating in La Conner has disappeared.

Leavenworth is an interesting town, sort of like Helen, Georgia (it has an alpine theme). We had lunch there.

After leaving Wenatchee, we took a couple of interesting pictures of the east Washington "desert", including some of a very long bridge over the Snake river.

Just past Pomeroy, Washington the speedo died (at milepost 411 on US12), 393 miles after we installed it. Later, we determined it was the cable, Dad said it was probably metal fatigue.

We took some pictures in Lewiston, Idaho, with the "Welcome to Idaho" sign in the background. Then we got as far as Oriphino, where we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant and started to look for a place to stay. The lady at a campground in Kamiah, Idaho (15 miles or so ahead) told us she would be closed when we got there but we could camp in the town park and get showers at the campground in the morning. Showers turned out to be not what we were interested in in the morning, so we got up and kept going east.

We had breakfast at a nice mountain restaurant in Lowell, Idaho, in the Nez Perce National Forest. Then we took a picture at Lolo Pass (5235 feet).

We got to Deer Lodge and went to the Prison Museum (where we had stopped on the way to the Olympia Rally). We had lunch at an A&W, but skipped the curb service, and Dad called and got a reservation for a cabin at Yellowstone. Then back on the road, and a few miles before Ennis, Montana we see a man waiting to cross the highway in an old brown Plymouth, so we honk and wave, and he honks and waves back. A couple of minutes later, we decide to turn around and go back to talk to him. He suggests we pull over in Ennis, which we do, and that's how we met Jim, of Ennis, Montana. His car is a 1939 P-9 4-door, and Dad takes a few pictures of us and the cars. He didn't know about the Plymouth Owners Club, so Dad showed him the directory and gave him the numbers, etc. and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. Then, we headed for Yellowstone again.

We stopped at the Grizzly Bar and Grill on the Madison River just before Earthquake Lake, and called Mom to check in, and we took a picture like the one we took 3 years ago, but with a different car.

We got to Yellowstone at about 11:00PM, and the ranger told us to watch out for Bison on the road. We did watch out, but we almost hit one anyway. It was trotting down the road in the other lane, and the Plymouth lights didn't help enough. Dad slammed on the brakes and we went past it at about 30 mph, missing it by about 6 feet!

We got to Old Faithful Lodge at 11:55, with 5 minutes to spare! We stayed in our cabin and hung around a while in the morning. We had missed Old Faithful erupting when we were there before, so we waited about an hour to see it By the time it blew, we were quite cold. As we headed south to the Tetons we saw a coyote and a moose.

Just east of Moran Junction we stopped at the Hatchett Inn, which is where Dad, Rodney and Jim Kelly saw the bicyclist who was riding from Boston to San Francisco, on their trip to the Norton rally in Kimberly, B.C. in 1989. Dad took a picture of the car and me in front of the restaurant, and the guy working inside came out and took a picture of us together.

As we went east over Togwatee Pass (9658 feet), the car was doing great, never overheating, and we did it in top gear.

We drove until we got to Casper, and then we camped at a KOA and went to sleep. In the morning, we replaced the smelly fuel pump and disconnected the heater.

At about 4;00PM we took a side road to see historic Fort Laramie. We learned about its history and we got some souvenirs, and it was real hot (about 90). And still it smelled like gasoline.

In Nebraska, we passed 7 trains which all had at least 110 cars and 2 engines, and all of the cars were full of coal. In Oshkosh, Nebraska we saw another 1940 Plymouth for sale! So we turned around and went back to look. It was in a used car lot which was closed, and it was in very bad condition, but it was neat to see it. Dad took some pictures of it of course.

That night we camped in Ogallala and it was windy! In the morning, we saw that the oil gauge was acting up, so we stopped at a gas station to investigate. There was oil everywhere! We start the car to look at it while it's running and find that it is the oil line to the oil gauge. We find that we have nothing to fix it with (none of the spare brass fittings we have will fit), so we start thinking of places to get parts. Like a miracle, we see there is a John Deere place down the road! So we walk there, and we get everything fixed and replace the 2 quarts of oil we had lost and we start on the road again.

Late that day we got to Kansas City, and went through it on the interstate. That was the scariest thing to Dad. On I-70 a car with about 4 teenagers in it flicked us off because we were going so slow and they almost rear-ended us. A few miles before that, Dad saw a funny sight, a pickup truck was pulled over with a flat tire, and a bunch of Mexican laborers were holding it up with a ladder while another one was changing the wheel!

It was late, so we didn't get much past Kansas City that night. We had dinner at a truck stop across from our motel. It was the worst place we stopped on the trip. Dad said "the coffee reminds me of the instant coffee in Vietnam." It probably had been cooking all day, and smelled burnt.

In the morning Dad tried to clean the steering wheel. The paint on the wheel was sticky, and had been bugging him the whole time. When the paint just kept coming off on the wet rag, he decided to just cover it with electrical tape.

Missouri was nice, and we drove through the country That afternoon we found a Sinclair gas station 10 miles west of Linn with a cafe and a workshop with no cars on the lift. We got out and asked the manager (who was old but very nice) if we could get the oil changed and the chassis lubed. He said it had been a lot of years since he'd had one of those on the lift, and that he'd do it right now, so we put it on the lift and he lubed it and checked the transmission and differential, and changed the oil for us and only charged us $14.00! Dad said that wasn't enough, and the man said "no use trying to get rich on one customer." Dad was really impressed by him. We had lunch at Judy's Place in Linn, where the people were really nice and the lunch was good.

That night we got to a campground in Sikeston, Missouri and the funny thing was that the man was very nice, but had about 20 empty Budweiser cans in the bed of his truck and about 20 cigarette stubs in his ashtray in the lobby. Dad asked him if there was a good restaurant nearby and he directed us to Lambert's. We got there just before closing time and there were all kinds of neat stuff like old license plates and dentist chairs. We got seated and ordered and when they got our drinks, the cups held about a half a gallon of liquid! The had waiters come around with different foods asking you if you wanted any, and the food they served you was all homemade and they gave you sooo much!

The last day was pretty uneventful. We did get passed by a truck hauling a double-wide trailer in Alabama, and we saw three nice-looking wrecking yards in Alabama, that looked like they might have parts for 1940 Plymouths.

 I want to thank my Dad for all he did himself (getting the car for me, getting the generator rebuilt and installing it and a new battery, a new voltage regulator and a spare water pump, and all that work with the speedo!) and that he got others to do (Gary and Jason figuring-out the obscure starter problem, and rebuilding the carb). Also, my Mom, for letting us keep the Plymouth in her garage (and her Explorer outside!) for two months! 

We made it home after seven days on the road, and the only trouble we had was the broken oil pressure gauge flexible line. We drove about 3050 miles (about 845 on interstates), used about 145 gallons of gas and added 5 quarts of oil (not counting the 2 quarts in Ogallala). We didn't need either of the spare wheels we had with us, the very old-looking 16" or the 15" we bought in La Conner. I know we were very lucky to have such an uneventful trip, and it sure did go quickly, even though we just went 45-to-50mph all the way. Now that I've had a chance to do some more adjusting and the car is sweeter through the gears, we're looking forward to driving it around here and to some Plymouth rallies!

 

 

©Tom & Peter Hill 2001