Okay, so this is long overdue! Our first major tour with Girtha (our affectionately named girthy motorhome) is in the books! Did it just happen? Hell no! In fact its been over a year that I’ve been sitting on this one. So how did her maiden voyage go? Well, we covered about 1500 miles over 11 days including stops in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island. The goal of this trip besides getting Girtha’s first major trip under our belts was to be able to say that we had visited and experienced some adventure in each state north and east of Pennsylvania. During the trip (as with any motorhome), we added a couple of items to the list of repairs, but every good adventure needs some surprises and a panic attack or two to be complete.

After a summer of troubleshooting, repair, short camping trips, more repairs, and some minor cosmetics, in August of 2022, we were as comfortable as we could be with Girtha hitting the road. I’ve written before about the search for Girtha, our 2014 Thor Hurricane and some of the maintenance issues that came with her (In Search of (R-V)alue, https://fthattreadmill.com/2022/05/27/in-search-of-r-value/). Following our seriously busy summer of 2022, the time had come. A few local camping trips to prove her road-worthiness and confirm our repairs were holding up was all that we needed to pull the trigger.

Planning this maiden voyage proved as adventure in and of itself. We had a goal of hitting each state to the north and east of our home in Pennsylvania, but just driving through them wouldn’t be sufficient. We needed to put boots on the ground and actually DO SOMETHING in each state. The problem was we had limited time, caught between a planned family reunion at the end of August and the start of dance and parkour classes that were scheduled to start right after Labor Day. No worries. Northeast states are small, and having family in Connecticut and New Jersey meant we had already spent significant time in each, so no need to stop there. After some digging on the interwebs, we were able to pull together a list of prospective stops in each of these new states to go with the two family visits planned in New York. Great, we had plans of where to go, but were still terrified of navigating through low overhead clearances and the narrow, winding streets that are so common in the Northeast.

We were still looking at a bit of a challenge with the timeline. Even small states cover large areas, and driving 10 tons of 36 foot-long fun down the road doesn’t happen nearly as quickly or easily as cruising around in the Honda Fit. Thankfully, Girtha had come with a GPS specifically set up for big trucks, those with about the same navigation challenges as Girtha. As a backup plan, we also subscribed to RoadTrippers, an online site offering a low-cost membership for people like us that needed help finding the best route for bigger rigs, but also shows all the stops we might be interested in like popular attractions, camping areas, restaurants, and fueling stations.

As always happens, when the launch day approached, everything went exactly according to plan, right? This plan was to pack first thing in the morning, shower and eat lunch, and leave early-afternoon. That plan should have us arriving in Lake Placid, NY at about 10PM. At least we woke up on time-ish. Clearly, we didn’t expect that packing for a week and a half would make even Girtha start to feel small. Boxes of food, pet supplies, shoes, and one suitcase after another made their way through that door and into just about every cabinet and storage bin. After a few hours and animated discussions about how much do we really need to bring with us followed by appropriate downsizing of luggage, we were finally packed… and it was already mid-afternoon (sigh). No problem; we’ll eat, shower, and get on the road before dinner. We figured there was time to drive most of the Lake Placid trip tonight and we would hit a rest area close to our destination.

But first, it’s time to pull Girtha out on the street. We filled the potable water tank, disconnected the 120V electric from the house, rolled up the lines and packed them into storage bins, and got her in front of the house. But there was a problem. The interior vent fan wasn’t working. And neither were the interior house lights. In fact, nothing that should be working on the house batteries was working. The batteries should have been fully charged since we had been plugged in and the DC charge controller had been recently replaced, but whatever… I’ll just fire up the generator to see if that works. And then the generator wouldn’t even try to crank. Rut ro.

Sweaty, exhausted, and defeated, we figured we’d might as well finally eat a late lunch and shower while we went through ideas in our head of what could possibly be wrong. There is no way in hell we would start our trip in Girtha’s current state; it would effectively be a big box rolling down the road with none of the house amenities like power, water, or a usable bathroom. What could it possibly be? Everything had been working properly for our two recent camping trips. The house batteries were only 3 months old. The DC charge controller was new and had just been installed two days ago, and I had confirmed with a multimeter that the new controller worked properly. A couple of hours later, we had filled our bellies, were clean, and ready to troubleshoot this latest curve ball.

While I dug through circuit breakers and fuses, all centrally located in panels beside the bed, my lovely wife scoured the internet looking for ideas. I checked wires and fuses around the house batteries, the generator, the new DC charge controller, and looked for anything out of place, but came up empty. I joined my wife for more internet searching; still nothing. Back outside to double check everything I had already checked. Suddenly, wifey comes out to show me a video on her phone. Despite all other breakers and fuses related to the house part of the motorhome being located by the bed, Thor decided it would be a great idea to hide a breaker under the engine hood that links the charge controller (located under the bed at the rear of the RV) to the house batteries (located on the passenger side near the middle of the RV). Engineering is job #1.

Yup, that was the culprit. We found that breaker had tripped. My best guess was that something may have inadvertently shorted while installing the charge controller a couple days prior. Click. Now the generator started and everything in the coach is working! Since it was after 8PM, we had a debate whether it was a better idea to get a good night sleep at home or start a long trip after dusk. Since my wife wanted to get started, that’s what we did. By the time we fueled up, it was 9PM, but we soldiered on, figuring we could still get over the New York border and find a rest area or Walmart to sleep for the night. That’s exactly what we did, except the adrenaline and coffee combination got us all the way to Lake George, about half way through New York state. Finally, one part of the trip went smoothly!

The next morning, we were on our way to Lake Placid. Unshowered and somewhat delerious, we parked in my uncle’s driveway and settled into some family conversation. And some showers. Now that the beginning part of the trip was over, the start of our actual vacation was relatively uneventful and we enjoyed a nice couple of days visiting family. Since we had been to Lake Placid several times in the past, outside of a walk through town with a nice sit-down lunch and failed attempt to catch a scenic boat ride (all tickets for the day had been sold out; go figure on a beautiful and warm August Saturday), there were no tourist activities planned. After bidding our adieus, we headed north to Chazy, NY, my Dad’s hometown, to visit some cousins.

Another relaxing family visit was welcomed after the hectic start to our trip. Chazy is an interesting little farm town, very stereotypical of what you’d imagine to see on a postcard from any town in rural America, with corn fields and apple orchards that stretch for miles, and fresh meadow flower scented breeze tinged with the occasional blast of cow manure. Those fields don’t fertilize themselves, ya know. Saying goodbye the next day was bittersweet but we were anxious to dig into the new adventures and the real meat of traveling and visiting new destinations in Girtha!

Coming soon – Part 2!