Let there be light

Unadilla, Ga., October 13, 2013—I’ve written about electrical woes before. They seem to be the bane of RVers, at least to us.

Last time we took a trip (a month ago, to south Florida), we had no electricity for one evening. At first we thought the problem lay with the hookup at the state park where we were staying. The park ranger checked everything out, however, and informed us that unfortunately, the cause of the problem was in our motorhome. We had no power all night. The next morning Jim, the Sherlock Holmes of electrical systems, finally found the cause of the outage: a ground-fault breaker. A simple fix; he just had to reset the breaker and we were back in the power business.

Last night, all was good. Everything was working well. Then, all of us sudden, around midnight, while Jim was watching TV, the power went off.

In a motorhome, you aren’t quite in the dark if the power goes off, as long as you have fully charged house batteries, which we do, thanks to the solar panels Jim installed. Nevertheless, we had to figure out what was causing the outage.

It was late, so we slept on the problem. In the morning, Jim tested the GFI and discovered that it was not functioning properly. In all likelihood that was the source of the problem. Getting a new GFI was a challenge, though. Unadilla is slightly more than a wide spot in the road. We asked “Garmina” (our GPS) the location of the nearest hardware store. 

Okay...not too bad. Unfortunately, the hardware store was also located in a very small town, and it was not open on Sunday. We asked Garmina again for suggestions. This time we opted to travel farther and opted to go to a Lowe’s, in Americus, Ga., another 20 miles away.

Americus is a quaint town, home to Habitat for Humanity. I think we actually went through this town last year when we visited Andersonville, the Civil War prison site.

After buying the GFI and driving around the town a bit, we queried my smart phone for a Mexican restaurant for lunch. We found one, El Jalapeño. Nestled in a neighborhood nowhere near any other commercial establishments, this restaurant drew a huge after-church crowd. And no wonder. The food was cheap and terrific!

Back to the power problem. It is apparently solved (cross fingers), thanks to Jim. He changed the GFI, and now we seem to be back in business. We are hoping for no new surprises for the rest of our trip—as well as for future trips as well.

We didn’t get to “tourist” much today. Tomorrow we will find out what there is to do around here. Perhaps tour Macon? Who knows. The Georgia countryside is beautiful, and it is nice just being out of the house.

Until next time,

Your Reluctant RoVer,

Linda