Big Fun in Littleton

When last we left you we were planning one night at the Littleton Elks Lodge and a meet up with our Magnum inverter guy. One night is all we hoped to be here because once our inverter was repaired we would be on our way to Burlington, Vermont. We have really been looking forward to Burlington but as we changed our route over and over, it seemed to fall further down our itinerary.

We got ourselves parked at the Littleton Elks Lodge where we had 50 amps. We had no access to water or sewer, but we came prepared with empty holding tanks and plenty of water. Once we were plugged in, we didn't have to worry about our inverter or generator and this gave us a bit of breathing room to work on fixes

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The YUGE lot behind the elks in Littleton, NH.

First things first, our generator. When we started it up while in the Cummins parking lot in Concord, we realized we had no power coming into the rig. We had no idea why but Steven set off on an adventure of a process of elimination to try and figure it out.

When we arrived at the "Koach Kare " place in Concord, the high-energy guy checking us in asked Steven to go out and get information off the generator, which I guess they needed in order to service it and he was too lazy to get the info himself. So, when Steven went out there, he couldn't see any info and so dusted off the top of the genny. In doing so, he flipped the On/Off switch to "Off". Who knew that switch even existed? We certainly didn't, but we do now! Once he flipped it back to "On", we had full power from our genny. YAY! One problem solved, one to go!

That pesky on/off switch was inadvertently turned off in mid dust-swipe.

Not long after we arrived at the Littleton Elks Lodge, the Magnum guy, John, arrived and went right to work. We had already talked with the folks at Magnum who suspected that the fans in our inverter had stopped working. John thought it might be a circuit board, but after he and Steven removed the inverter and conducted a couple of tests, it was indeed the fans that had failed. Our inverter has two fans, and John only had one, but it was enough to get us up and running again. John mailed us the second fan which Steven can change out himself at a later date. That was good news for both our inverter and our wallet. $75 later, we were good to go!

 
Steven stands watch while John, our Magnum guy, does all the work.

But even with our problems solved and Burlington just a couple of hours away, we just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to pack up and go. Turns out, we were quite comfortable at the Littleton Elks Lodge and both agreed it would be nice to stay another day and explore. We were as close as we were going to get to Mt. Washington so, on the second day, we drove the famous Auto Road to the top.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day with just a few puffy clouds thrown in for interest. We paid our steep (pun intended!) entrance fee of $38 for Toadie, driver and passenger and off we went up, up, up. The average incline of the road is a steep 12 percent and over 7.5 miles we climbed 4,600 feet. The views in all directions were stunning, but the main focus was on the road and other vehicles which seemed to graze by in the opposite direction. No one was going fast, but the road was quite narrow in places. As we approached the top of the mountain we were suddenly engulfed in clouds so thick we had trouble seeing the observation deck. We did see that there was a line to get to the official summit, where folks were taking selfies. We didn't bother.

 
A foggy mountaintop with a big line for the premium selfie spot.

It looks like there was no one around judging by this shot but there were hundreds of tourists milling around.

The sun poked out for a little while to reveal the beautiful layered surrounding mountains.

The trip down was hell on Toadie's brakes, so we pulled over several times to let them cool off. We already burned up her brakes in the Sierra Nevada a couple of years ago and had to replace them, so we were careful not to repeat that episode.

Back at the Elks that evening we still weren't feeling ready to travel so we signed on for another day. This turned out to be fortuitous, as we get to tour around the cute little downtown area of Littleton.

 

 

 
Littleton was such a fun town! We saw the world’s longest candy counter and pianos on the streets!

We also got to meet up with the writer of "The Lady is a Tramp", a blog I absolutely love. Tammy is a fellow fulltimer and Seattlite, and she just happened to be parked a few miles away. We connected and plans were hatched for a night on the town.

What fun we had! Cocktails, dinner, lots of laughs! And y'all, at The Beal House I had some of the best poutine I've ever eaten. Seriously, you know how I love poutine. I'm still thinking about it, so you know it had to be delicious! Anyway, we're circling around places Tammy will be staying in the coming weeks, so we hope to see her again soon in the Boston area!

 
We had a blast with Tammy!

We finally packed up and headed for Burlington but instead of a full week in the area we now only had four days. We planned to make the most of it and I warned Steven, get ready to be a tourist!

And then, on our way, another warning light!! Another call to Cummins reassured us it was safe to travel, and they gave us the name of a shop we should contact just south of Burlington. We did, and then drove straight to New England Kenworth.

 
The light came on and the manuals came out to try to identify that upside down bulb with the exclamation point!

We were lucky to find this huge parking lot to pull into while we stared at our manuals.

OMG, back in the shop again! Not how we imagined our Friday evening.

One of the engineers hooked up a computer to Scoopy's engine and found that she had indeed generated a code., something called an “engine speed sensor.” This was Friday afternoon and it was too late to start work on Scoopy so we made plans to return Tuesday morning for the fix. They had the part in stock so hopefully by the afternoon, we'd be on our merry way.

LOL. Y'all know that didn't happen, right?