Bertha's Journey Home

On Saturday, Scott and I went to prep Bertha for the journey home. Scott attacked the locked-up stabilizers with excellent success. Three went up with a little BP Blaster and elbow grease, while only one fell off completely! Next, Scott went after the front steps, which were cockeyed and frozen in place. This took a little longer to fix than expected, but he broke the steps free of their rusty bonds and managed to store them as designed for the ride home.

While Scott worked under the camper, I detached the rock guard that was hanging on by a single screw. Once detached, I bubble wrapped Bertha's front end to protect those expensive curved windows while cruising down the highway. Next, I zip-tied the awning arms as a protective measure and hooked up our temporary tow lights. Although advertised as 30' long, the tow light wires only stretched about 20 feet (Bertha is 23 feet), so we purchased extra wire at the local auto parts store, spliced some wires, and put some electrical tape to the test.

Before hitching up, Scott jacked up the camper to test the wheels. Most rotated easily, but the front tire on the port side took some convincing. Scott noticed that the brake lines had been cut at that wheel, which gave us both pause, but we've towed far heavier machinery without brakes, so we didn't let it slow us down. Scott hitched Bertha up and drove her about 30 feet while I listened for an problematic sounds. All looked and sounded fine, so we drove Bertha to my in-laws house to lay over for the night. We stopped three times over the course of the mere hour drive to make sure the two-year old bias ply tires were holding up. They did crack a little during the drive but held up fine.

On Sunday, after giving the in-laws a tour, we checked the tires again, then hitched Bertha up for the 3.5 hour drive home. Our girl towed like a dream, the temporary tow lights did their job without fail, and not even the rain could dampen our spirits. Scott towed Bertha with Emmy Lou - our 2000 Ford F350 7.0 Powerstroke Diesel (a classic in her own right), and managed 13.5 miles to the gallon. That's only 2.5 less than Emmy Lou usually gets on that drive, so we were very pleased. I followed along in the Subaru to keep an eye out for any issues and thankfully saw none.

We got Bertha settled in beside the workshop around 12:30pm and started ripping out carpet after lunch so we could assess the subfloor. We found two significant areas of rot and lots of water damage, so installing a whole new subfloor may be in our future. We'll do more detective work this weekend to determine how bad the subfloor is damaged.

We did, however, make progress in profiling the refrigerator vandal and even located the weapon used in the crime. I wonder if the little tyke got away with it or suffered harsh consequences:)

Best quote of the day was from Scott who said, "Baby, you get new axles and tires, and I'll tow Bertha anywhere you want to go." Yep, our adventures in aluminum have officially begun!