Long Beach, WA

Highway 101 provides beautiful scenery throughout its route along the Oregon coast but it also a slow going highway. Anticipating this we departed Bullard's Beach shortly after 8:00 a.m. As it turned out the route was especially slow with backups in Florence, Newport, Lincoln City, Tillamook, and Seaside. We enjoyed the scenery though and stopped for a beachside lunch and a DQ in the afternoon. It is a beautiful road to travel.

We finally arrived at the Sand Castle RV Park in Long Beach around 6:00 p.m. Shortly thereafter I screwed up!

I take pride in being a good motorhome driver and being reasonably intelligent. So, we have a rule that I do not back the See Ya up without Sue being outside to watch and direct. So, when the campground owner asked me to back out onto the road adjacent to the park in order to move to our site – no problem.

Sue moved the car to the side and jumped on board the See Ya, unaware of exactly what we were doing, as I began to back onto the road. As I was backing up I said, “You probably should be out there.” EXACTLY!

I then proceeded to back the See Ya’s passenger side rear tire into a deep ditch on the other side of the road. The outside tire was off the ground and the rear of the coach was resting peacefully on the neighbor’s lawn. (Sadly or happily we failed to take a picture.) The campground owner and a couple residents came over to assess the situation as I searched for my roadside assistance card.

After some discussion and before calling for help we decided that I would straighten out the front wheels and slowly pull forward in the hope of dislodging the coach. In what must rank as a minor miracle the See Ya, using the remaining drive wheels, pulled out of the ditch and emerged without discernible damage. Despite the happy final outcome, the incident ranks as one of the top bonehead moves of my fulltiming career!

Lesson learned! ….. again!

We are booked here for six nights.

Jul 6, 2012

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