Those of you who are old enough to have watched the moon landing on a 13 inch black and white TV, used a bong before it was legal and remember ashtrays on airplanes, let us marvel at the technology today! I’m sure its hard for the youngsters to conceive that we used to use paper maps and word of mouth for camping or fishing spots. Hard to imagine people would trade travel info in dark smokey bars back when I had hair
Yes people smoked in bars,just about everywhere,except church from what I was told. I recall sweeping the floor at the local drug store that I worked at back near Pittsburgh as a teen, chasing middle aged women as they chain smoked Virginia Slims,grinding them out on the floor with a high heal. Every isle from baby formula to tampons littered with butts,but I was making $1.60 an hour so smoke away BABY!
ANYWAY, google maps is a great invention and no smoking on airplanes is an even better idea. I think Ricky Nelson catching his plane on fire while freebasing cocaine *which led to his death may have even caused us, uhhhh,I mean people to rethink smoking weed in airplane lavatories too. Personal growth is a great thing, don’t you think?
Where was I? Besides confused?
Google maps,ahh yes
Some months ago we headed into the Arizona mountains for fifth wheel camping
My navigator Karen , said google maps says there’s some great spots down this road…..so off we go, just outside of Prescott Az, or somewhere, I’m not the damn navigator,what do I know.
As we happily and perhaps stupidly meandered down what looked to be a pretty good dirt/rocky road,I silently wondered about the hapless saps that spent their days and nights camping in “resort” type facilities with their pools
Pickle ball,shuffleboard,mini golf,driving range, skeet shooting,jacuzzi,tennis courts, dog park the size of Delaware ,strip joint…oh wait,they don’t usually have strip joints..humm?
Those bozos will never camp like Karen and I!!!
Just a 1/4 mile down the dirt road,we spied a open area to the left that had some RV’s parked there. We slowed to checked it out ! Someone had the grill going
As the smoke waffled our way I expected the sweet aroma of BBQ but instead we were greeted with a metallic chemical smell! Unsure of what exactly they were “cooking” but being a Breaking Bad aficionado I could guess.
I hit the gas and the Mc5er lurched forward past the tweekers and towards yet another dry creek bed, but adding distance between us and the the druggies was paramount!
Google maps, much to our dismay continually showed what appeared to be boondocking camp sites that turned out to be more dry washes,
We forged ahead as I cursed myself for not scouting ahead with just the pickup, I had driven us into a very bad situation as the road continued to narrow with no place to turn around . The road became almost nonexistent in some spots
And in the “good” spots ,it was scary as hell
I tried to keep my whimpering silent as I thought of our impending death by a 100’ tumble down the steep embankment, encased in our Ford F250 tomb!
Karen SNAPPED me out of it with a shout of
YOU P*SSY!!!!!
We got to a spot that did not appear wide enough for a pickup, rock wall on my right and a 120 foot drop on my left! I folded in the passenger mirror and got as close to the wall as I dare, fearful of scratching Karen’s baby! Karen said “ya got another 5/8 of an inch over here if ya need it”. As I crept along glancing in my mirror every 1.223 seconds, I saw an image that made my heart flutter and my skivies fill with dodo. THE ROAD WAS GIVING WAY UNDER THE Mc5er TIRES!!!!!!!!!
My minds eye saw this over and over
Somehow my sphincter trying to clench caused my right foot to spasm and mash down on the accelerator! My eyes locked on the mirror,willing the tires that floated in air to stay straight, but to my horror they every so slowly were starting to tilt toward the bottom of the rocky gorge. In a millisecond my foot mashed harder on the gas, although it was already floored,I swear I felt the floorboard compress further. Much to the chagrin of our heirs, the Ford reacted to my minds pleas of “HOLY SH*T GO!!!!!!” I breathed a sigh of relief as the tires found dirt, leaving the cave in behind us!I cleared the sweat that burned my eyes, grateful to be alive.
Just then Karen looked up from her book and asked,”did you fart”?
We drove for what seemed like miles and miles across the terrifying moonscape of death in search of a turn around to no avail. As I mentally calculated the cost of a cargo helicopter to extract the Mc5er and F250 from this highway to hell…….
What should appear? A wide spot in the road!!!!! Although it didn’t appear to be wide enough to turn around in,it was wide enough to drop the Mc5er and still allow a PU to pass, not that we had seen any other vehicles in what was feeling like a lifetime on this crap road
Karen and I expertly dropped the fifth wheel in record time,eager to forge ahead, hopeful for salvation from this parkway toward purgatory.
3 hairpin curves and 250 yards later our hearts sank as the road turned into a footpath as the road had completely given way
Let’s see…….can’t go forward ,Check
Can’t go backwards,Check
We’re fu*ked, Check
Karen cuffed me upside the head and firmly admonished me “snap out of it cowboy, we got one choice….well two choices ,one choice being DYING!!!!!! Which isn’t really a preferred choice OR go back the way we came”
I backed the pick up the 250 yards back to the Mc5er in just under 3 1/2 hours, and we were a bit disappointed that no one had stolen it. That would have certainly simplified things.
After hooking back up to Mc5er we milled about the “wide spot” trying to envision how this turn around job was gonna work.
As I tried to channel my internal “Will Hunting“ and apply it to the current algebraic skull cramp, I quickly decided that I didn’t posses the necessary level of quality grey matter. Unfortunately, the grey matter I’m blessed with is only good for its silly comedic ability and as a place to store a lifetime of concussions.
In an effort to keep with the mentality I was born with, I just said “fu*k it, it’ll work or it won’t but we won’t know till we start”
Karen bravely scampered back and forth behind the Mc5er trying to guide me. Karen knows that every inch matters….especially in this situation, we also have our own set of hand signals that Karen invented for backing up the trailer and I’m not really clear on the meaning on all of them but I know this one means STOP!!!!!!!
Our plan was to back the first set of trailer tires up to the edge until little baby avalanches of dirt started to cascade down the gorge then pull forwards 3 inches. Of course the challenge here was to not create adult avalanches that thunder down the ravine dragging me, the Mc5er, the truck and the yeti full of beer to our death.I pock marked the shear wall so many times with the front bumper that it resembled my teenage face, but it did appeared we were making some headway…Time drug on and it certainly felt like it took the same amount of time it took to talk Kelly Such out of her tube top in 9th grade*
But we were finally POINTING THE RIGHT WAY!!!
Our merriment was brief as the realization hit that the original cave in lay ahead like a meeting with the IRS , parent teacher night or your 6 year old great nephew’s Christmas pageant.All of the aforementioned examples ,though uncomfortable are not immediately life threatening like the Evil Knievl jump that lay ahead.
The drive back was made even more unnerving by the fact that I was on the rock wall side now and could only try and scrub the mirror on the wall in an attempt to put distance between the precipice and our tires. Karen’s occasional commentary of “holy sh*t holy sh*t” although understandable was not entirely helpful, but then Karen cried out “is that a truck”! Ahead several hairpin turns a dust cloud and perhaps a truck was coming our way!!!
Otis and Etta awoke from their nap and eyeballed the welcome apparition
At 75 yards out the driver found a spot to turn around and signaled me to follow him out! How cool is that? He easily made it across the cave in a few minutes later, and Karen and the twins walked across just in case.
My plan was to gun it, admittedly not much of a plan but given the circumstances perhaps the best. I stared down the gantlet
Like that 1970’s hero
I gunned the engine hoping to jump off the line
With the accelerator thru the firewall…..I lurched forward
At 7 mph hour my body wasn’t thrust back into my seat as I had hoped,so I rocked back and forth like a child trying to get a swing going. This seemed to have about as much of a positive effect as a speech from the Oval Office, but somehow at a max speed of 12 mph we drifted across the abyss to safety!
In a few miles our good Samaritan’s pulled off into the RV meth encampment we observed coming in a lifetime ago. A few more ratty RV’s had set up in our absence with children running about giving me the finger…how cute…..and a impromptu concert…….. what?
For safety sake I told Karen to stay in the truck and enjoy the music and dancing while I went and thanked the pick up truck driver
As I approached he smiled broadly
Being deaf as a post I have to stare at peoples mouths to try and lip read if you will…..this was not a pleasant experience
I thanked him with a $20 and wish him a great day, as I scurried my middle class ass back to the safety of Karen and the truck I heard him beckon “ come on Kenny lets go to Walmart and get some sterno”!
Once safely on the blacktop, where our only worry was a flat tire or maybe fatal crash, we still felt better about our chances than the area we just left.
As I quietly hummed that catchy banjo tune, Karen pecked away at Google in search of the nearest RV RESORT before I could even suggest it! As we drove I marveled aloud at how we managed to get turned around, Karen giggled slightly then admitted “ I backed you up until the first tire was airborne and the last tire made little avalanche’s , I didn’t tell you cause I knew you’d just snivel about the possibility of dying and all”
* further investigation of Ricky Nelsons plan crash refuted initial claims of a crack pipe induced fire
* I never got close to talking Kelly Such’s tube top off but like the Ricky Nelson thing it made for better prose
On a more serious note, those of you who RV or even truck camp, be careful of nature and your fellow man, it can be dangerous out there.
Round the bend 