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I did something similar our in, I think, Utah at a place to dig fossils. You drive out a washboard road for about thirty miles to a ''shale bed'' where you pay a guy thirty bucks to get down on your hands and knees and dig out ''troglidites''. it is a pre historic bug, some the size of three fingers, that looks kinda like a horse shoe crab thingie. It is burried in the shale between the layers of shale and you have to ''page'' them out of the shale. It is loads of fun and it will kill you knees and toes and your back and your hands and fingers and this was the fun part. Anyhow. We got there in the late afternoon about the time the attendant was leaving. He suggested we rough camp there in the ''parking lot'' and he would be back in the morning. Mind you, it is thirty miles on a dirt washboard road each way. We stayed the nite. He further suggested that we would get a beatiful view it we simply pulled up on top of a little hill and camped there. We said ok and he left. Evening was coming and I walked up on the little hill for a look around. WONDERFUL VIEW. You could see for miles. I put Willa behind the wheel and I gave hand signals. The thing that I did not notice was the drainage ditch that we had to cross to get up on the little hill. Willa was driving ,,,,, going slow,,, in low gear,,,, I was watching and the front wheels crossed the ditch just fine. Remember this is very hard ground. We proceeded with the front of the coach heading up hill and the back tandoms hit the little ditch, sank down to the bottom and our trailer hitch, with the pick up unhitched, thank God.... Buried its self into about eighteen inches of shale rock. I said shux....... Willa put the coach in neuteral and we look at our situation. I said shux again.
The coach was sitting at about a fifteen degree angle up hill with the back wheels in a ditch and the trailer hitch completely out of sight down in the shale. I used a stronger word than shux. Willa suggested we would have to sleep in the pick up and call a wrecker in the morning. WE HAD NO CELL SERVICE.
Fortunately we have leveling jacks on the coach. Using a series of ''Jack up'', ''Wedge up'', ''Jack down'', ''Wedge up'', ''Jack up''.(you get the idea) After about an hour and much ''SHUXES'' i got the hitch out of the shale and yanked it out of the receiver box. I put Willa back in the coach and I ''signaled'' and we slowly crept the coach back down on level ground. I replaced the hitch and we spent the nite listening to coyotes sing song and watched a zillion stars twinkle at us. We listened to ground creatures scamper about and felt the desert frost creep in. We fixed supper and really enjoyed the adventure. If we had not had the leveling jacks on the coach I suspect it would still be there on the side of that ''little hill'' that would have made such a beautiful camp sight.s
It is truly amazing what you can do when you are trapped thirty miles from nothing on a shale parking lot down a dirt road that is full of ''washboards''......
We just love camping and we found a bunch of ''bugs'' the next day. Willa found one about two inches wide and about three and a half inches long and in perfect condition. the attendant said it was worth about two hundred dollars and it was the biggest one he had seen in years. We still got it somewhere around the house. I think the place was called ''YOU DIG FOSELS'' just inside the Utah line going east.
Ps. There is no such thing as ''Normally Dumb''. You can be ''Exceptionally Dumb'', ''Really Dumb'', ''Pretty Dumb'',''Fairly Dumb'', and ''Awful Dumb'' but you cant be ''Normally Dumb'' because no one is ''Normal''. Just a thought.....
God bless our troops and keep them safe ....
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