Waiting is over.  The hitch is in, the person selling the RV is back in town, we’ve met at the bank to formally complete the transaction, it’s a beautiful spring Saturday and we’re on our way to pick up the RV at last.

We picked up the RV and slowly and carefully drove it the 3 miles of country road to our home.  Success!  Well not quite.  Backing it into the driveway was a completely different challenge.  The issue I had was as the trailer entered our driveway on one side of the road, the front of the truck ended up off the road on the other side.  The middle of the road is the center high point and my driveway and the ditch on the other side of the road both slope down.  This caused the bed of the truck and the front of the trailer to eventually collide.

After countless attempts I finally decided I would not be able to back it in from that direction and so decided to drive around the block (in the country that’s 4 miles) and try backing it in from the other direction (which would be the passenger/blind side).  The kids of course were still excited and wanted to ride with me.  Charity stayed home and waited on me to come back so she could resume her role as the spotter.  After going almost all the way around the block, I got distracted listening to the kids chatter and promptly turned the corner too sharply until hearing a scraping sound that was our new trailer in the ditch!  Ugh!

I couldn’t believe it.  It’s always such a sinking feeling when you do something like this but on the first day before I’ve even gotten it parked in our driveway?!  The scraping sound was the bumper scraping the pavement.  After initially trying to back the trailer out of the ditch without any luck I called Charity.  My brother-in-law (who is staying with us) and Charity came and we assessed the damage:

• Scraped and bent bumper
• Drain pipe cap slightly scuffed
• Trailer resting on the tires, bumper, and spare tire

That’s not too bad really.  My brother-in-law and I ran back to the house to get a tow strap and we called my parents to see if they could bring their Suburban to help pull us out.

In the meantime the guy that lives at the house across the street from where we were stuck came out to find Charity and the boys there with the stuck RV. As quickly as she could Charity informed him that things weren’t as they appeared and her husband had actually done this:-). When I got back he offered his tractor to help pull us out and we readily accepted.  After connecting the tow strap between the RV bumper and his tractor we used my truck on the front and his tractor on the back to back the RV out of the ditch.  SUCCESS!

After carefully driving the rest of the way home we were lined up to try backing the RV in from the other direction.  Fortunately we didn’t have the same issue from this direction however I had to back it in on my blind side which took some work.  About 4 hours after we had picked the trailer up from the guy 3 miles away we finally had it parked next to our house, safe and mostly sound with only very minor damage