IT’S FREE!!!

$325.00 later the sunken beast is free! Wait, let me back up a bit… you’re reading that $325.00 and saying hey, what about roadside assistance!! You’re getting ahead of the story.

This is how the RV has looked for the past 4 weeks when the major thaw occurred. The ground is near level on our spot, maybe a list to the right but as you can see we are leaning a great deal to the passenger rear.

Ahhhhh the crux of the matter… buried the depth of the tire sidewall and almost sitting on the rear passenger hydraulic jack. This model sits so low as it is, damn you Monaco!

The front had to sink as well, really?

I managed to get a board as far under both jacks as possible. The rear passenger side jack punched through the board causing the tire to sink a bit but I had the rig mostly level and ready to give it a try.

Easy peasy pumpkin peasy right? Just drive forward and all is well. I raised the jacks and… it sank even further when we gave it a go. This time, she was in for good, the tires had so much packed in mud in the treads just going into gear it spun the passenger side tire.

I didn’t take any more pictures due to my head exploding.

Ok, we figured unless we could get the rig higher than the ground the rear was sitting on it was going nowhere. We called Collier RV and they suggested a local company that has the equipment to pull 26,000 lbs, the cost would be $325.00 and if the pull turned out to be hard it could go up from there. I should have taken pictures but all that was on my mind was getting out of that God forsaken lot. I let Good Sam lapse so I figured I’d be eating the cost of 3 years worth of road side assistance in one call, simply great, yep.

The company sent a wrecker that can pull 20 tons, hence the cost of the job, send a big wrecker, pay a big bill but this one could pull low enough not to damage the front cap which has a lip that sits several inches below the chassis, yeah Holiday Rambler gave no thought of this design ever getting towed or pulled and neither did I when we bought it.

The guy that arrived was courteous and knew exactly what to do. He kept the big wrecker about 40 feet in front of our rig (yes, pictures would have helped here, I know..) and then he pulled out a long cable and a thickly woven wrap that went around the front axle which was strangely close to the ground as well making his job a little tighter.

He hooked up and I went inside the rig, started her up and he slowly pulled the rig forward. Here is why I and well the wrecker guy as well knew we would never have gotten it out on our own. When there was slack the rig wouldn’t move forward on its own, the tires continued to spin another 20 feet, the wrecker had to pull us clear of our spot completely before the rig gained traction. The drive tires were simply to full of mud to be helpful.

Here she is free at last, I will have been on the road for 25 minutes before I realize I had my Progressive road side assistance phone number on a card in the rig.  

As you can see, the rig continued to sink until it was past our spot. The ground was simply too saturated with water, those wheel indentations are about 3 inches deep, we would have dug a trench and never gotten out. The boards the tires had been sitting on, were now about 8 to 10 inches buried into the mud where the rig pushed them down sitting there.

I have to send our bill into Progressive to get reimbursed so at this point I’m not sure if we will get reimbursed but I’m crossing my fingers. $325.00 was a lot to shell out.

We have the RV home, it’s filthy with mud the carpet has mouse crap all over… that brings up anudder ting… MICE… we placed 12 traps last weekend and it looks like the smartest mouse on the planet cleaned out most of them before he was caught oooohhhhhhh but that little bastard WAS caught!

Tomorrow morning after I can feel my arms again, hey digging mud and flinging boards is hard work! Tomorrow I’m going to power wash the RV rain or shine and we are going to clean the carpet and all cabinets and then bring the rig to the campground and I’ll take more pictures and hopefully post a shorter blog tomorrow night.