Thursday, May 20th

We were headed to Indian Creek Recreation Area & RV Park, near Alexandria, LA.  Keep in mind that it had been raining every day for about a week in New Orleans and that same rain storm was tracking right up north, so the Alexandria area had been getting the same rain.  By the time we got close to the campground, it was around 6pm and we had been in rain the entire trip, so it was quite dark already.  The Garmin GPS lead us down a road which started out paved, then turned into gravel.  We didn't really think much of that, since we've been to other RV parks which have a gravel road.  Suddenly, the gravel road dropped out from under us and the car came to a halt in a big mud pit.  Some of the ruts were more than a foot deep and the driver's side rear tire was spinning because the undercarriage of the car was on the ground.

Here's where we ended up. (These pictures are from the next morning where we had already tried putting some wood behind the lowest tire to see if we could back out.  It didn't work.  It was too deep.)

Here's a look back up the road showing where the mud started.  We were firmly in the middle of worse part!

We called Good Sam Emergency Road Service while in the car that evening, but couldn't get a good enough signal, so decided to sleep and try it again the next morning.

Since the trailer was fairly level, we retired inside for the evening.  The next morning, we tried calling Good Sam Emergency Service again and still didn't have a good cell signal, so Richard started trekking up the road to see if a better signal could be had on higher ground and not in the midst of trees.  Richard happened upon the house of Gil, who works at the fish hatchery which we passed along the road right before it turned into a gravel road.  At first, the thought was to use Gil's phone, but just standing in Gil's driveway gave a good signal, so Richard finished talking with Good Sam there while Gil was patiently waiting to find out why this strange guy was in his driveway!  (Actually, Richard quickly told Good Sam to wait just a few seconds and quickly explained to Gil was was happening.  Gil was very patient.)  After finishing the call, Richard TXT'ed Kelly where he was. Gil turned out to be a very nice guy and extremely helpful to us throughout the entire experience!  He said that since the house where he lives is actually owned by the state, we can't have anyone stay there, but he would be more than willing to help us in any other way he could!  (Everyone we met in Louisiana has been the nicest people we've met anywhere!  These people really understand and practice "Southern Hospitality" and help each other.  It's truly amazing!)

All Friday Good Sam kept calling us to say they couldn't find anyone to help us.  Keep in mind, it had been raining for about a week, so I'm sure all towing companies were swamped (ha).  By the time Good Sam found someone, it would be rather late at night when they could come out, so they decided to try the next day, Saturday.  The towing company was supposed to be there between 9-10am and never showed up or called.

Later Friday evening, Justin came driving down the road in his 4 wheel drive jeep and found us in the middle of it.  He is an engineer at Dow Chemical and does Entomology on the side, after hours and on weekends.  He was looking to trap some rhinoceros beetles down the road, closer to the lake, but was also interested in areas closer to where Gil lives as well.  So...

He was more than willing to do whatever he could help, of course!  Gil had loaned us to strong towing straps, but he didn't have a vehicle strong enough to do the towing.  Justin and Richard discussed the finer points of where to attach straps.  (You can't just put a strap around the back bumper of the trailer.  Trailer bumpers are notorious for being very unsound and will bend or tear of easily.  Just don't do it.)  We discussed wrapping them around the wheels, but that would only move us a foot or two before they would need to be re-wrapped again.  Finally, we decided on wrapping around the trailer axle to see if a little extra backward force on the trailer could help the car, in reverse, to back out.  It basically did nothing.

We then decided we just needed to "divide and conquer" by unhooking the car and trailer.  It looked as though it may be really hard or impossible, but it was worth the try.  Amazingly, we got the two apart.  This allowed us to actually use the 4 wheel drive on our car to extract just the car, which was good because we couldn't find any way to attach tow ropes to the front of the car.

(Later, we found that Toyotas have two threaded holes under plastic caps in the front of the bumper, but they don't actually give customers the towing eyelets which screw into those holes, so no Toyota owners, at least in the US, have a good way to tow their vehicles!  This is apparently, a known problem by towing companies!  Richard will be buying those eyelets online somewhere after this is done.)

Having moved the car out the mud (but further down the road), Justin used our hitch on his Jeep to pull out our trailer and put it at the end of the road as well (under a tree and on a more level surface).  After doing all of this for us, Justin felt it necessary to give us the sushi which he had brought for his lunch!  We tried to say we didn't need it, but he insisted.  We didn't get around to eating it until the next evening, but when we did, we thought of his generousity and sushi was quite good!

In pulling the trailer out of the mud, we lost the front, driver's side, stablization jack; twisted it up and pull it right off.  Later, we found that we seem to now also have a leak in the grey water line.  Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be in the black water line. The plan was to wait until the mud dried out (we were told this would be about 2-3 days, probably), then try driving out the road.  Of course, the road was hopelessly rutted and we would need to do a lot of work to level it first!

While we were parked at the end of the road, we were amazed to see other people with boat trailers just drive right through all of the mud, so they could launch their boat on the lake!  At least 2 people, plus others who came down there for fishing!  The first guy to arrive looks at where we had parked the car and said, "I need you to move your car so I get to the boat launch, please."  Having gone through a lot of work to get it just 30 minutes before, Richard looked at him and said, "If you knew how hard it was to get it there, you wouldn't be asking that."  None-the-less, the car was moved to a better, out-of-the-way place, and he got his boat into the water.  We envied these people with high ground clearance and 4x4!

The trailer batteries were basically dead, but starting up a generator (we have a 5 gallon gas can) topped them up and even allowed us to use the coffee maker!  Later, Richard pulled out 100 watt solar panel and looked that up instead.  It seemed to be working well and charged the batteries.

Saturday came and went with no real change.  We finally were in contact with a towing company, but they said they couldn't really do anything until things dried out more.  Saturday evening, we walked up the road to Gil's house to take him up on his offer of a shower.  We had left a small blue chair in the middle of the road as warning to others that the road was impassable.  As as walked by the chair, we decided to remove it, but set it on the side of the road to pick up on the way back, because obviously some people were able to get through with no problems at all!  When we returned down the road, we saw the chair was missing!  It seemed hard to believe that the nice people around here would steal a chair that quickly!  Returning to our trailer, we found Michael there with his 4x4 truck.  His first comment to us was, "I bet I took your chair!  People leave stuff by the road all of the time, but when I was your trailer here, I figure I have your chair!"  He had come down to go fishing.  Michael turned out to be yet another really great guy and was instrumental in getting us out on Sunday!  We talked with him (he does landscaping), he gave us his card, and offered to help us out in whatever way he could.

In the meantime, talking with the towing people again, we agreed to wait until Monday to give it a try.  Knowing that the huge ruts in the road would tear up the bottom of the trailer (our sewage line is rather low and we didn't want to rip it off!), we were trying to find a shovel, so we could maybe fill in some of the ruts.  On Sunday, we went to see if Gil had a shovel we could borrow it, but he said he had loaned it to his sister a while back and it hadn't been returned, so sorry, he has no shovel!  Ok then, we thought, "I bet Michael, the landscaper, has a shovel!"  It was still  before noon, so we TXTed him.  He responded immediately saying he would be there "in 20 minutes"!  He actually took more like 40 minutes, but when he arrived, he had his friend as well and also a lot of wood, rocks, and metal loading ramps, which could be used to bridge across the mud.  He and his friend were fully prepared to just get us out of there here and now, and be done!

We all piled sticks, rocks, and whatever we could find into the mud to make a more level spot to drive the trailer across.  The car could drive up on the side banks of the road and go around the mud, but the trailer couldn't do that because it doesn't have the clearance, plus we already knew the grey water line was damaged and didn't want to make it worse.

Michael hooked up his truck to our trailer and drove it across the mud and up to the top of the road with no problems! (You should have been there to see Richard and MIchael's friend holding a low limb out of the way with a rake, as the trailer barely made it under!)  We drove our own car, with it's 4x4 engaged, around the mud with no problems!  Michael's friend drove out, we picked up all of the stuff we had left behind, recovered the ramps, leaving only the sticks and branches in the deepest holes.  We hitched up to our trailer and, after spending quite a while cleaning our connectors and straightening connection pins, we actually got the turn signals and brake lights on the trailer to work again!  We made another reservation at the same Indian Creek RV Park, got directions from Gil as to how to drive there, and made it this time!  They don't have sewer, but do have electricity, water and good usable wifi!  When we arrived, we also found that apparently there's an RV repair guy who will come to the park to do repairs.  We'll be contacting him tomorrow (Monday).  We will probably also spend a few more days here until things get more back to normal.  It's been quite the adventure!

We also found that apparently the Indian Creek RV people actually are well aware that GPS can lead their customers down that particular dirt road, but it seems they just don't care enough to have a warning on their site.  I plan to put that into a review or maybe just send them a note.  It's very unacceptable!  By the way, down at the end of the road where we were, we finally found the bridge where Garmin was leading us. Here it is:

The locals know it has burned out for about 7 years now.  Gil says people go down there and find they have to turn around every week!  Google Maps has it correct, and doesn't route there.  I plan to tell Garmin about it also.

So, we're safe and sound (at Indian Creek RV Park) for now (with a bucket under the trailer to catch grey water until we can get it fixed) and are hoping to get back to normal.