Stuck In Mexico

Mexico, New York that is.

This past Memorial Weekend we spent in Mexico, NY will be one for the books.

We went camping, yes I said camping, with our friends Joe and Lynn and their three kids, Amanda, Courtney and Michael.  I mention camping because when we go out in our motor coach, we tend not to “camp”.  At least not in the traditional sense.

See, They were heading to a Yogi Bear Jellystone Campground for the long weekend with their new class C camper and we decided a long weekend with our friends would be a nice, quick get-away.

Well, should have remembered what it was like last time we went to a Jellystone park (in Java, NY) with them.  It was a different one than this one.  We, of course, were the largest thing their.  There was only one spot that would fit our size rig.  Well, minus some tree branches and a few k-turns, we made it into the spot.  This Jellystone park luckily was a little better.

As far as kids campgrounds go, this one was decent.  It had lots of activities for the kids, which is what Joe and Lynn were looking for.  As far as us?  We wouldn’t be back unless we were going with friends with kids.  It’s not the type of place for a coach our size.  We did fit much better than the last Jellystone park though.

So you want me to explain the above picture?  Well, it’s simple.  We got stuck.  The longer version is this.

It was raining non-stop for two weeks before Memorial weekend up to that Friday we left for the campground.  When we pulled in, yup, we were the biggest thing their.  People actually were getting up from their campfires and watching as David maneuvered through the streets.  No problems.  Then we tried to park.  The spot was big enough however it was narrow.  We ended up parking without issue, but…with a full campground, we had neighbors close to us.  They had a large family and a pop up camper.  They had asked if we could possibly give them more room.  So David being David, tried to move over a little bit to give them more room.  Sorry to say, in the darkness and the rain, he missed the gravel by a couple of inches and the muddy muck just sucked in our rear tire, then our front tire.

Before we knew it, we were stuck and going no where fast.  We jacked up our back end and tried to wedge some flat boards that we had under our back tire.  When we let the jacks down, the boards snapped from our weight.  Then David got the idea to use some firewood underneath the tire.

By now it was well after 9:30pm, raining and humid, with no dinner in our bellies.  David amazed me by keeping his cool and having such a great attitude towards the whole situation.  Shrugging his shoulders and having the attitude of, “Oh well, what can you do?”  I on the other hand felt really awkward taking pictures while it was raining and we were sinking further down with each attempt.  My stomach had knots and I was worried the whole weekend would rain and we’d be completely buried and need a wrecker to get us out.

The next morning we woke to sunshine and blue sky.

And dried up mud.  Before we left for this trip David had washed the coach and shined up the rims.  After this ordeal he smiled and said, “Well, the rims are still shiny!”  Too funny.

The picture above is interesting.  Note the muddy water just to the right of our coach (left side of the picture).  Somewhere in their is our jack pads.  The campground owner remembered we still did not have our jack pads, so the next day he came around with a shovel so we could search for them.  20 minutes later with 3 Adults, one shovel and some detective work, we located them.  It was another story getting them out as they were buried over a foot deep in mud.

We heard rumors that their were other rvers stuck in the mud and the tractor could not budge them.  So they spent the entire weekend un-level, buried in mud and some instances surrounded by water.  That does not make for a fun weekend.  We decided to walk around and see what the rains had done to the campers.  This is what we found.

Looking back, we were the lucky ones.  The area that we were in dried up nicely.

The rain had stopped and the sun was around all weekend.  We weren’t stuck any more and we were able to enjoy our weekend with our friends.  Other campers were not so lucky.  They had standing water surrounding their campers.  They were stuck and had to wait for a wrecker to come.  But only when the ground dried up.  We at least were able to leave with our motor home on Monday.