Well, the rain continued to fall so after speaking to the boss man, I figured the best place to be was inside the truck watching the worker bees! The plan was to fill in the ruts with what they called leechee (sp?), to me it looked like gravel. Once the ruts were filled they would put down wooden boards so I could get the truck in and hooked up
The tractor arrived with its front bucket full of gravel, this looked promising until he dumped the gravel in the rut. One bucket load did about 4ft of rut! There was at least 20 ft to fill! For the next 20 minutes or so the tractor hauled in around 5 loads of gravel, while another guy packed and smoothed the ruts. In the mean time the boss returned and figured we should give it ago while waiting for the boards! Must admit to being a little nervous as the gravel strips were only slightly wider than the tyres and I had to both stay on the gravel and get the hitch lined up with the trailer. After moving some of the gravel around to allow me to line up squarely I backed in the final few feet to be met with a large bang. This was good news as it meant the hitch had connected and locked. A gentle tug forward confirmed that the trailer would now go wherever the truck went.
Next problem was to get the 16000 lb combination moving without finding the mud or spinning the wheels. The truck was in 4 wheel low and started to move just fine, The problem I had was when I reached the road I would have to turn the truck 90 degrees left or right to stay on the road as there was mud on the far side. If I turned right the trailer would go off the gravel into the already soft mud, if I went left the trailer would cut across the property of the mobile home next door, but this way was more solid. I went left, and all was (almost) well. The trailer went over a decorative log that formed the boundary of the property and promptly snapped it in half. The boss man declared this a non-issue, and we were free of the mud and firmly on the road.
Once clear I hooked up the trailer brakes and electrics and we headed out to Corpus Christi. Previously I said that the journey would take about 5 hours…. this is what the GPS predicted, however once on the road, the signpost and the GPS differed by about 120 miles. The signpost was right, and we had just cut 2+ hours off the journey. Lyn reprogrammed the GPS and distance to go then looked fine. Not sure what I did wrong earlier!
About 50 miles into the journey we had to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint (the border was about 60 miles behind us), the agent there looked at the licence plate and said “You’re Canadian?” My first thought was to congratulate him on his superb knowledge of geography, but quickly realised this may not be a smart move so replied “Yes” instead. He just waved us on.
We reached the new campground just after 2pm and checked in. The original site they had put us in backed right onto the water, but for some reason we had been moved to across the road, still close to the water but we now back onto another RV. This gives a feeling of being sqaushed in, but I am sure we will survive.
So far the weather has been cr*p, but it is less windy and less muddy here. Hopefully we’ll get out and explore a bit tomorrow.