Everything’s bigger in Texas!
New Years Eve morning 2018 we rolled out of Cajun Palms, heading to “Cousin Ann’s house” in Montgomery, Texas. Montgomery is a suburb north of Houston, some 250 miles from Cajun Palms.
After a nice drive including a couple hours on a rural 2 lane, we were in front of Ann’s house.
We’d been here before, with our 40′ Monaco, and I’d gotten that coach in her long skinny driveway and parked by the side of the garage for a great couple week stay.
This time, in a 45 foot coach, I’m not so lucky. The driveway crosses a ditch, and flares only slightly to the street. On the near side is a big brick mailbox. 
To get away from the mailbox, I drove to the end of the street and did a 3 point turn in the cul-de-sac, then tried to swing wide, miss the mailbox, and make the turn into the driveway. I got the wrong angle and the rear tires tracked in too tight. Carol managed to get my attention before the right rear dropped into the ditch, and I backed out. I figured I’d back off the road to get a little more room to make the turn. This is when everything went terribly wrong. It had been a very rainy month, and the ground was very wet. When I tried to go forward, I had no traction at all!
I found I could go backwards a little, but 
any attempt to go forward, the tires spun in the wet mud. Rather than dig in further, I just called coachnet and waited. 
Coachnet is our Emergency Road Service company, they specialize in these big coaches. After an hour this little bitty tow truck showed up. I greeted him with “you’re kidding right?” It seems Coachnet was trying to get out cheap. He hooked this little chain to my front suspension, and tried to move the coach by driving his truck forward. It wouldn’t budge. No movement at all. He took his toys and went home. I didn’t even get a picture, but it was an Isuzu flatbed, the kind you would pick up a car with. Not even close. I called Coachnet back, told them the story, and an hour 
later a properly giant truck backed down the street to the coach. This thing was huge! Somewhat other worldly looking too. It was dark now, and he had some huge lights on the back of this truck. Big thanks to Milstead Automotive for their quick response, fabulous equipment, and great operator. In a matter of minutes, he pegged the truck down with it’s rear legs, set a pulley to keep the chain below the front of the RV, hooked a fabric strap to the RV’s frame, and just winched my baby out of the mud. It was so easy!
It seemed spending the night on the side of the road was a smart thing, so I put the slides out on the curb side, started the generator, and called it good. We went inside and enjoyed a nice dinner by Ann and Carol. I went out and turned in early, and they stayed in the house and talked half the night. Cousins had lots of catching up to do.
Glad there was no damage to the coach. Kinda reminds me of the time I was backing into the pad beside our RV garage and My brain confused what the camera was showing with what the mirrors were showing. Instead of going left I went right and buried the right rear in a planter. Every RV owner has to do it at least once!
Thanks Bob. Yea, no strain no pain. We were at our destination, so not even any delay. Glad We had Coachnet, it would have been a $500-$800 job without it!
Jim, we had almost the exact same situation in our 2018 Cornerstone a few weeks ago at a NASA campsite near the Kennedy Space Center. Backed into a site and got into some soft soil. Called CoachNet and they sent a Ford F-450 flatbed tow truck to winch us out. I told the guy it was like sending a BB gun to a gun fight! He actually got us stuck about 3-4 times deeper than we started and then left us. A second truck came and tried, but failed, followed by a third F-650 Ford flatbed. After wasting near 7 hours, CoachNet tried to tell me that they were going to change it from a winch out to a recovery, which is not covered by their policy. I demanded that they get a manager involved and they finally sent a big truck, like the one that pulled you out. It was now after dark and after hours, so it cost CoachNet $1,250 (so I was told). I told them that they could have saved a lot of money and my time by calling the right truck the first time. Huge learning opportunity for us! The first three trucks scraped the bottom of our nose cap really bad, so now we have a damage claim against the first tow company. Glad you got yours out without damage!
Damage would suck, hope yours isn’t too bad.
I damaged the rear cap in our first motorhome, insurance replaced the whole thing, said it wasn’t repairable!
I’m going to be a whole lot more careful with this thing in the future. It’s a lot heavier and needs way more room to turn than the “little” 40 foot Monaco!