Adrift

I went up to the lake this weekend to spend some quiet time reading and writing. I drove my own car while my friend drove the RV up ahead of time. I drove into the RV park and drove around the different rows trying to find the right RV. I even found one that was just like it; but it wasn't it. I couldn't find it anywhere. So I drove over to the more distant side of the RV park. I went around several areas and saw the RV nowhere.

I suppose I haven't mentioned that my cell phone was off. The deadline for the phone and my hold date for my bank deposit didn't fall together right. I also have failed to mention there are still little drifts of snow in the shady spots between the trees in the campground. I didn't think much of it. I crunched over a couple of them without any issue.

Of course, you see it coming. I crunched halfway into one and that was all the farther I went. Even with 4wd my little Escape would go no further.

I know about trying to rock back and forth; but it didn't move. I got out and looked in my car for something that might help me dig it out. The best I found was a flip flop that helped me shovel away the snow from the back wheels. I was hoping that would give me enough traction to pull the car out backwards. It didn't. I scraped up 50 cents and went and called my friend; the pay phone wanted 75 cents. The campground office was closed. I went back to the car, tried again to shovel away more snow, rock back and forth out of the spot; scrounged up 75 cents and walked back to the pay phone. Sure enough, it wanted a dollar.

I went back to the car, empty a soda cup and used it to shovel away snow from the front wheels thinking maybe the back wheels being completely clear and the front wheels partially clear would be enough to get the darn thing out of the snow drift. It wasn't. So I gathered up about $1.30 in change and went back to the pay phone and finally got a hold of my friend and got about four words out of my mouth when we got disconnected. By then I had figured out we were at different camp grounds which obviously wasn't a good thing.

Even a call to the operator got me no sympathy. So back to the car for more attempts on freeing my car from this ridiculous last of the season snow drift. By this time I have dug away behind both rear tires and the better part of behind of both front tires. The best I could surmise is that it was the snow up in the wheel wells of the front tires that was keeping the car from moving. Otherwise, I really wasn't sure what the problem was. I was cold and wet and had pretty much exhausted my physical ability. I did attempt turning the wheels while trying to go forward and reverse in hopes that would loosen up the front wheels, but still they got no traction.

I finally went to the payphone one more time and made a collect call to my friend. Which for those of you that have not done so lately, cost $9. Yes, that was no typo, that was nine dollars!

So it turned out he was on his way to the campground I was at anyway because the other one he'd gone to was still under 2 ft. of snow. So when he got there and got in my car he immediately got a little bit of traction. I'm not being rude, but I think the extra weight must have made the difference. He worked it and worked it and it didn't come easily; but he finally got it out.

We went and found ourselves a camp site on the drier side of the campground. The rest of the weekend was uneventful other than the last night when the water froze up. But that was a minor issue.

So who else but me can find the last car capturing snow drift of the season.