The Bang

Last week the wife and I took a three night camping trip to Lake Kegonsa State Park, only a 12 to fifteen minute drive from our home. We have started to go to Lake Kegonsa on our first trip of the year with the camper, to make sure we have everything. I have to admit last year we missed a few items. Not so this year. On Tuesday afternoon, I was getting the fire up to snuff to cook some food, and my wife was preparing food, and she saw a class C motorhome going down the outer loop road, and all of a sudden a large BANG occurred. It was not a happy bang. The bang was related to class C motorhome RV and my thoughts immediately turned to the driver having hit something, like a stump. The driver was probably less than 800' to her campsite.

Our campsite had a good view, about 250' from where it occurred, although some scrub and trees partially obscured the view. The class C motor home, in this case, had a truck cab cut for the front, and the motor home part extended several inches beyond the width of the cab on both sides. To me this is an important fact. It was a large vehicle. My brother-in-law once commented that the irony of campers is that the size increases as a persons driving ability decreases. This incident appears to have put an end to an 80+ year old woman camping adventures. After the incident, there was an odd delay, like the driver did not know what to do. Then all of a sudden she jumped out of the RV, in a manner that I thought she was forty years younger.  

Part of debris field

Just to the side of the pavement on this narrow one-way road was a tree stump cut about two feet above grade. The edge of the living quarters of the motor home hit the tree stump, which ripped that portion of the RV to shreds. I suspect the bang came when part of the frame hit the stump, but we heard little before the bang or even after the bang.  As the driver got out another person had made their way to the scene. The driver's first comment was, "I was watching the road." Apparently not. If the tree stump had been cut to 6" above grade, or had been left at 5' it would not have been a problem; in the first instance, the vehicle would have cleared it, and the second instance, it would have been more clearly noticed, or her right mirror would have hit the stump.  The RV sat in the road for a few hours as the sun started to set. She emptied her fresh water tank, and after several hours was convinced by someone to try to move it forward out of the road and into a nearby vacant site. For some reason, perhaps thinking it was still salvageable, she was reluctant to move it out of the road. There were less than 19 campsites occupied that night in the campground of about 95 sites. I would not like to see what would have happened if it was on a Friday. If there was a location in the park for this to occur this was it, as the third loop entrance was before and its exit beyond the scene of the incident, meaning people that needed to get to sites 17 through 54 could go that route--the bulk of the occupied sites. 

She was fortunate that the situation was not worse, in a few ways. First, she, and her female companion, were going to be camping with a cousin and her husband. He was a big help, getting them to a hotel for the night, and bringing her back the next morning to await the arrival of the tow truck.  Before the tow truck arrived, he and his wife unloaded a pile of personal belongings from the trailer and loaded it into his truck and took it to her house. Wednesday afternoon he cleaned up the debris left behind by the stump. He told me he could not believe how much two people had in that RV.  We saw the pile and if he got all that stuff in his pick-up truck, it was a great job of packing. Second, the collision just missed hitting the batteries. Third, the batteries are next to the propane tank, and the man who assisted her told me that the valve on the propane tank was cracked. A cracked propane tank valve is not a good situation, particularly neat batteries. If the batteries had gotten damaged with a cracked propane tank there may well have been a conflagration. They, perhaps, may be fortunate to be alive.

Being towed

Showing the power of social media, her brother in California heard about the incident via Facebook the night it happened and called her. No one seemed to know who had posted something about it that tuesday on Facebook for her brother to find out about the incident. 

Apparently, this octogenarian is now putting an end to her camping escapades. She had lined up several trips to take with her cousin and her husband, per the cousin's husband. He also told me she was experienced driving that RV as she has traveled the nation in it. Her side door and roof had just been replaced. I think she forgot to realize that the living quarters stick out several inches if not a foot from the main cab, and she simply was too far to the right and the stump, at the edge of the road was hit.

On a brighter note, and inch worm

Careful is the name of the game, and it shows how one slip in attentiveness can change a lifestyle. The bang has taken this octogenarian out of camping. (I never would have guessed she was in her 80's.) I give her a great deal of credit for driving a massive RV like that at her age. I don't think my wife would want me driving one of them, for fear of such a bang.

As an aside, our camper has an Alde heating system for hot water and as a furnace. It has glycol that it pumps around part of the living space. While we have used the Alde for hot water, for showers, we had never used it to heat the living space, but we did that for two nights. It is a really neat and quiet system. It does require maintenance every couple years to change out the glycol. Hey, and it was rather simple to use that even I could figure it out.