We're currently in a hotel 143 miles from Memphis, a room which we were lucky to get- Loretta Lynn's ranch is only a few miles away and she's hosting the national amateur motocross finals. Apparently people come from all over for it. Needless to stay, we stick out a little.
Getting to this point has been an adventure. We had a rough time getting the 16 foot truck loaded and getting the car on the trailer took a few tries. We left DC at 4 pm on Wednesday afternoon- about 3 hours later than we were originally hoping. We quickly determined the limits of our truck's engine on a particularly steep hill just outside DC- Andrew floored the engine the whole way up, climbing at a solid 15 mph. We laughed about it at the time, but little did we know the hill the night still held in store for us.
Our goal, given when we left, was to drive 4-5 hours, which would put us near Roanoke, VA. We had a pretty smooth ride and decided to find a motel just west of Roanoke. I called a few places and found a room at what was listed as a Ramada Inn. As the sun went down, we pulled off the highway. Less than a mile off the 81 we saw a Howard Johnson and I remember thinking, "Oh, the Ramada must be around the corner."
All of the sudden, the road started going uphill. Pretty steeply and narrowly. With all these great little gravel driveways that led to awesome little houses overlooking the Blue Ridge mountains. We pass a sign that had a nice little truck stencil with an X over it. No trucks. Here's a map of where we were- driving up Skyview Drive.
The most important rule of driving a truck towing something when you don't really know what you are doing is never never never put the truck in reverse. Never.
We need to turn around, but we don't have the 100 x 100 feet level parking lot that requires. Then we hit the engine max. We can't go up, and we cannot back down the road. At this point, the sun is completely down, it's dark, we're tired and I'm on the verge of tears.
Suddenly, our luck changes. Sort of. A car comes up the road. It's a man named Greg who lives at the top of the hill, coming home from the grocery store. He gets out of his car and spends the next hour with us, talking us through our predicament.
First, Andrew tries backing, which was my idea. This is a disaster and lasts about 10 feet down the mountain. Once we realize we are likely to back ourselves off the edge of the road, we decide to go with the Gregg's suggestions.
Andrew puts the parking brake on as hard as he can and we unhook the car. Andrew backs it off the trailer and we leave it in someone's driveway. Greg's plan is to drive the truck about 200 yards farther up the hill and there is a spot he's confident we can turn around. We're hoping with the car off the trailer we will be light enough to get up the hill.
Andrew floors the gas.
Nothing happens.
30 seconds pass.
Tears are welling in my eyes.
Finally, we start inching forward. And I mean inching. Cheering erupts.
We go about 1 mph for the first minute or so, and then we hit a part of the road that isn't as steep where we can get some momentum. We get enough going that we make it to Greg's turn around spot.
Now the really tough part. Turn the truck and trailer around so we can go down the hill.
Greg talks Andrew through a 36 point turn where we purposely jackknife the trailer to get it to go down one of the side streets without the truck too far off the road. We are in a flat enough spot we aren't going to fall off the mountain or anything, but we need to make sure our tires stay in contact with the ground. I'm shaking the whole time, but Greg is about as calm and supportive as you could hope for and Andrew is holding up like a champ. Apparently this happens more often then not- Greg said he talks someone through this about 3 times a year.
It's almost 10:30 pm by the time we get the truck turned around. We thank Greg profusely with our faith in mankind restored based on his kindness we let him finish his grocery store run, pick up the car on the way down, and drive to the HoJo (which Greg told us used to be a Ramada) where we have apparently have a room.
Needless to say, we slept hard that night. Andrew especially.
Today was a lot less eventful- we got up, put the car back on the trailer, and got going. Besides a pretty torrential rainstorm that was on and off for almost 2 hours (which Andrew also handled impressively), we had a pretty uneventful day and got over 500 miles in. We quit well before the sun went down and got the truck parked safely. We ate at a BBQ shack across the street and have been relaxing since. Tomorrow it's on to Texas!
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