Vehicular Misadventures

[Guest]

I was going to post this in the Photography Forum, but it is such a fond memory I didn’t want it to vanish too quickly. I finally have an old 35mm photo scanned in to accompany this tale. It is a long story, copied from a long ago trip journal.

EK_0013 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

On the last day of an extended trip in the Wind River range my compadre Brian and I endured an afternoon experiencing the full range of weather nastiness - rain, sleet, thunder & lightning and absurdly high winds.

No need to wonder why it's called the WIND River range; the winds were strong enough that just standing up was a challenge. We found we could lean over into the wind at an angle and the force of the wind would hold us suspended there. Even more fun was to spread our poncho clad arms wide and lean way, way over, flying in place like some backcountry Batman, poncho-capes rippling in the wind.

On reaching the truck the weather system passed, the sun broke out and Brian surprised me by producing tonic water, a bottle of vodka and a lemon from some hidden recess in the back of my truck. Good man, best travelling partner ever.

We dried out, packed up and celebrated our success by enjoying a vodka tonic or two, dreaming all the while of hitting some Wyoming small town restaurant.

We head down out of the mountains in high spirits. The road is muddy, but the truck is well ballasted with our gear, no sweat. Below the ridge is a broad plateau we need to cross before reaching the first paved road. This plateau floor consists of bentonite. AKA mineral soap. Known colloquially, when wet, as gumbo.

Now bentonite, at least in this Wyoming form and quantity, may be both the stickiest and slipperiest crap god ever created. Bentonite, mixed with water (and it absorbs something like 15 times it's own volume in water), creates mud with the texture of chocolate pudding. Actually, when driving on saturated bentonite, it seems more like a layer of chocolate pudding with grasping tentacles, spread over a sheet of ice. Not only will you have NO traction and NO control, but this goo is deep...and, apparently, lonely - it just hates to see you go.

We plow through the first couple of mud holes, fishtailing, counter steering and downshifting. Gotta downshift, ‘cause this slop just seems to try to hold you in place. The mud holes starting to get bigger; I start having to hit them faster in order to have sufficient momentum to break on through to the other side (Doors reference whippersnappers won’t get).

Soon I'm plowing into bigger and bigger mudholes, going 50 mph on the way in and barely making it out the other side doing 15 mph, working my way through the gearbox as we careen around.

Then we crest a slight rise and see it - THE MOTHER OF ALL MUDHOLES. 100 yards of breathtaking ooze. I glance over at Brian - he seems unconcerned. He also seems to have acquired a fresh vodka tonic. I elbow him - he glances at me, looks at the mud mother and shrugs his shoulders, as if to say "Yeah, whadda ya waitin' for? Hit it!" What confidence.

I gun the truck as fast as I dare and scream into the mud mother. And swiftly realize that there is no way this is going to work. I'm all over the road. I'm losing too much speed too fast. I'm banging gears, I'm working the accelerator. I'm pulling us out of a slip this way and a slide that
way....I'm in the ditch.

I look over to make sure Brian is OK. He still seems unconcerned. And he hasn't, as far as I can tell, spilled a drop. I'm not even sure he knows we're in a ditch.

We get out and survey the situation. I'm about 50 yards into the mud mother, nose down, half in and half out of the ditch. Big ditch. A Wyoming sized ditch. Back east they give ditches this size names and build housing developments in them. Bentonite Acres. Gumbo Estates.

OK, we've been in this position before. First things first, let’s get the truck back on the road. "Brian, get in front and push; I'll ease the clutch out and try to coax her back up onto the road".

No good. "Dang Brian, look at all that mud on ya from the back tires spinning".

OK, let’s denude this hillside of brush; we'll lay out corduroy tracks back up onto the road and try again. "Come on Brian, one-two-three, heave!"

No good. "Dang Brian, now yer covered with tiny bits of twiggy debris too".

OK, it's time for desperate measures. We'll jack up the downside of the truck as far as we can, push her off the jack towards the road, jack her up, push her off....it's a slow process, an inch or so at a time, but we've done it before. "Here Brian, squirm up under the truck and slip the jack back into place".

No good. Now the jack is stuck in the mud under the truck. "Jeeze, Brian, look at yourself. Clothes make the man, ya know".

Things aren't looking too good. Brian chooses this moment to utter perhaps his longest vocalization of the trip - "Good place to homestead, eh?" Could be the alcohol has loosened his tongue, I notice he has mixed another vodka tonic.

Then we hear it. Ting. Ting, ting. Ting. Bells? Then we see them. Sheep. Lots of sheep. Coming over a rise to our north. Brian gets a wild look in his eyes. I begin to suspect that he's been away from his girlfriend for too many weeks.

Fortunately, the sheep are followed by a shepherd on horseback. He pushes the sheep off into a meadow, gives his dogs a whistle and rides through the gumbo up to the truck.

Surveying the truck, the ruts, the sagebrush corduroy and Brian's thoroughly bespattered condition, he looks down at us and says "Espidquton basomnpz freveyya?"

Ah, a Basque shepherd on horseback.

"Yup, we're stuck in the ditch" I say, agreeing with the obvious.

"Jezzevtya nugtrudao weghita", replies the shepherd, holding up his rope and gesturing towards the bumper.

"Hell, it's worth a try" I respond. "Brian, you push".

The shepherd hops down, throws a hitch around the bumper, remounts and throws a hitch around the pommel. Brian pushes. I ease the clutch out. The truck slides out of the ditch and we work it back onto solid road outside the mud mother.

The shepherd hops down, unfastens his rope and we shake hand all around. I offer him a $10. Brian offers him a vodka tonic. He refuses both, gathers his sheep and rides off.

Of course, we're still on the wrong side of the mud mother, having been pulled out of our dilemma backwards. I back the truck up to the top of the rise and try again. Fly into the mudhole, slipping right, sliding left, slamming gears...and put us in the ditch again.

We've gone about 50 yards. Again. We're in the ditch. Again. The only difference is we've slid off the other side of the road this time, where the ditch is less severe.

We get out, denude the other hillside of sagebrush and lay out another corduroy track, fortunately leading up out of the mud mother this time...no way I'm starting from point A again if we get free. I'm walking around to the driver’s side when Brian utters his second longest sentence of the trip. "You push. I'LL drive".

I get behind and push, Brian eases the clutch out and the truck comes out of the ditch and starts gaining momentum. 5mph. 10mph. 15mph. We're back on nearly solid ground. Now I'm covered with gumbo and sagebrush, but the truck is going. Still going. Still going. Gone.

Up over the next rise and out of sight. Hmmmm, well, I guess Brian didn't want to stop until he was certain he wouldn't get stuck again. I run to the top of the rise. Just in time to catch a glimpse of the truck, clearing the next rise, still going.

When I catch up to Brian, a mile or so later, parked in a nice level un-muddy stretch, he's reclining on a boulder, sipping another vodka tonic. He smiles at me and throws me the keys. "Here" he says "You drive".

If you have similar tales of vehicular misadventure let’s hear them.

 

[ppine]

I used to live in Wyoming, and have worked on soils a lot. Sometimes your wheels just keep getting bigger and you are going nowhere. Bentonite is used for drilling mud in reverse circulation drill rigs because of its lubricity. I have been on a flat road with chains on all 4 wheels and been real stuck after a short rain storm. The only solution is to wait for it to dry out.

There can be a light coating of Bentonite on an asphalt road that is not that easy to see. A little rain and it becomes slippery. People miss turns all the time.

The Winds are a special place but not for everyone.

I had an outdoor career and spent decades driving on dirt roads, mine roads and no roads. Judgment is very important. 4wd just gets you stuck in worse places. Your job is to get unstuck. In 30 years I never had to call for help. That is a good thing because there is no cell phone service out there. I walked out once in Colorado when I broke the front straight axle on a Jeep Wagoneer at 10,800 feet. It was my personal vehicle. I walked out of the mountains, slept in a field and hitchhiked home. My room mate took a day off work, we got some part and went back up there. It was Memorial Day and snowing hard. We built a little tent over the truck and repaired it on the spot and drove it home.

Some places are so remote there are no roads. A mine site in SE Alaska was one such place with 150 inches of rain. We flew out there in a float plane, mostly Beavers. Most of the access was by helicopter Hughes 500s and a few Bell Rangers. It never got dark in the warmer months. Hiking all day in that country nets about 6 miles. I will never forget working on salmon streams gauging streams and doing water quality work. We saw bears every day, sometimes a lot of bears.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I've had lots of problems with my mostly old vehicles, but since this is a canoe site I'll limit my memories to problems that happened on canoe trips.

The first I remember was on my first trip on the Russian River in northern California in 1981. I was alone in my new Mad River Explorer. At the take-out I pulled my Chevy Malibu station wagon too far onto the sandy shore and got completely stuck in the soft sand. This was long before cell phones and I wasn't near any towns. Another paddler at the take-out said he would call a tow truck when he passed a public phone. So, I just waited, not knowing whether he did. Finally, a tow truck arrived and I had enough cash to pay for a tow. I didn't have credit cards in those days.

I recall more than once a group of us having to shovel snow and mud off the access road to the west branch of the Sacandaga River in the southern Adirondacks of New York. We used our bombproof Iliad and Norse paddles as shovels.

On April 14, 1984, no one showed up at the meeting place for the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) trip on the Millers River in Massachusetts, except for Steve Tuckerman and me. So he and I decided to tandem the Green River in Vermont. On the shuttle we got stuck in muddy gravel on a mountain road. We had no paddles because had left them with the boats. Standing around clueless, a USPS mail truck finally came by. The driver stopped, got out, and said, "Happens to me all the time here in the spring on my job, so I carry stuff." Whereupon, he pulled out a huge coal shovel and some big metal traction tracks from the back of his truck. He got us out. Steve and I took a different and more circuitous shuttle road at the end of the trip.

As editor of the AMC River Guide in those days, Steve later officially named a rapid after me, Glenn Dropped In, when I dumped in my Gyramax C1 on the Cold River in New Hampshire.

In the early 90's I was leading my traditional AMC Memorial Day trip in the northern Adirondacks. I was driving my Ford-Coachman van conversion. We did the famous Nine Carries route the first day. The second day we were looking for the put-in for the Osgood River, as described in the guidebook Adirondack Canoe Waters: North Flow by Paul Jamieson and Donald Morris. I was literally standing in the woods, puzzled, reading the description for the hard-to-find put-in when a guy walks out of the woods and says, "I see you're reading my book." It was Donald Morris. What a freaking coincidence! "The trail is right over there," he points out, as I thanked him profusely for his book.

The Osgood had loads of beaver dams and the black flies were brutal. Our two kayaker ladies had no fun getting out of their kayaks to cross the dams. At the takeout, I was to shuttle everyone back in my van, but the windshield kept completely fogging up in the light, cold rain -- because, as I later found out, my defroster coils were leaking fluid. My daughter had to continuously wipe the windshield as I drove back to the put-in and camp, lest I drove everyone off the road.

The third day, thankfully dry and warm and not needing the defroster-from-Hell, we paddled the heavily beaver dammed Chubb River south of Lake Placid. The two kayakers were at their wits end, struggling to get in and out of their small cockpits and sometimes tipping over. I never saw those two on an AMC trip again.

In 1996 I was intensely researching my first sea kayak purchase. I drove from Connecticut to a shop New Hampshire to try out some British boats and Kerry King's Surge, which was the first kayak (or canoe) that I had ever heard of being built by resin infusion. I rented the Surge and took it back to Connecticut. Then I drove it to New Jersey to paddle it head-to-head against a Mariner Max made by the Broze brothers in Seattle. Then I drove the rented Surge and my Mike Galt Lotus BJX up to Kerry King's shop on Westport Island, Maine, to talk to Kerry personally about building a customized Surge out of carbon fiber with gold flecks in clear gel coat.

Just outside of Brunswick, Maine, my now 14-year old Ford van conversion simply ground to a halt on the Maine Turnpike. I had my first cell phone and called AAA, which towed me to a Ford dealer in Brunswick. They told me I needed a timing chain and other stuff for around $750. By this time I was sick of the vehicle, which was continuously needing repairs. So, I said screw it and bought a used Ford Aerostar 4WD minivan with very high mileage for $5000 on a credit card, which I also now had.

Mastercard thought the purchase was fraudulent, given it was for so much money so far away from my home. After many calls to them on my new Motorola flip phone, I convinced them to approve the purchase.

But this Aerostar had no gutters to hold my gutter-foot Thule racks, which I needed on the Aerostar to hold the Surge kayak and BJX, which laid around the floor of the dealer's shop. So, I had to rent a car from the dealer to drive to LL Bean to purchase Thule false gutter mounts, meanwhile paying to stay in a motel. The dealer installed the gutter mounts by drilling right through the roof of the Aerostar, and we got the racks installed. I then had to drive to New Hampshire to return the ugly green rented Surge.

I eventually bought the customized Surge on yet another round trip to New Hampshire. I probably drove over 2,000 miles buying that kayak, which cost over $3,000, plus $5,000 for the Aerostar, plus all the gas money and motel money and car rental and boat rental and and tolls. Whew!!!

So, in 2000 I'm way up in downeast Maine and Canada with my Surge kayak, driving my even higher mileage Ford Aerostar piece of crap. We took a break one day from salt paddling in the Bay of Fundy to paddle Pocomoonshine, Mud and Crawford lakes. On the way back to Cobscook Bay State park it was pouring rain and my windshield wiper motor BROKE. It is impossible to see anything while driving in a downpour with no windshield wipers. So my co-pilot, the great paddler Clark Bowlen (now deceased), stuck his head way out the passenger window and directed me as I drove about 20 mph on the road: "Turn a little left . . . a little right . . . go straight . . . keep it straight . . . a stop is coming up . . . ." We took this risk driving because our feeble short wave weather radio from a Canadian station said the rain would keep up till the next morning.

Thankfully, it was dry the next morning and for the remainder of the trip and I didn't need to use my wipers again. So we went down to Mt. Desert Island where I had a blast surfing my Surge in a near nor'easter on Seal Cove Pond and Long Pond, and came near to death paddling the gorgeous Somes Sound fjord -- but those aren't vehicular misadventure stories.

 

[Waterdog]

I’ve been driving the same Tacoma for 16 years and never had a mishap with it. But once many years ago we had run a local whitewater river in winter. Having run the river we were loading boats and jabbering away. Then we left for home my brother and I. His kayak and my Bell Prodigy canoe were on the roof. We were halfway between Ebensburg PA and Altoona Pa when I cut him off mid sentence and said “did I strap my boat down?” He rolled the window down and reached up while I was going 70 mph and said “Pull Over!” We had driven 20+ miles on interstate with no straps on the canoe. It had full Mike Yee outfitting in it and it was sitting on Yakima gunwale brackets and never flinched. I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking what could have happened.

 

[scoutergriz]

Back in the 80's I took my 1970, $500 ford van up to Temagami with 3 other guys, and 2 canoes on the roof. we spent a fantastic 3 days paddling and fishing the many small lakes between there and the Soo before heading home, stopped for lunch in Thessalon, and piled back in, turned the key, and...... nothing, not even a click Everything worked except the starter solenoid, luckily it was on the firewall beside the battery. I found an old, chrome shelf bracket (the ones with a leg sticking down) and shorted the solenoid terminals and it roared back to life. Every time we stopped, I had to pop the hood, short the terminals and go, but we made it back unassisted.
Same van a few years on, and I broke the clutch linkage so drove home by stalling it at stop lights, leaving it in 2nd gear, and "bumstarting" it using the starter (transplanted from an F500 diesel), got home and cut up and brazed a piece of that shelf bracket to the ends of the clutch rod, that repair lasted until I scrapped the van in 1989. Never did get it stuck because I kept big old lug tires on it always, and lots of weight in the back.

 

[Gamma1214]

I drove a '79 CJ5 for 200,000+ miles in the mid 80's & early 90's. Noisy, drafty and there was a definite learning curve to driving it (it could get pretty squirelly, pretty fast until you adjusted to it), the old girl never let me sit and could pass just about anything but a gas station.

Coming back from NY once after section hiking more of the Appalachian Trail, we smelled burning oil 5+ hrs from home & found that the timing cover was leaking. We grabbed several cases of engine oil & pushed on. We wound up stopping every 50 miles to add oil and I think we used more oil getting home than we did fuel (despite 10 mpg with a good tailwind)

I still own that old Jeep but it's (sadly) not my daily driver these days.

 

[ppine]

Some people never get stuck, because they don't drive anywhere slippery.

 

[Guest]

I have been on a flat road with chains on all 4 wheels and been real stuck after a short rain storm. The only solution is to wait for it to dry out.

There can be a light coating of Bentonite on an asphalt road that is not that easy to see. A little rain and it becomes slippery. People miss turns all the time.

The Winds are a special place but not for everyone.

We were always in a 2wd Toyota or Datsun pick up. Still a 2wd Toyota pickup today, but I do now have chains.

Between 1976 and 1989 I (we) made 12 trips west to the Rockies, some two weekers, some stretched to three. Almost always including a trip in the Wind Rivers, often with a stop in the Big Horns while heading west. I don’t think the Big Horns get the respect they deserve; the backpacking there was excellent and the trout fishing even better.

Waiting for the gumbo to dry out was not an option. We would shift-drive nonstop to the Rockies, starting an hour after we left work on a Friday, make the sub-40 hour west trip stopping only for gas, and then eek out every precious minute of our mountain time, often leaving but 40 hours to drive back east and make it into work.

One thing I noticed, especially up through the res, was that many of the severe \/\/\ switchbacks on the dirt roads had a wrecked and abandoned vehicle at the bottom of the switch, where someone had not successfully made the sharp corner.

The Wind River are, to me, still a very special place. God bless Finis Mitchell; I sure ate a lot of fat Wind River trout, courtesy of his DIY milk-can pack-train high lake stock efforts in the ‘30’s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finis_...illion%20trout.

I have enjoyed the Bitterroots, Beartooths and Purcells/Cabinets, the High Uintas, the Chiricahuas and even some stuff in too-hippy for me Colorado.

Years ago a western friend put it this was to me, “If you drive up 30 miles of dirt road in Arizona or New Mexico you’ll find scowling Chicanos in rusty pickup trips with gun racks. If you drive up 30 miles of dirt road in Wyoming or Montana you’ll find scowling ranchers in pickup trucks with gun racks. If you drive up 30 miles of dirt road in Colorado you’ll find aging ex-hippes in Volvos parked outside a fern bar talking about biorhythms”

The “fern bars” and “biorhythms” dates that quote. Today it might be vegan Cafés and Quinoa.

 

[Chip]

Greenville to Baker Lake, Me., May 2000
Vehicle: Rav4

My first indication of the Rav4's suitability for our shuttle vehicle came after we'd already stashed my truck near Pelletiers place and stopped in Ft. Kent to pick up a rental boat, a Disco 169. We went to load it on the Rav, set it down carefully, on what? The Disco spanned the puny rack on the Rav and the boat was sitting on the roof. No problem, just flipped the boat right-side up on the racks and tied her own as best we could. Even though the front and back rack on those early Rav's were only about 16" apart, I think we would have been okay with the upright canoe had it not proceeded to rain the whole 7-hour way back to Greenville. Acceleration rocked the boat backwards, and when braking water rushed forward and the bow came down so far I thought it might block our view. We stopped to bail a few times, and we got back okay.

Next day, we u-bolted 2x4s to the Rav racks, so we could carry two boats, gunwales-down. Then we started loading the Rav with gear for our three-person party, plus dog and dog kennel. It was like with the boat the previous day--load gear where? Those old Rav4s were small. The car was hardly able to transport us three and the dog, never mind gear for a 10-day trip. Of course you readers probably already guessed that the gear went into two upright canoes on racks that kind of were just pretending to be racks.

Things were rocking but fine on the paved road, but on the Greenville Road north of Kokadjo, there'd been wash outs, and it was like surf's up for the boats. Our driver's approach to mud bogs and ruts was to "drive it like I stole it." The 490 road had a crazy mud whole. We didn't get stuck, but I classify it among the hairiest rides of my life. After each obstacle we'd get out and tighten things up, tie things in the boats and add more ropes. We looked like a muddy, rolling spider web. As I write, I am newly amazed no grief came from that shuttle, but I'm sorry there wasn't a more spectacular mishap I can contribute. It turned out to be a great trip and sort of life-changing for me, since it got me hooked on canoe camping.

 

[ppine]

Mike McCrea,
Having lived in 6 western states, your stereo types are amusing. A few trips does not give you a realistic picture.
I have smoked dope and eaten plenty of mushrooms with cowboys in Wyoming. In tight places I have watched the locals blow Mary Jane up their horse's nose.

I had a logging company in Colorado and hung out in logging bars. I rode with mule outfitters dressed in buckskins and rode at night when it was below zero. I worked for mining companies all over the state. People that built their own log houses, hunted for food, and were tough as nails.

I moved West 50 years ago from the East Coast. When my friends come out to visit from the East, they need help to understand what they are looking at.

The Rural/Urban Divide determines people's outlooks now much more than what state they live in.

 

[Guest]

Having lived in 6 western states, your stereo types are amusing. A few trips does not give you a realistic picture.
I have smoked dope and eaten plenty of mushrooms with cowboys in Wyoming. In tight places I have watched the locals blow Mary Jane up their horse's nose.

With all due respect to your resident expertise in all things western, shroomed cowboys and stoned ponies, I have more than “a few trips” west; one cross country jaunt lasted 18 months, most of it spent somewhere in the Rockies, and I lived in SE Arizona for a spell. Not your lifetime’s experience, but enough to have formed my own opinion.

And, of course, these are just opinions; like the old saying goes, everybody’s got one.

Small town Colorado, especially west of the Front Range, seemed “too cool” for me, even in the ‘70’s when I had a ponytail down my back, and has not, for my personal preferences, gotten any better. I got that same “too cool for me” feeling when in much of coastal California, even back in the day.

It isn’t just Colorado. I spent time in sleepy Moab in the 70’s, and didn’t return again ‘til 2014. Driving down 191 through town and seeing signs for Zipline rides and jeep safaris made me want to vomit. The cutesy cafes, bookstores, bike shops and abundance of overpriced chain motels lining Main Street ($150 a night for a Super 8?) didn’t help. Time marches on.

I haven’t been to Lander or Pinedale in the last 20 years; maybe it’s best just to have memories of such places back when there was some there there.

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them

 

[pblanc]

One day sometime back in the early 1990s I was camping down by the Nanatahala River near Bryson City, NC and had been paddling it for a few days. On this particular day I figured to do the same but stopped by the Outfitter's Store at NOC after eating breakfast at the River's End restaurant. That was back when NOC had an outfitter's store worthy of the name, and every morning they would mark regional river levels on a small blackboard near the front. That was well before cell phones.

I found to my surprise that one of my favorite rivers in east Tennessee was running, the Tellico. I phoned a friend in the Chattanooga area to see if anyone was planning to paddle it and indeed he and a few other guys were planning to meet there that afternoon. I wanted to join them but the problem was how to get there in time across the Blue Ridge. The normal route down to Murphy, NC, across and then back north through Tellico Plains would have taken too long.

I looked at my ancient DeLorme atlases for North Carolina and Tennessee and noticed something called the "Robinsville - Tellico Plains Scenic Highway" which was then marked as "under construction". This made a more or less direct route from the Bryson City area over the mountains to the Tellico River. That road is now called the Cherohala Skyway which officially opened in 1996. But this was around 1993 or thereabouts. Since my atlases were probably at least a couple of years old I thought perhaps it might be open. I stopped at several gas stations and quick stops in Robbinsville and made inquires but nobody seemed to know for sure if it was open all the way to Tennessee, but one or two people seemed to think it might be.

I decided to take a chance and started up. Initially the roadway seemed good until I got to around Haw Knob near the state line at over 5000 feet elevation. There I found a road crew taking an early lunch break and a stretch of uncompleted "road" that was about 100 yards of partially graded muddy dirt. I checked it out and went over to a guy sitting on a bulldozer eating a sandwich. I was driving a Ford Explorer with 4 wheel drive and asked him if he thought I could make it across in 4WD low. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and said "Well, you might could".

I decided to go for it figuring if I didn't make it I could offer the guy on the dozer a couple of $20s to chain me up and pull me out. As I walked to my Ford he said over my shoulder "Once you start, whatever you do don't stop" I put it in 4WD low and hit the gas. The whole way across the front end was plowing side to side like a bicycle in deep sand and the rear end was fishtailing. But I kept my foot on the gas and made it across.

When I got to the Tellico I found that both sides and the rear of my vehicle was completely covered with plastered on mud. I looked as if I had just finished dead last in the Baja 1000 cross country race.

 

[yellowcanoe]

The East versus West thing. Amusing. You could not get me to live in the West as water is so scarce that development with walls between houses is encouraged. Its been 50 years since I had either a fence wall or city water or anything under two acres.
The cities of the West scare the bejeesus out of me. As this is a vehicle mishap thread with a canoe trip involved, a tower on our very old but lifetime warranty Yakima rack broke just out of Julesburg Colorado ( a town to my liking). We could not get the boat stable no matter what we used on the roof and wound up leaning it against a stock fence in back of a crossroad diner ( also to my liking). The cattle were curious.. We took off to find an REI and had to go to Ft Collins to find a replacement tower. That traffic and hunting for a well manicured and well hidden store drove me nuts! But we did get a set of replacement towers ( and got repaid by Yakima later!) and back we went to get our Wenonah off the fence and hope the cattle had not been too curious. We were glad to find it. Rural Westerners arent actually different than rural Easterners.

Then we can move onto the perils of getting on a wrong twitch road in Maine and having to back the canoe trailer up... a couple of miles.

 

[Chip]

... "Once you start, whatever you do don't stop" I put it in 4WD low and hit the gas. The whole way across the front end was plowing side to side like a bicycle in deep sand and the rear end was fishtailing. But I kept my foot on the gas and made it across.

That is exactly what my friend meant by "drive it like you stole it," Momentum is your friend.

Now just imagine doing that trick with two 17' canoes, upright and filled with gear, on a tiny little rack, rocking every which way and acting like they were going to fall off or at least spill out their contents. Nerve wracking !

 

[Chip]

Pine Barrens, circa 2011, Batsto to Atsion
Vehicle: Toyata Tundra 4wd pick-up

There are perfectly good paved roads for this shuttle, but my buddy thought he knew a more direct road through the forest. So we start down this dirt road that seemed in the right direction, but after a while we were loosing confidence that this was the way. The growth along the road kept closing in and and began to look like it had been a long time since a vehicle had passed through. We would have turned around, but the road had become so narrow there was nowhere to turn around, and backing up the miles we'd already been on that road seemed a pain, so onward we plunged. We came go a 50' long pot hole filled with water. Mike stopped, got out and checked it out, fishing around with a stick, and decided it was okay to proceed, and it was. We came to a second pot hole, a small pond in the road, and Mike went out and fished around in the water, decided it was okay, and we proceeded. Then there was the third pot hole, which for some reason Mike didn't stop to check out, and in we went.

My guess is that somebody must have driven a rig with monster truck tires into that bog and just let the tires spin. The ruts were deep and the center was high. The Tundra slammed to a halt in the middle of the road/pond. It was high centered and all 4 wheels just spun in the water. There's stuck and then there's real stuck, the Tundra was real stuck. Water began seeping through the doors and eventually filled several inches in the cab. We were in BF nowhere. I had no cell coverage but Mike had like one bar of sketchy coverage if he stood in the right place. He eventually got hold of somebody, but was having a hard time making himself understood on the sketchy connection. A not trivial problem was communicating where we were stuck. We had the GPS coordinates, but our rescuer-to-be needed to know more than just where we were, he needed to know how to get there. It's not like google maps could route him to the "road" where we were stuck. Somehow, they figured it out.

I walked out the road we were on, which eventually merged into a bigger dirt road that looked well traveled. I waited around hoping our rescuer would come by and I could direct him to the small road that led to Lake Tundra. I waited until it was about dark and decided to give up waiting because possibly the guy had come in the other way, as we had. I found some downed wood and put a big arrow on the main road, pointing to the Lake Tundra road. I was almost back to the Tundra when the wrecker came up behind me and picked me up.

It was a flat bed wrecker which fortunately had a winch on the front. That Jersey guy never hesitated, plunged knee and hip deep into the water (it was winter) and hooked up the Tundra by something under the bumper, beneath the surface. He winched the truck out of there, and to my amazement, after sitting in that mud hole a couple hours, it started. We completed the shuttle run, with a lot less cash than we started.

Mike later took the Tundra to an auto detailer that cleaned out all the mud and Mike drove that thing for years after. He got married a year or two later. From me, the happy couple received a hand-winch and length of tow cord. Don't know why that wasn't on the wedding-gift registry--it is something every couple needs, right?

 

[scoutergriz]

Some people never get stuck, because they don't drive anywhere slippery.

you've obviously never driven the backroads around Temagami- there's dozens of car graveyards up there from people that didn't make it. A buddy snapped his frame, losing half of the back axle and the ONLY tow truck around that would even consider it wanted $2000 in ADVANCE!

 

[ppine]

I have never driven in Ontario, but I have driven in the Yukon, BC and Alberta and Alaska. For the most part there are no tow trucks.
Same in the remote parts of the all of the western states. You are on your own. No cell phone service, no tow trucks.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

It certainly wasn't possible for me to travel in old vehicles on narrow mountain roads for 20 years in the snow, rain, mud and hail of March and April canoe trips without having many vehicular misadventures. I'll add a few more, beginning with strip joints and ending with bush planes.

Back to the Ford-Coachman van conversion I had from 1983-1996:

--> It was late Friday night after work and I was traveling to the West River in Vermont around '86. Stopped for a relief break at some bar in Massachusetts. It turned out to be a strip joint, with a packed parking lot and the population of India inside. Had a beer or two and went out to my van, only to find the back door smashed in. Someone had crunched me in the parking lot. The damage didn't affect driving and I went on to complete the canoe weekend on the West.

--> Around the same time frame, I was returning from a canoe trip in New England, driving down a steep winding hill outside of Pine Plains, NY. A deer ran out from the woods and smashed into the side doors of my van. Stopping as soon as I could, I detected no damage to my van and did not see the deer back up the road. If that deer had sprinted out one second earlier I would have hit it head on, likely with lots of damage, blood and gore. Fortunately, the deer seemingly just bounced off the side of the van.

--> The most dangerous accident was when I was scouting around the upper Hudson River in N.Y., looking at side streams, put-ins and take-outs. I was on a narrow, wet dirt road in a stream valley. The up-slope of the hill was on my right and a steep down-slope was on the other side of the road. I was driving in the middle of the road with my big vehicle.

Around a corner came an even bigger van, filled with customers and guests of kayak school and raft outfitter. It was also driving in the middle of the road, coming straight at me. I couldn't swerve much because of the up-slope on my side, so all I could do was brake and slide. The other guy did the same but reflexively swerved too far and went off the down-slope edge. His van began to tumble over into the stream valley but luckily got hung up at a 45 degree angle on a tree. I ran back and helped all the passengers safely exit from the teetering outfitter van. The other driver and I agreed that no one was at fault and that he'd radio his base for a tow truck. I drove on . . . shaken.

***************************

Moving on to canoe trip misadventures I've had with my current 1997 Dodge van conversion (the magic bus) with my Huki V1B solo outrigger canoe (called a va'a in Hawaiian).

I bought the customized outrigger in 2004, never even having seen one in person, much less having paddled one, because I wanted to get back to single blade paddling after eight years of sea kayaking, with which I was never comfortable physically or mentally. So I drove the magic bus from Connecticut to Sacramento, CA, to pick up the Huki and then paddled it all over California, Oregon, Wyoming, Minnesota. Lake Huron, Ontario, the Adirondacks and then back home, driving 10,000 miles over seven weeks.

The main hull of an outrigger is connected to the outrigger hull (ama) by two custom-bent aluminum tubes called iakos. Without the iakos, the entire $3,000+ craft is unpaddleable and useless.



For cartopping, the long iakos detach from the hull and ama and are replaced by two much shorter iakos, called stubby iakos. (Also, for the next misadventure, note the spare tire mounted on a steel rack on the back door.)




--> For several days I was paddling in the oceans, tidal rivers and lagoons around Eureka-Arcata-Trinidad in northern California. I met two trailer-traveling retired ladies who had kayaks at a campground, and we agreed to paddle the tidal Mad River together. (I've paddled Mad Rivers in California, Vermont and New Hampshire.)

We finished our run just as the creek was entirely emptying at low tide. I disassembled my long iakos and put them on the side of boat ramp while the ladies helped me put my stubby-iakoed boat on my van and tie it down, and I helped them do the same with their kayaks. We chatted a while, saying goodbye, as I was then immediately heading east out of Arcata along the Trinity River, which I had paddled in 1981, and into the lake country of the Trinity Alps.

I was 120 miles into the Trinity Alps and it was getting dark. Suddenly, I wondered: Do I have my iakos?

I looked in their storage place in the back of the van and, sure enough, they WEREN'T THERE!!! I must have left them on that boat ramp at low tide. My only recourse was to drive back to Arcata in the dark. So I did. Arriving back at the boat ramp the tide had risen about three or four feet and it was pitch black. The iakos had either been swept away by the tide or were under water.

I shined a flashlight on the water . . . and recoiled in horror . . . a gigantic severed fish head looking right at me, with huge dead eyes.

But I saw a black glint under the water. The iako's were still there, three or four feet under the high tide. I had no alternative but to submerge into that briny, fetid, mephitic, stinking water to pick up the iakos. HURRAY, my expensive boat and trip are saved!!! . . . but I'm soaking wet with stinking brine and it was midnight. So, that night, I stayed in a motel instead of my van for the first time on the trip.

--> Remember my spare tire on the van back door. I was daytripping with my Huki and an open canoe all over northern and central Florida in the spring of 2006. Exploring the bumpy dirt roads around Cape Canaveral on the east coast, looking for put-ins, I began to hear loud banging on my back door. The metal tire rack had rusted out and the spare tire and cover were dangling from one remaining rack arm. I couldn't get the tire off the rack because the bolts were too rusted for my wrench, and I couldn't rip the broken rack all the way off the door.

So, what to do, standing there in the middle of an estuarian nowhere? I decided to risk driving on to Jacksonville Beach, where I had lodging at my daughter's condo, with the spare tire banging and clonking the whole time, threatening to fall off in the middle of the road. I drove uncommonly slow, and thankfully the tire didn't fall off. Back in Jacksonville the next day, I found a cheap welding shop that fixed the tire rack for a relative pittance. It's probably ready to fall off again.

Later on during that marathon canoe driving trip, I got a flat tire while parked in Tallahassee for a spiritual meeting. AAA saved me.

*************************

For three consecutive years in the mid 1980's, I led whitewater day trips on the class 4 Rapid River in Maine, which connects Lower Richardson Lake to Umbagog Lake. The only convenient way to get to the put-in at the dam on Lower Richardson was to fly in from Umbagog near Errol, NH, on a bush plane, which could carry one canoe or kayak on each pontoon. I therefore had to limit the trip to six or eight boats. I personally paddled the river the first time in a Gyramax C1, the second time in a Whitesell Piranha, and the third time in a Blue Hole Sunburst II.

On the third trip, for some reason I can't recall, the plane could not use Umbagog Lake as the takeoff and landing place. Umbagog is huge, and the pilot, a retired Eastern Airlines pilot, could always make long runs on the water to take off and land at a long, shallow angle. This year he had to take off from a relatively tiny pond nearby.

That caused two vehicular (airplane) problems.

While five of us waited at the Richardson dam for a sixth tandem boat to arrive on the plane, it didn't. We waited and waited and waited. Meanwhile, the afternoon was marching on. Finally, the damkeeper got a radio call that the plane was unable to take off from the small pond in the prevailing winds with one large tandem canoe unbalancing the plane. So we launched and paddled.

In the longest and toughest rapid above a famous surfing hole called Smooth Ledge, I low braced the club's Sunburst II hard on a big wave, which ripped the entire Perception saddle right out of the hull. I swam . . . ignominiously . . . right into a group of squirt boaters at Smooth Ledge, who were practicing mystery moves under the tutelage of the famous Jim Snyder. I said hi and, joking weakly, told them I had just completed a mystery move without a boat.

The second adventure happened on the flight back to the pond. The pilot seemed a little nervous and admitted he had never landed on such a small pond with so much weight on his plane. "Well," he gulps, "if I want to be a bush pilot in my old age, I guess I'll have to use a bush pilot move, which I recall from my flight training 30 years ago." A "dipsydoodle" or some scary name like that. I'm bordering on terror, because I've always been nervous in small planes and have acrophobia. So, the pilot elevates over a hill, then plunges at a steep dive toward the pond, and then does a sharp level-out when he gets near the water surface. We skate to a halt before hitting the shore.

I live to paddle another day.

 

[Guest]

More vehicular misadventures. Our first tripping van was a Plymouth Voyager, the most base model 4 banger I could buy. It was brown, with a tan interior, colors my wife hated.

EK_0001 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

But it got us there and back, with a load of gear and two canoes on the rain guttered roof. Until it didn’t.

Coming out of the Machias it made is as far as southern Maine when things quickly went south. The speedometer died, then, seconds later, the tranny went.

The nearest transmission shop of an AAMCO, across the bridge in New Hampshire, and that’s where we had it towed. On a Saturday afternoon. An AAMCO that was closed on Sundays, and we needed to be back at work & school on Monday.

EK_0025 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

The guys in the shop immediately started a competition for who was coming in earliest on their day off. I told them I’d be there with coffee and a box of donuts before they opened, which made an interesting cab ride next morning from the motel.

They had it finished that afternoon, and we made it home it time for work and school.

Being the genius that I am we eventually upgraded our tripping van. To a 6-cylinder Grand Voyager, the last model year that had rain gutters.

Of course it still came with a Plymouth/Dodge transmission.

EK_0027 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

We were 30 miles of unmarked dirt road from where Jesus lost his sandle. Getting found by the tow truck was itself an adventure.

Eventually I got smarter, and bought a 5.4L V8 Ford E-150, a 2000 model still on the dealer lot in 2001. Still running 20 years later, and capable of carrying four canoes all gunwales down.

EK_0004 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr