Week 181 - Tight Places Photo Collection - 01-31-2010

Big Rigs in Small Places,

RVs come in all sizes, from the pickup campers to Prevost-based dual axle buses. Heres the lineup small to large:
    Pickup campers range 14' to 20' for the camper plus the nose of the truck.
    Class B motorhomes are converted vans with raised roofs, 19 to 23 feet.
    Class C motorhomes are built on van chassis with lengths of up to 35 feet.
    Class A motorhomes like our Mothership (length 41') reach up to 45 feet.
    Prevost-based buses: The Prevost (Pray-Vo) company produces the outer shell and many companies build the interiors. They are the legal maximum of 45 feet.

    While the Prevosts look so much bigger than our motorhome, the Mothership with the Scooter on the back is 44 feet long!

Obviously, if you want to get to the smallest and tightest camps or attractions, you want the smallest vehicle. And today every one of the above vehicles can have slides, full bathrooms, A/C, flat screen TVs, kitchens and all of today's electronic goodies. As we live full time in ours, we chose the Big Rig motorhome with four slides. Now, you might think that this would limit our travels. But, far from it, we go just about anywhere! It definitely helps that we do not pull a car as it allows us to be adventurous in where we drive. While many RVers try to stay on freeways, we do just the opposite; we get off them wherever possible. This creates adventure (or stress) but rewards you with the local color.

For example, we were headed to the Garden of the Gods RV Park in Colorado Springs. The road signs were not good and we headed into the Garden of the Gods Park! The entrance road was a narrow right-hand sweeping turn that pointed right at a sign that said "No Buses or Motorhomes". Oops! 1) The rocks at the entrance to the park are too narrow for our motorhome to pass through. And the road had no turnaround and no shoulder. We sat parked on the road not knowing what to do. If we backed up around the curve, it was likely that a car would crash into us. But, we could not go forward. The Lord blessed us, as the first car to come behind us was a Driver Training car. The instructor come to our window and asked us what we were going to do. We told him we had no idea! He said "follow me, I'll get you through this". He pulled his car to the right toward the entrance. 2) Then he blocked the outgoing traffic and signaled for us to go in the exit. Once through the exit we followed him through the entire park. We got a lot of looks from many wondering how we managed to get into the park. A great adventure and a beautiful park.

North of Silver City, New Mexico by about one hour is the Whitewater Canyon in the Gila National Forest. This canyon is tight even for people. Much of the canyon has cantilevered catwalks to allow for your passage. This is a must do 2.3 mile hike when in the area.

A fairly short drive from Silver City is the City of Rocks which has many tight places. Not a good place to be during an earthquake. If you come here, bring a few friends as this would be a fantastic place to play adult Hide and Go Seek.

Now, back to the Mothership. Make sure you know your vehicle height and read the signs before crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The 17 mile route has two one-mile long tunnels under the ocean. This is tight fit from top to bottom and side to side. Our vehicle is just a few inches shorter than this tractor-trailer.

Cities, in general, can have very narrow streets. Many times they expand to four lanes where only two were before, trimming the lanes from 12 to 10 feet. With a 8 1/2 foot width motorhome, it doesn't leave much room. This was the case below in the Bronx. The Bronx? No one told us not to got there! This is an adventure you might just want to go around.

1) Once out of New York we got onto a spacious highway that, without warning, channeled us right into this Connecticut town. Narrow? Yes and the people there were as surprised as we were to see us maneuvering through their streets. One nice thing about being large is, if possible the cars will move out of your way. 2) There was no choice in Kennebunkport but to travel on this street. As you can see we were in good company with another motorhome leading the way. We attempted to stop to have Maine lobster. However, we had to drive 3 miles just to find an illegal parking area large enough to stop. Lobster will have to wait.

To say that Jeff and MaryEllen's home in Piqua, Ohio, has a narrow driveway would be accurate. Here Jeff clears the way and this was on the way out!

Ahhhh, California's Hwy 1 from San Luis Obispo to Monterey. This is one of the most beautiful drives in the world as you have a view of the ocean from high places for over 100 miles. However, you must travel about 10 miles of the road north of Ragged Point where you have to take both lanes on some of the curves. This is definitely worth it. We have taken this road twice, but note that both times we traveled North. If you go South your passenger will be looking over the cliff in many places. Enjoy!

At first glance, you might think these two photos were from the same camp. But, no! 1) The San Francisco RV Park sites were so narrow that you could barely open your slides. Daily rate? $67 (04-2008) for EWSC (electric, water, sewer and cable TV). 2) On the right the same size sites with EW was at the Eugene, Oregon Elks at $10. Yeah for the Elks.

Our friend and motorhome mentor, Bill, has one nice site in his backyard. It is gorgeous with grass and trees, electric, water and sewer. 2) Tight? We had two feet left after we closed the gate.

1) This road leads to the Newhalen Camp in the North Cascades in Washington state. This bridge is long, only one lane wide and has no sign that says it safe for a motorhome to pass over. We decided it would be okay and sped across to find a beautiful state park with very large asphalt pads. 2) Road work on Washington State Hwy 20 squeezed us into a lane about 9 1/2 feet wide. Fortunately, it was okay to go as slow as 5 mph to insure that we didn't scrap the sides of the Mothership.

California Hwy 168 coming from Neveda toward Bishop, CA travels through this wilderness area. In a few places the road narrows to a single lane. Not a problem and it is very beautiful.

1) Alaska and the Yukon are huge with big wide roads. But the free ferry from Dawson City, Yukon over to the Top of the World highway is tiny. On our ride it carried our motorhome, a class C motorhome and two cars. 2) We chose this site at Caribou RV Park in Whitehorse, Yukon. The park had only 30 amps so we could only use one air conditioner and it was hot. So we squeezed into this site and opened only two slides and we stayed very cool.

One of our favorite sites back home in Paso Robles, is Janice and Frank's house. The first time we parked here, we started clipping trees on the public road a half mile away from their house. Each subsequent trip we have had to trim the fast growing oaks in order to fit in. Frank is doing the honors here.

Okay, so sometimes tight places can hurt. This is what the Mothership looked like after Pete scraped a two feet tall pole in a San Diego city parking lot. This repair cost $6,000! Here is a lesson in Inflation. In 1966 $6,000 would buy you four fully-loaded VW Bugs! Ouch! And what we got was 10 feet of new panels. That ruins our new book, "The USA on $5 a day".

Just to let you know, Pete loves these adventures and looks forward to more while Ellen really doesn't but is a good sport about going along. Pete loves her!

And we love sharing with you; thanks for coming along. This week we are in Hemet, CA playing volleyball. We will be moving on soon to new places and will be bringing you new photos, new parks and new adventures.

Love, Pete and Ellen

Photos from 2007 to 2009