The little city of Corning in northern California lies about 100 miles south of majestic Mt Shasta, and the I-5 highway goes right past downtown. It is surrounded by olive orchards and advertises itself as the “Olive City” with a great place called the Olive Pit selling sandwiches with muffaleta, assorted jars of olives, and many different flavors of olive oil.

We made the five-hour drive from Grants Pass in Oregon, stopping overnight in Corning, before proceeding next day on to Marina, south of Santa Cruz, near Monterey.

Our sole evening in Corning was enlivened by having both batteries in our massive Ford F350 failing. Well, to be truthful, one of them had probably failed sometime earlier, and then the second gave up the ghost right then.

Anyway, from the grime and the “FoMoCo” labels they both appeared to be original equipment. The truck is now 4 years old with 120,000 miles on it; for the rest of the world that translates to 4,000,000,000 km? 🙂

At any rate, $400 at the local AutoZone and an hour’s work later in the parking lot, and we had a brighter outlook on the evening.

Next morning, it was time to move on. We quickly got everything packed up, and Kellyn walked over to the nearby Starbucks to pick up morning beverages, while I planned to meet her there in the parking lot with the truck and trailer.

As I was pulling out of our campsite, I glanced upward in the mirror and noticed a tree whose boughs were going to collide with the driver’s side of the fifth-wheel trailer, so I retreated. I reversed back into the campsite, and then swung wide to the right, determined to give the tree and its boughs a wide berth.

I turned successfully, giving those boughs a wide berth, but I had failed to notice is that there was another tree to the right, on the passenger side. I was busy congratulating myself on manuevering around the tree that I could see on the driver’s side, when I heard CRASH!

Perhaps you’ve heard the ancient Greek myths about Scylla and Charybdis. Sailors steering clear of the six-headed monster Scylla would fall into the whirlpool vortex of Charybdis, and so the myth became a parable about maintaining situational awareness when confronted with an obvious danger. Well, I saw ol’ Scylla plain as day, but I missed the hidden Charybdis, positioned exactly right for anyone swerving to avoiding Scylla.

Now that I think of it, I wish I had taken a permanent marker and put names on those two trees.

At any rate, the fifth-wheel was pinned up against the other tree, and one of the two awnings on that side was crushed…

One of the employees of the RV park was raking leaves nearby, and she ran and called for her colleagues to help. Several more folks came to see the damage, and we quickly decided that moving the rig forward or back would increase the damage and likely rip the damaged awning clean off, so we decided that the tree bough had to be cut down. Serves you right, Charybdis…

It didn’t take long. The folks at the RV park had a chain-saw and a ladder.

And so finally the bough was removed and we were able to reverse the fifth-wheel back into the site. At that point, I had had enough of trying to maneuver past those two trees, so instead we decided to continue reversing in order to exit out the same way we had entered the night before.

Using nylon ties, which are the handiest things in the world (alongside duct tape and WD40), we strapped the bits ‘n pieces of the damaged awning to the side of the trailer. We’ll order a new awning, and make an appointment in a few weeks time at an RV service facility up the road.

Within a month or so, everything should be as good as new, and we’ll be on to the next mishap or crisis…