Using our “Get Out of Jail Free Cards”

Well, it finally happened. Seven months and several close calls into “van living”, we got stuck in the mud.

Aint gonna lie, while some folks take this sort of thing in stride, I have fretted over the possibility of getting stuck in some remote spot since the get-go. (And we did, in fact, get stuck the van in our own driveway once upon a time, before this crazy brave adventure even got underway.)

This worry caused us to avoid some (probably awesome) wild places. It has also caused a some tension as we headed down this road or that, me gripping the yikes bar, gritting my teeth and expecting the worst.

We all have our hot button issues. Mine is getting our home hopelessly stuck on some remote road. I have met people who enjoy pushing their vehicles limits, getting themselves stuck just for the “fun” of digging and squirming and revving back out. Not me. At the first sign of mud or sand or other sticky condition, I am all about the quick turn around. And the “we’ll find some safer spot”. And the “let’s not push it, a parking lot is fine, really, just fine”.

My worry comes from experience. In my late teens and 20s, I got stuck on muddy, snowy forest service roads several times… by myself… with no idea what to do. I was lucky to have gotten help from local folks along the way, but I still remember the sinking feeling that goes along with actually sinking– well, sliding– off the road, the “ugh” of spinning wheels. The frantic cramming of rocks and twigs and debris under the wheels. And for the last 20 some years we got stuck at least once a year on our very own muddy/snowy small town roads back home. It is not an unfamiliar feeling.

Because these things are ever fresh in my mind, Dan and I got ourselves some shiny new recovery boards before we started off. Along with a tire deflator, tow chain, and folding shovel, the recovery boards are a key part of our emergency gear. One of our last van build projects was screwing these into our rooftop deck.

And there they remained through fall and winter, untouched for over seven months. We thought about them often though. When we hit a hairy stretch of road, those recovery boards were our ace in the hole. Sand up ahead? We have recovery boards. Muddy stretch? Recovery boards. Warning about the road on iOverlander? Recovery boards. We started calling them our “get out of jail free cards” because they felt like– a bit of last-ditch good fortune up there on the roof.

But we were still pretty cautious in our rough-road travel and never actually used them.

Then, on a sunny spring day in Kentucky, of all places, that changed. We’d just arrived at Hartig Wildlife Preserve, a lovely 500 acre tract of wild land just a hop, skip and jump from Cincinnati, Ohio.

To reach our free spot, we drove a progressively more challenging road. At first it was patched and lumpy but paved. In places, it reduced to a single lane due to washouts and flooding that ate away whole sections of road. But, no worries; we took it slow.

Once we reached Hartig Preserve, we left the pavement behind, but continued on solid gravel a ways. Up some steep, rocky sections…. then some very steep and quite rocky sections.

Finally, on a high grassy hill with a view of the Ohio River valley and no one else around, we found our camp and left the road entirely.

It all would have been fine if we had just stopped there. However, the spot was tilty, really tilty, and we had the idea to re-orient the van so as to minimize the extreme tilt.

Alas, as is the case in pencil drawing, cake decorating and novel writing, the more we messed with it, the worse it got. One thing led to another and soon Steven’s nose was facing down hill and those back wheels were spinning and kicking up clots of grass. There was no way we were backing up. No choice but for Dan to head downhill and then drive back up just to get back to where we’d been to start with.

But that didn’t work.

Pretty soon we were dug into the hillside. The macho treads on our new tires didn’t help a bit. Obscured by gummy Kentucky mud, they spun in the broken ground.

We were stuck.

Now, being socked in on a beautiful Kentucky hillside in view of the Ohio river and just about within sight of the city of Cincinnati is not such an awful thing. In the grand scheme of traveling, it’s nothing at all, a blip on a vast horizon of goodness.

But it was our first blip. And we felt it.

Dan set to work unscrewing the “get out of jail free cards” from the roof rack. This was more challenging than expected as they had been stuck on there through wind, rain and snow, not to mention 13,000 miles of driving.

He wasn’t all that worried, repeating that “we had plenty of time to fix it” as if the getting unstuck part was a foregone conclusion. I wasn’t feeling all that certain. Our “get out of jail free cards” had never actually gotten us out of anything. We didn’t even know if they would work. I for sure wasn’t feeling the “brave” part of the adventure.

To manage my stress level, I took a walk with the dog. Unfortunately, Milo and I found a muddy trail that led down hill. Ruts and tire tracks told the story of other vehicles in much the same predicament as ours. Turns out, that Kentucky clay, hidden beneath a beautiful layer of new spring grass, was no joke.

When I returned, the traction boards were off the roof and ready to be deployed. We dug under the wheels with our trusty little folding shovel. Then I scraped as much clay off the tires as I could, digging it out of the treads so that they’d be thaaaat much more grippy when the time came.

It took a while. And several tries before we were able to crawl up onto those traction boards and back up the hill. But– Woohooo!— they worked! The traction boards actually bunched up like the a Loony Toons road under Roadrunner’s revving feet, and Steven lurched up the hill. Hooray! I wish I had a video for you, but the moment got away from me.

Despite the stress of getting stuck, the whole episode gave us some confidence. We did in fact get out of jail free. No tow truck or outside help needed. No long-term stuckness either. But we didn’t feel like pushing it. The next few days at Hartig Preserve we slept on the safe part of the hill, tilt and all. This was a beautiful camp spot full of hiking trails, fossil rocks, and old barns, worth a little tilt and a minor misadventure.

I hope that the next time we are driving down some wild and wooly road, I will think about “that time we rescued ourselves” and feel a little more confident. After all the best spots are always down those wild and wooly roads.