quicksand

Sometime in late July they had to dig up, remove, and replace the sewage plumbing in my spot. The RV park was built in the 1950's and tree roots had finally pinched the pipes. There were a few blockages that were snaked leading up to the final discovery. The snake would not push thru and there was mud on the tip when it was pulled back.

This is what caused an entirely different problem for me almost two months later. At the time I had moved for a few days while it was repaired. In mid to late August monsoon season hit and there was some settling of the earth which was expected. It wasn't until the last storm of the season hit three weeks ago that I almost lost my trailer to the earth. Unfortunately I only had time to shoot the one photo below before I went into crisis mode and had to save my trailer.

It was my weekend off and had been pouring rain nonstop for a day and a half. Technically it was my Sunday. I was left in the morning to run my usual weekend errands and returned around lunch. I made a nice bowl of clam chowder and settled in to watch a few episodes of Orange is the New Black. I think about four or five hours had passed when I finally stood up and noticed that the trailer seemed to be leaning towards the driver side. I went outside to check and saw that my leveler wasn't visible and my tire had sank. I live between the park managers and consulted them for advice. We were surprised that it had sank at all given all the storms we've had in between thus far and all agreed that it wouldn't sink any more. A minute after I climbed back in I felt the trailer shift downward on that side again. When I jumped out to look, the bottom half of my tire wasn't visible. Panic mode kicked in and I scrambled to unhook and move it as fast as I could. When I did, I was able to move it forward about a tire length and had only created a canal. The upside to that is that my sewage pipes weren't snapped off, with the downside being that I was almost flat on the ground on that side. I managed to back up enough to slip a short board with some rocks underneath and climb back onto firmer land. I moved temporarily to another spot for a few days while they fixed it. In addition to more gravel a lot of road base was applied to the trench which makes the earth set more like concrete. I'm back in my old spot again and have been for a few weeks now. 

It's good to be terra firma again!