I’m an idiot, pure and simple. For the past year, I’ve struggled with the simple task of backing my new camp trailer into the driveway. I always started out close to and parallel to the curb in front of my house, which, after driving the truck diagonally across the street, left the rear of the trailer near the entrance to the driveway as I began to back it in. This made it so that the trailer had to cut the corner of the driveway a little bit as I backed it in, which led me to make a heavy wooden ramp so that the trailer tires didn’t drop into the gutter. I always stressed about backing it in after each camping trip because it was so difficult to line up with the driveway and I often had to pull forward and go around the block a time or two in order to get it right. Living on a busy street made it worse because I was always blocking traffic as I fumbled to get the trailer into the driveway. The last time I had to back the trailer into the driveway, the wooden ramp broke. I knew I would either have to make a new one, or figure out how to do without it the next time.
After pulling the camp trailer back from Traci’s family reunion last weekend, it was time once again to back the trailer into the driveway. After putting it off for several days, I finally decided yesterday to wake up early today to do the chore. I did, however, figure out a better way of doing it. Instead of starting out close to the curb in front of the house, I would start out in the middle lane of the road. That should give me more room to line up the trailer before it gets to the driveway, but I was still stressing over it. I didn’t sleep well last night, and I’m sure it was because I was constantly worrying about backing that trailer into the damn driveway. Here’s an awesome drawing showing how I used to back it in (left) and what my new plan was for backing the trailer in:

My alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, and it was time to give it a try while traffic was light. What surprised me is that it worked so well. I managed to back the trailer into the driveway without having to cut the corner and without having to go around the block again to get lined up properly. I don’t know why it took me a year to figure out how to do it correctly, but it worked so well that I don’t think I’ll ever lose any sleep over it again. It seems ridiculous for me to even talk about it in-depth here, but it’s such a weight off my chest that I just had to mention it.
This afternoon after work I went for a drive in the truck. I’d driven past some old buildings near Mohrland twice in the past week, and I wanted to stop to check them out today. I also wanted to drive Burma Road, which runs from near Mohrland, south across the base of the mountains, to Huntington Canyon near the power plant. It turned out being a fairly uninteresting trip, so much so that I won’t even bother posting any photos. Burma Road was ok, with decent views of the Huntington area and into the Swell, but still nothing special. The area is similar to the maze of gravel roads around Price, and the landscape is dotted with gas wells. I hiked up the cattle/horse trail in Chris Otteson Hollow for about a third of a mile, but it was pretty hot and not worth staying for long in the heat. It might make a nice fall/winter hike later this year.