I often enjoyed going along with my older brothers on their adventures, but sometimes they didn’t end up so well. This one left us stuck in the mud!
It was winter, and it was frigid outside. The ground was frozen, and it was a Saturday. We were eating breakfast together, when my brother Jacob asked if he and some of the youth guys could go to nearby Shafter Lake, which is a salt flat, with their trucks to spin around on it. (It is closed to the public, but at the time we didn’t know that.) Dad said he could, but warned him to be careful.
I’m not sure why the guys let us come along, but my cousin Katie and I somehow convinced them to let us go too. It was going to be fun! Once we got there, Jacob pulled up onto the salt flat right away and started pulling donuts. It was great fun! Two other guys had brought their trucks, but one wasn’t allowed to drive it onto the flats, and the other was cautious. Katie hopped into Jacob’s truck and we went again! Only this time, when Jacob was driving back to the road that led to the pump jack, he followed his tracks and the tires started to spin. Not good!
Stuck!
The thing about the salt flat is that the mud is super sticky. Rather than packing the mud down and providing a safe place for him to drive as Jacob assumed it would, the tires simply sank further in.
So now we were stuck in the mud! We all climbed out of the truck. We weren’t sure what to do. My cousin Rick decided to try to pull it out with his truck. I don’t remember what we used, but we found something to try to pull the truck out. It didn’t work. In fact, things got worse. Rick’s truck got stuck!
I honestly don’t remember the order that things happened. I do remember that Jacob was very determined to get out without Dad’s help! We all ended up stuffed into a truck (there were at least eight of us) driving to pick up chains to pull the trucks out. Well, that didn’t work. Then the guys decided to use one of their bosses’ tractors to pull it out. So back to being stuffed in the truck. But the tractor wouldn’t start.
That’s when the boys decided that enough was enough. They dropped Katie and me off at the house, and went back, this time with adult help. Neither truck was super stuck so with the help of a winch truck, it didn’t take long to pull the trucks out.
What started out as a fun adventure, turned quickly into a not so fun experience, but now it’s the type of thing we look back on and laugh about!
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