Tight Windy Roads

myredracer wrote:
You mean like the "Old man drives his trailer into a narrow winding "small cars only" road and gets stuck" FW owner, lol? :) See the whole rescue on youtube here. Entertaining!

Always watch the road signage and if a road starts to look questionable, stop. If you have to back up, use a spotter. A backup camera may or not help. Our Garmin GPS gives us warnings in advance. If you miss a planned turn and think you can simply take the next turn coming up, don't assume it will be okay as an alternative. Checking road conditions in advance on the internet can help a lot. A secondary type road on a map may *look* fine but can be a road from hell when you get on it. Carrying a laptop and having a mobile hotspot/mifi can really help. Know your turning radius and if you have to, take a corner wide even if you have to cross the center line (oncoming traffic permitting). If using a GPS, make dang sure you have the destination correctly programmed into it and don't assume it will always get you there without issues. I always go over paper maps in advance so I have at the min., a basic idea of where we're going and if something isn't clear, I'll take a closer look along with more info.

That was just just a case of bad driving right there. Nothing more. He should have never went through the tunnel be clearly he made it. The turn should not have stopped him. I have a turn that I go around when I go to Dale Hollow that is sharper than that. I can literally see the tail lights on the boat behind the RV looking out my driver side window.

To the OP. Rand Mcnally makes a map that we use that's called "Large Scale Motor Carriers' Road Atlas" The pages are laminated and it has truck routed marked, restricted routes , low clearance and also city to city mileage.

Road atlas

transamz9 wrote:

myredracer wrote:
You mean like the "Old man drives his trailer into a narrow winding "small cars only" road and gets stuck" FW owner, lol? :) See the whole rescue on youtube here. Entertaining!

Always watch the road signage and if a road starts to look questionable, stop. If you have to back up, use a spotter. A backup camera may or not help. Our Garmin GPS gives us warnings in advance. If you miss a planned turn and think you can simply take the next turn coming up, don't assume it will be okay as an alternative. Checking road conditions in advance on the internet can help a lot. A secondary type road on a map may *look* fine but can be a road from hell when you get on it. Carrying a laptop and having a mobile hotspot/mifi can really help. Know your turning radius and if you have to, take a corner wide even if you have to cross the center line (oncoming traffic permitting). If using a GPS, make dang sure you have the destination correctly programmed into it and don't assume it will always get you there without issues. I always go over paper maps in advance so I have at the min., a basic idea of where we're going and if something isn't clear, I'll take a closer look along with more info.

That was just just a case of bad driving right there. Nothing more. He should have never went through the tunnel be clearly he made it. The turn should not have stopped him. I have a turn that I go around when I go to Dale Hollow that is sharper than that. I can literally see the tail lights on the boat behind the RV looking out my driver side window.

To the OP. Rand Mcnally makes a map that we use that's called "Large Scale Motor Carriers' Road Atlas" The pages are laminated and it has truck routed marked, restricted routes , low clearance and also city to city mileage.

Road atlas

Sure looks like he had enough room. Must have been freaked out because he just trashed his rig, and thus missed the curve.

Wonder what his wife had to say about it all?

drsteve wrote:


Sure looks like he had enough room. Must have been freaked out because he just trashed his rig, and thus missed the curve.

Wonder what his wife had to say about it all?

HA! I would be single after that. LOL

My wife is the navigator and typically "drives" the routes on screen ahead of time using Google Maps.

And we pay attention to road signs as they whiz past.

You should also listen to local info. My aunt tried to warn me of "the back wy up the mountain" to Monte Sano State Park in Huntsville, AL. She was telling me (in the background while I was talking to her daughter/my cousin) about how terrible it is, tight and twisty. I didn't heed her advice.

2 weeks into owning a 42' fifth wheel (coming from a pop-up camper before that) and we hit that road. It went from small to smaller and ultimately had 1 horrid switchback. We made it through and I gained a lot of confidence.. but man, I still wish I had listened!

The switchback:
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.7477732,-86.5295227,3a,75y,210.42h,73.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBiCXJuE6994VFdp9ocYiig!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Not being a GPS user (that's cheating), most paper road maps have notes on them noting steep and narrow roads. I will use Google maps once in a while. Then there are the signs on the narrow road "suggesting" that trailers aren't recommended or even prohibited. Blew by one of those in southern Utah and they weren't kidding, very steep, almost lost the brakes.

On Route 66 east of Oatman, the road is narrow and curvey, semi's aren't supposed to be on it, but met one on one of those curves. Or for fun you can go thru Jerome Arizona squeeze around corners in town, then head south on 89 and hit more tight curves and steepness. Then there's the highway that heads south from I-70 near Green River Utah down to Monument Valley where the signs say no trailers. They are right on this one cause as it descends off of a mesa, its, dirt, much of it one lane and really steep. Fun to drive solo though.

My problem is I see those "don't do it" signs to be a challenge to my manhood and driving prowess. Wife usually prevails though. Never had a ticket or accident so I am very careful at all times.