No RVs Over 30 feet!

When a sign says "No RVs over 30 feet" it's a good idea to continue on and look for another place to park. The experience we had a few days ago in a Newport, RI parking lot could have ended some marriages, possibly even lives. Sitting at the gate and seeing other RVs in the lot, I decided to ignore the sign and maneuver our ship through this mangled parking lot.
The lot was the site of some kind of gas line repair and as a result half of the lot was partitioned by some kind of drive-over plumbing. Pipes ran into one side then under the driving surface and out the other side. It created a type of channel to drive through, 10 feet wide with 1 foot tall curbs on either side. An ingenious design, that works perfectly, unless you are trying to pull a trailer over it at an odd angle.
The device, the lane of utility work, became my personal hell for the next half hour. With my patient wife on one end of our two-way radios and a women on a cell phone looking on, I drove onto the ramp. Once the RV made it all the way into the lane, it was time for the trailer to follow it through. This is exactly the point when things became interesting for the women on the phone and difficult for me.
On my first pass, the leveling jack on the trailer would not clear the corner of the curb, and looking back I should have backed all the way out and tried another approach. Instead, I made a small adjustment and tried to pull through again. This led to a series of back and forth adjustments, that would eventually end with a fresh dent on the front of the trailer where I pinched it with the rear of the RV. It matches the one on the other side perfectly. We also now have steps on the trailer that slant slightly toward the rear of the trailer after having collided with end of the ramp. That collision however turned out to be the spring board to finally freeing us this trap. After I bent the steps, I backed up in an attempt to just get out completely. Becky told me she thought the steps would now clear if we went forward, and we did. We managed to get into another part of the parking lot, a portion that we soon realized would probably trap us if a few more cars parked near us. It was then we decided it would be best if we just left.
There were times when we were on that orange utility torture device, that I thought we might never get off. I thought I might have to unhitch the trailer and leave it there. I had thoughts of putting out the awning and starting a campfire. We had already spent more time in that lot then we had in some of our campsites. I thought that it was slightly unfair that they charged me for an hour of parking, because we really never stopped moving.
Having made it out of the parking lot, I wish I had a photo of that pathway to share with everyone, but it really wasn't one of those moments when you think of grabbing the camera, unless that is of course you are the women standing there with your cell phone.