Little Miss Creativity

Many people know me as the Farm Lady but I'm also known as Little Miss Creativity - well, actually I just adopted that name for myself today.  The thing is, I am very creative when it comes to problem solving. Some of this I learned during Peace Corps days but living on our farm really honed that skill.  Like most farmers, I was always figuring out how to do things, using what we had and adapting.
This week I really put my mind to figuring out a couple of problems with my popup.  This first was a problem with hitching.  I'm by myself when camping and depend on the screen in my Explorer to show what's behind me as I backup.  The problem I have is seeing the coupler - everything is black on the trailer hitch including the coupler and really difficult to clearly see it. I talked to Larry and we decided to put orange paint on it.  This was a huge help.  I hitched with only 2 attempts and  I think that's pretty good for a novice doing  it alone.  I mean, you have to be so exact with placement of the ball under the coupler - geez, I'm good!

Ok, that was one problem taken care of but I had a bigger one and that was backing up the trailer - a real nightmare for most of us beginners.  I have some theories about this subject - I've given it a lot of thought.  I truly believe that someone who is knowledgeable should give instruction and then go away. Too much help can just be confusing.  Larry gave me the basics, tried to continue helping but that didn't work.  I need to stop and think - ok, I want the back end of the trailer to go right so, I need to turn the wheel in opposite direction.  Every time I have to change direction, I have to go through this thought process.  If I'm given enough time and I'm not being watched I'm not too bad.  I just want to be left alone, for example, first camping trip, ready to back up and some old guy places himself behind my trailer and starts giving hand signals.  I thought, "what the hell, leave me alone".  In my opinion when someone tries to do that it just causes confusion.  So, what to do - well,  I came up with a solution, orange pails.  I was at Maumee in Ohio and was backing my trailer into my site cement pad - should have been relatively easy as it was basically a straight shot but, what a mess.  I just couldn't see what I was doing - had no reference point.  Now, genius that I am, I decided to place one pail on one side of the area that I'm backing into and another pail on the other side.  Now I can look at the side mirrors, see the pails and know where I'm headed.  Tried it out and it works.  This is not to say the backing up issue is resolved because it's not - backing a trailer is a struggle but this pail idea is going to be a big help.  So, onward and upward, enjoying my solo camping adventures and trying to confront and resolve the problems I face.