That red semi tractor so visibly parked at Prineville Reservoir is moving on – but only after a bit of help to get unstuck

Retired couple hits the road again after spending first summer as campground hosts

PRINEVILLE, Ore. (KTVZ) – We recently solved a minor mystery about the bright red semi tractor visible in the Prineville Reservoir State Park live webcam view all summer long. It belongs to the campground hosts, who are moving on as the season ends – but first, their rig needed a bit of help, to get unstuck.

Launa Beaty said park hosts John and Judy Shinn’s tractor was temporarily stuck in place after a long, hot summer at rest.

So Ranger Drew Witmer stepped up Saturday evening and used his pickup and a tow line to dislodge the immobile rig, so the pair can hit the road once again.

“We’ll miss them and their big red truck,” Beaty said.

Retiree John Shinn, 66, says he and his wife of 46 years don’t have a house anymore, so they’ll be parking the trailer and staying with their daughter in Powell Butte before another park host stay starting Nov. 1.

Shinn said Sunday that he was indeed a trucker “a long time ago,” but added, “That was never my truck – we bought it used for towing the trailer.”

And they’ve been traveling all over Oregon and Washington, after years spent working for AT&T but not staying in one place for too long: “We’ve lived in The Dalles, Scappoose, Brookings, Roseburg – every seven or eight years we moved around.” He still does some work on the side, on the road.

This actually was the couple’s first summer as Prineville Reservoir’s campground hosts, so they were told it was fine to park the tractor in the overflow parking area, where people often put their boat trailers.

As it turned out, Shinn said, “I backed up a little too far, off the hard pan and into the sand.”

Whoops.

But he also parked the tractor in that spot not knowing that over time it would become quite a large, bright-red conversation piece in the foreground of the park’s webcam shot.

“My grandson lives in Powell Butte and told me, ‘Grandpa, your truck’s on the news every day!’ Other people I knew in Central Oregon said, ‘Is that your truck?’”

Shinn joked, “We thought about getting it unstuck, turning it around and facing the opposite direction, just to get people talking.”

But a bit more seriously, he said, “I’ve got to put in a plug: Central Oregon is lucky to have Prineville Reservoir, because it’s one of Oregon’s nicest parks.”

So Shinn figures “we’ll be on the camera” again, when they return to Prineville Reservoir as hosts next summer.

But with one difference: “I’m not going off the asphalt again.”