jeepin.jason

It’s 10PM New Mexico time and after a long day of wheelin’ and a good dinner, the only thing I want to do right now is crash into bed. We had a great time today. The morning started with fog and rain, but within an hour or three it had burned off and the skies were clear and the temps warmed up. Our trail today was rated a “hard” hard, and I think it lived up to that rating. The obstacles were considerably more difficult than yesterday, and there were lots more of them. They were mostly rocky ledge drop offs, but we also had a few good ledge climbs too. Oddly enough, there were a lot of the same folks from yesterday in our trail group today, including the Poison Spyder crew and our previous trail leader, who played tailgunner this time.

I actually did more hiking than driving today… Jennifer snagged the driver’s seat while I was away from the Jeep too long during a morning break, and ended up driving for most of the rest of the day. She got to drive on all the best parts of the trails today, but it was ok as it gave me a good opportunity to snap some good photos and video. Funny thing is, despite running better trails and me hiking around with a camera the whole time, I ended up only taking about 98 or so photos today, vs the 150 from yesterday when I was driving. They’ve all been uploaded to flickr of course.

There were was really obstacle that we decide to bypass, and it was a huge ledge drop-off. Out of the 30 or so Jeeps in our group, I only know of 3 that went down the ledge. The interesting part was when the battery in a Scrambler came loose halfway down the ledge and flopped forward onto the inner fender well, causing sparks to shoot out from under the hood. No damage was done and the guys got it secured back pretty quickly.

Today was definitely longer than yesterday too, I think we logged about 50-60 miles total, and didn’t get off the trails until about 4PM. We racked up lots more scrapes and scratches on the body armor, and managed to put a dent in one of my RE LCA’s (the T&T Customs high-clearance long-arms on my buddy Rick’s XJ were looking better and better as the day went on).

Well, that’s all for today, time to hit the sack and get ready for our last day of wheelin’.