By Chief

Murphy's Law is nearly always an adventure. Like its namesake, you just never know what it will come up with next. As we headed out Friday morning, the anticipation was mounting as to what we would encounter. Our first mistake was leaving the lot before the Law Enforcement Officer finished his donut and got out of his car to tell us to leave the lot. He pulled up, turned his lights on, and we took off. First day jitters. I'm sorry. We had a really good group of Jeeps and drivers, and I had my trusted assistant John and his wife Stephanie.

The trail was pretty dry so I really didn't expect any trouble. Murphy was meeting us at the trail head. He was scouting ahead to see if we might find any limbs down since the last running of the trail. It was easy to tell where Gary was because, in his gracious caring way, he had installed a "bug fogger" on his Jeep to clear all the bugs ahead of the rest of the Jeeps. It kinda smelled like oil burning but Gary assured us it was the latest in insect control technology. As we wound around the creek bed, I heard a call on the radio. Gary was in trouble. He had missed one of the entrances to a drop-off and was in a "Jeep size" hole, nearly rolled over. Gary had exited the Jeep and was not injured when I finally found him. He advised that there was no need to call the other Jeeps over, but I saw a good chance to put on a Jeep recovery class, much to Gary's chagrin . We got Gary right side up and continued on. As we hit "carburetor alley", we took a little break and let everyone try it who wanted to. It was pretty forgiving this go-around, not like the springtime runs. The "waterfall" presented a rather interesting picture as a huge, bright green bullfrog hitch-hiked a ride on the nerf bar on one of the Jeeps. It rode up the fall and sat there for pictures. Pretty cool. It was a nearly perfect day of "jeeping". No major problems and, thanks to Gary, no bugs.

On Saturday we made sure to wait patiently for the Law Enforcement Officer to signal us to proceed and we met Gary at the trail head. I had a very special rider this day as Virginia, Gary's mother, rode with me. All was going well until we arrived at "carburetor alley". It was so much fun Friday we thought we would try a little more "wall crawling". It's amazing how fast a Jeep will just roll over in certain situations. In the "alley", you really can't do any damage, but if you get “too much wall", over you go. Several of us, yes I said us, took that ever-so-gentle roll. Virginia's comment? "One more time!!!"

After a lunch break at Virginia's house (thank you, again) we headed for the "timber" section. This is my favorite part of the trail, as we twist and turn around the creek bed and climb "two-winch hill" and "rock hill". It was a hot day, but a good day of jeeping. We were blessed with good Jeeps and drivers both days. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. Thank you, John and Steph, and especially Gary and Virginia for letting us run on your ground.