Our trip was short- we only had a few days to take our 5 year old out of school and basketball, and get me away from work for a short time. A while back I asked the kids if they wanted to watch some rock racing, or some trophy trucks. At the time they were on a trophy truck kick so we headed down the Friday before the desert races and drove home the Tuesday after that(juust in time to many anything other than UTV power hour).
I was blown away by the amount of traffic that was already rolling in this early in the week:
The kids were practically bouncing off the walls of the motorhome with excitement, but somehow they managed to hold it together while we found camp and got setup.
In the morning we headed in the hammer town to look at some racecars and watch some of the slower classes leave the start. The kids were all in and I think this moment pretty much made the trip for my wife and I.
We also cruised around hammer town for a bit and the kids got to play in some cool stuff.
After that we set out across the desert to go see some desert trucks attempt heartbreak hill..... except I made it about 200 yards away from where people were camped and had my rear driveshaft blow up going slow through some pretty mild whoops. Don't think the whoops caused it, but probably my last local trip where I was trying to do wheelies on a metal teetertotter might have started the breakage and I didn't notice. Lucky for me, it broke at the centering yoke of the double cardan joint(I know, I know, it's going away soon). I pulled the driveshaft and drove back to camp in fwd. I was able to salvage the driveshaft with a new centering yoke, a new u joint, and some new bolts from a nearby napa. The cool part was the guys at the BFG Garage offered to put everything back together for me and even install it in the jeep for free.
One of my fellow BFG Garage Refugees:
It was pretty awesome to get to keep my kids entertained while someone else worked on my jeep.
One of my buddies has a pretty dialed in axial crawler and my 2.5 year old is good enough with RCs that he trusted him to drive it around the axial course.
That debacle took all day, but once it got sorted, we took her for a sunset shakedown cruise.
One of our buddies at camp is racing 4400 and he's pretty much our kid's hero, but more because of his exploits in this rig than racing
The next morning it was full speed ahead to have some actual KOH fun. The TTs were starting at noon, so we took a quick rip out to Turkey Claw. There was a crowd parked at the entrance, but no one on the course (maybe they thought it was closed?) so my buddy and I got it all to ourselves. We ripped up it quick before anyone else figured out it was open. Then had a chance to stop for a beer as the flood gates opened behind us.
We had just enough time to head back to hammer town, grab a pizza, and watch the trucks stage
The monster booth didn't have the best action for watching the start since the desert race was going the opposite way, but I had a sneaky spot to watch:
After that we had our own "desert race" out to watch everyone hit the Baldwin leap. I turned around and missed the one truck that sent it.
![Homersimpson :homer: :homer:](https://data.irate4x4.com/assets/smilies/homersimpson.gif)
(My youngest actually napped in the jeep the entire time this went on...so I'm stoked I'm still able to run a soft top and doors)
After that, the kids were smoked and the shadows were getting long, so we headed back to camp.
The next morning one of our local-ish buddies took us out to a trail called Blueberry. Hadn't done that one before. It had some good technical spots.
Back for lunch, and then we went with all the recovery homies to pre-run thor's hammer so they could figure out where the winching spots should be and who was going to park their rig where during the race.
Bottom of big johnson on the way in:
Headed up Thor's
We got to the top of that trail just as the sun went down
Annnd, that was it! Other than some night time turkey claw laps, and some minibike action around the lakebed, that was my KOH this year... and it was awesome, because my kids loved every minute of it and want to come back next year.
Packed up and headed home