willis_racing and I headed out early Thursday morning from New Mexico. Pretty uneventful drive other than some interesting encounters with law enforcement. We had an Arizona state trooper pull us over as we got into Flagstaff. There were a ton of troopers in the median and I was going the speed limit, but one pulled out and started following us as soon as we passed by. As soon as I passed a semi while going the speed limit he lit us up. He came up to the truck and started going on about some bullshit that I cut off the semi and that is was dangerous because the semi is going to win. He was pretty cool though and chatted us up about the Bronco II and the dirt bike. He still gave me a written warning though even though it was obviously a fishing exercise
When we got to the California port of entry, we got a weird agent that was grilling us about the most bizarre things. She was upset that there was some mud on the front tires on my Bronco II from loading it up in my muddy driveway before we left. She said that if we left California, we would have to wash it before we could come back in, but then proceeded to let us through
We set up camp in the Heights since it sounded like that is where a lot of other members would be. Definitely a lot better dust-wise than being down on the lake bed.
We went and found
Pinzguy and got him moved over to our spot. We also went and found
Arickvan and hung out for a bit at his camp. Sorry we were lame and didn't go to hang out at Backdoor, but we were pretty beat after getting up early and driving all day. He showed us where Austin was camped at so we could harass him later
The next day we watched the EMC from Chocolate Thunder and Turkey Claw and screwed around with some RCs. We also got to watch some dude LARPing as a racer put on a spectacular show on how to get a YXZ stuck on the spectator hill at Chocolate Thunder
the heckling got pretty rough, but no one chucked any beer bottles at him. We got to see
JR4X coming down turkey claw shortly after two of the Ford-backed Broncos and thought he was in 3rd or 4th place, but it turned out he was having a rough day and was just completing his first lap. We ran over to the pits in hammer town and chatted with
Pitbullcruiser and
Hodgiemoto. We didn't get to meet
JR4X , but we got to talk a bit with his father Shawn which was pretty cool. Afterwards we hunted down
Austin at his camp and got to meet his wife and
SurfnSnow as well. It was awesome to finally meet the man behind the Website and Austin was super cool and hooked us up with tons of swag. Thanks again!
That night we got to see someone in a UFO car making multiple high speed passes right by our camp which was pretty bad ass.
Our group all agreed that we had done the spectating thing on Friday and that watching the main race on the livestream back home was better than in person. We decided to go check out Cougar Buttes instead and screw around in our rigs. I am not sure if it was Blue Berry we found on our way to Cougar Buttes, buy
Pinzguy let me drive his 1 ton JK on 40"s up it which was pretty cool of him
I immediately laid it on it's side with encouragement from him, and taco-ed the tie rod a little further down the trail. I pulled it straight with my Bronco II and we found a nice spot to chill and screw around some more with the RCs.
On Sunday we decided to hike Bloody Mary and Dead Blow to see what all the fuss was about. Bloody Mary was nuts
it looked like someone had recently attempted the gate keeper rocks, but had a major blow out at the top based on the oily Trep prints and 5 gallon bucket full of oily rags. The mid section of the trail past the gatekeeper had been completely blown out by water and was impassible. The only way through would be to do some sketchy side hilling on some super soft sand dunes. The top rocky section didn't look like it had been run in years.
Dead Blow was pretty nuts too, but was super burned in.
Heading back home was pretty uneventful other than catching the edge of a blizzard in Flagstaff and coming home to a bunch of fresh snow.
I suck at taking pictures, so hopefully
willis_racing posts a few more up. I am bummed we didn't get to meet up with
90supra and others, but hopefully we get something organized better next year for everyone to meet up. We were camped just down the road from
Honky Lips , but never got the chance to stop by. One of the times we passed by and saw folks standing around his camp, we made sure to yell out his screen name
