The Arizona Land Rover Owner's Second Annual Rally

Back in April while attending the Las Vegas Land Rover Club’s Rover Rendezvous in Death Valley, I had the luck to meet and befriend two guys from the Arizona Land Rover Owners group, Jayson Stangel and Rob Woodward. They invited me to the second annual club Rally in Phoenix that was to be held over the last weekend in October. After missing the National Rally in Moab, Utah in September, there was no way I was going to miss another chance to do some rock crawling and moved heaven and earth to get there for the event.

I had met some of the Arizona club members in June and felt like I was meeting up with old friends – one of the best parts of my job! Ted and Marilyn Moyer opened their home to me and as a fellow sailor, I loved staying in the ‘sailing room’. Their warm hospitality and easy lifestyle made the visit special and their home on two acres overlooking the Superstitions in Apache Junction was amazing.
Click here for pics!

The Rally was very well organized and off-roading in the desert is always an incredible experience for this rain forest born girl. I spent Saturday as co-pilot for Jayson who led a small group of serious rigs through Woodpecker and Upper Apex (or is it Ajax?!? I better check before it goes in the magazine!). Tough trails – some of the toughest in the state – and Jayson did a great job of bringing the group through the obstacles even though there was some interesting dynamics between the participants.

Saturday night was the cocktail party and raffle draw. The AZLRO organizers did a momentous job of gathering raffle prizes including a full Power Tank set up and a Superwinch. I won a $100 gift certificate (more spares! I am all about the spares after breaking down so much the last time I drove home from Texas!) from Rovers North and a couple of T-shirts to add to the Land Rover T-shirt collection.

The second day I rode along with Rob on the Walnut Creek Trail. This is an easier trail but very scenic (pics will come soon, I promise!) and we had an interesting cross section of extremely experienced drivers and new to off-roading types. It made for an interesting day and we had a ton of fun acting as tail-gunner or sweep for the group. It too was a great day – entirely different then running with the truggies of Saturday, making the sanity of Sunday even more special.

As always, it is sad to see the end of an event but considering I was in Phoenix for another week, it was not as miserable as usual leaving all my new LR friends. Thank you AZLRO for a wonderful weekend and see you in February of 2010 for the third annual rally!

Land Rover Texas Wheels Event

I read the other day that Land Rover is the only automotive manufacturer that consistently builds vehicles for the one percent of people who will actually use them for what they were designed for – serious off-road travel. Maybe this is why I love and respect this marquee – they get the sales but more importantly, the designers and manufacturers understand their one percent owners and make sure that their vehicles continue to meet the needs of these unique people.


Click here to see the web gallery!

Snell Motor Companies owns the three Land Rover dealerships – one in Dallas, one in Frisco and one in Austin. Twice a year, the combined dealerships host an off-road adventure for their new owners to put them through the paces to learn exactly what their Landys are capable of doing. It takes some guts to take your brand new $75,000 vehicle to an off-road track – especially if you have never driven off-road before. The track is a three mile long circuit designed by the guys from the US Camel Trophy team and it definitely pushes the envelope for these new owners. Located at Rough Creek Hunting Lodge, an amazing 57 guest rooms on 11,000 acres designed for the outdoors.


The dealership asks the local Land Rover club, the Texas Rovers, to help at these events. The newbies are broken into three or four groups depending on how many vehicles participate with club members leading each group. At each of the more difficult obstacles, a club member is posted to help talk each person through the spot – it helps instill confidence and keep everyone safe. And some of the obstacles are a challenge even for the experienced drivers! The 38 degree decline on loose gravel could quickly send someone flying without direction. There is also some great off-camber bits that are often the most challenging – we are all used to going up hills and down but rarely do roads drop one side of your vehicle to a sharp 25 degree angle!


After the trail, there is a timed obstacle course and then a full-buffet sponsored by Rough Creek Lodge. The Lodge is worth a visit on its own whether you own a Land Rover or enjoy blamming poor animals – it is truly spectacular. Peter Greenburg of the Today Show named Rough Creek Lodge ‘one of the top five places in the world to get married’ and Condѐ Nast voted it the top lodge in North America. Pretty good accolades in my opinion and worth a visit if you find yourself in Texas to say the least.


Between the trail and the lunch, the newbies enjoyed themselves and a few even joined the Texas Rovers to try their hand at a little more adventure. These dealer events are an excellent way to introduce new owners to the remarkable capabilities of their new vehicles and help them understand why the rest of us love our Rovers!

Dallas Stars vs Colorado Avalanche

One of the best things about big cities and Dallas in particular is the amount of pro sports teams they have. Coming from a small city on an island no less, there is little to no chance of spontaneously deciding to attend a pro game. In fact, there is little chance of even attending a game even with months of planning – it is just too expensive and too much of a hassle to leave the island.
So when we got up Saturday morning and Jon asked if I felt like attending the Stars game at 1pm, it was like something of a dream for me! You mean we can buy the tickets on game day? And we can take the train directly to the American Airlines Center so we do not have to worry about traffic or parking? You’re kidding?!? This is the best reason to live in a big city!
The game was good – during the first two periods, the Stars were playing as if the ice was wet cement but they picked up for the last period. They ended up losing 4 to 5 but they put up a good fight.
The train was something else as always – hard to believe you can travel twenty miles in about twenty-five minutes no matter what the traffic is like. Very cool stuff! We even had time between the train into the city and the train to the AA Center to grab BBQ pork buns ‘to go’. Yummy! I have been missing BBQ since I was last in Dallas in June so it was good to have a pig out.
It was a fun day and glad we decided to attend the game. Oh, did I say how much we paid for tickets? $15 each…! The same ticket in Vancouver would have cost $90 at least. Sometimes I love this city!

State Fair Part Two

Other parts of the state fair were less overwhelming but more interesting. The arts and crafts building was really interesting as a lot of the crafts being demonstrated where things I grew up with – quilting, hooking (rugs, folks, rug hooking…), needlework, tatting and preserves. The testing was going on for the food, too – fun to watch.
After the crafts building, we headed to the heifer judging – again, it is way too similar to the dog show scene. These cows are bathed, blow dried and coiffed to within an inch of their lives. The handlers use the exact same slicker brush we used with the Bear Dogs - bigger of course but the exact same concept. Weird! And the forced air blow dryers, again, bigger but exactly the same concept although I can’t imagine how long it would take to hand dry a cow…a Bear Dog in full coat could take up to an hour and a half so what would a full-grown cow take to dry? Hours!
From there we headed to the milking parlor. The milking parlor had to be one of the most interesting things for this little city slicker. I can’t remember ever seeing a cow being milked before and I have to say it was a lot less stressful then the time I visited the meat cattle ranch in Alberta – that was nightmare! First watching a calf being ‘pulled’ from its mom was bad and the way the rancher then put the less then one minute old calf over a partial wall to ‘drain’ its lungs was really nice. Poor thing! The worst, however, was walking down this aisle made between these huge rows of hay while the rancher’s coyote hounds ran back and forth along the top of the hay, then, sensing me a newbie to all this excitement, they dropped a hind leg of recently demised bull on me! Perfectly aimed shot so there is not way it was an accident – no way! Darn dogs! Normally I love dogs but those coyote hounds (coyote hunting in Alberta is a topic for another post – it is horrific in its own right!) where something else. The worst of course was the rancher and my friend Kyla where out in front so did not see the incident – they only heard my scream and assumed I was being a city-slicker. It wasn’t until one of them turned to make sure I was still walking that they saw that I was holding a severed leg crawling in maggots did they have any sympathy. Ranchers…definitely a breed apart.
Back to the milking parlor – it was cool! The cows are smaller and hand-raised so they are less intimidating right off the bat. They are also clean – nice change there too. The process is quite fascinating from start to finish. There was a little blond Dairy Farmer representative who explained everything that was going on and why they were doing what they were doing. For example, cows are bred and have a nine month gestation. Once the calf is born, it is taken away from the mother and the hand-raised so everything the cow produces from then on is for human consumption. About three months later, they are bred again so they continually produce milk. Smaller cows produce around five gallons of milk a day and the big Holsteins can produce up to twelve which is why they are the most common of dairy cows (97% of milk in Texas comes from Holsteins while the other five breeds of dairy cattle make up the other 3%). Cows are either on a twice a day or three times a day milking schedule so the farmers must go through this whole thing at least twice a day and some even three times a day. The cow’s teats are disinfected before and after each milking and the machine is disinfected after each cow. So if your parlor holds twelve to sixteen cows at a time, this means that a good portion of the time is spent cleaning. Twice a day, every day, the dairy farmer has to go through this huge amount of work and I cannot understand how they do it! My hat goes off to them and I sure look differently at the milk when I put it on my cereal each morning.
The train museum was a bit of a disappointment but one of the neatest things was the Women’s Building. The display was not so good but the building itself was spectacular! After taking a ton of photos, I spotted the sign saying ‘No Photography’ so these are limited edition images, folks, no one else has the gall to photograph a building where photography is not allowed!
We headed home without too much fuss although the crowds were just as insane as the game had gotten out. Crazy amount of people!

A Canuck at the Texas State Fair

The Texas Rover group displays their Landys once a year at the Texas State Fair. It is a fun event and like all things Texan, it is huge! Don't believe me that its big? How about the fact it takes up 277 acres of land and is spread over twenty-four days? What about that it grosses over $350 million each year for the state? How about the 8,000 livestock entries each year and the 7,000 creative entries? Is it big yet?

And of course, we end up there on the busiest day of the entire event - the day of the Red River Rivalry!
The Red River Shootout is the college football game between the University of Oklahoma and University of Texas. This year's game was held in Cotton Bowl which sits in the middle of the fair grounds, commanding quite the view. After a revamp that fixed bad plumbing and dilapated seating, it now holds 90,000 people...in case you didn't get that the first time, that was 90,000 people...in one building. Nuts! Did I already say everything is huge in Texas?













This is what 90,000 people waiting to get into the stadium looks like and half time was worse! Crazy! I wish I had been able to find a higher vantage point - one of the frustrating parts of being a short photographer.
The Land Rovers were nicely set apart in the Classic Car Corral. This meant that we had a fence all around us and a gate to keep foot traffic out. It was a relaxing place to sit and observe the masses from a safe and undisturbed distance - perfect when you are talking about rowdy football fans!












Every bit of the land is taken up with displays and activities. Near where we were put with the Land Rovers, a giant lagoon had swan boats you could rent and a big fountain. All around the lagoon was outdoor sculptures, food stalls and souvenir stands. Surprisingly, everyone was very well behaved and even though it was standing room only, most people where laughing and enjoying the line ups.

















The midway was something Jon and I avoided - crazy busy and scary big rides. The Texas Star Ferris Wheel is the tallest in North America at 212 feet tall. Now that I know it is the tallest, I am upset I didn't take the plunge and try the ride but at the time, it was just too scary to consider! It has 44 gondolas that holds a total of 264 people. The staff of eighteen keep it moving at a rate of one and a half rotations a minute. On a clear day, you can reportedly see for 42 km away and is lit up at night by 16,000 red, white and blue lights.
Before the game started, all 90,000 people were milling around outside and playing on the rides. Once they moved inside to watch the game, we could all move around so we headed to the livestock area.













The livestock area was impressive - lot's of animals, all in comfortable pens with no sense of your tyical animal smell. The 1200 boar was disturbing - nothing living should be that big and it was fun watching the animals being show. Considering how many years I was involved with dog shows, I thought I had seen it all but I was wrong. Hand stacking goats was something to see and the little girl with heffers was a sneaky trick to get the judge's attention on the right cow.

All day long there are shows going on in all the arenas. The dog shows included a group of frisbee dogs and then a group of dogs that do jumping tricks. We watched the practise session but were locked out for the actual show - two minutes late and we are not allowed in!



































































The baking competition was going on behind us with a full news crew filming the event. The arts and creative section was amazing, including the rows and rows of preserves. All those colored ribbons represent the first, second and honorable mention of one type of preserve. I would like to know how many different types of preserves they judge but it would have taken too long to find out.

Come back tomorrow for more photos and stories from the fair!