2200 miles in five days...we must be nuts! Well, I am and poor Jon just gets brought along on these crazy adventures of mine. We left Dallas Thursday morning and headed east. We made it as far as Nashville, TN that night without any trouble. We arrived at North Bend State Park Friday around 5pm est, set up camp, changed to the off-roading tires and hit the trails with the Blue Ridge Land Rover Club at 7pm for the night run. The night run was very entertaining - lot's of playing in mud puddles. Around one in the morning we made it back to camp and crashed still with no dinner. Nine am we were back on the trails for another day of playing in the mud - great fun! The banquet that night was delicious and the club had rounded up enough raffle prizes that everyone received one which was a neat trick. For more details on this event, read the August Land Rover World for my trip report.
Sunday morning we broke camp and got back on the road home. We made it almost to Little Rock, Arkansas that day - 870 miles. We were bushed and the dogs were happy to get out of the Rangie. The next morning we headed to Texarkana on the Arkansas and Texas border to visit friend and Land Rover nut John Monahan. He showed us around his amazing old house, the town and his own personal LR museum - cool stuff. Very nice collection! We made it home by 2:30pm and were happy to finally get out of the rig for good!
Click here to see the pics - warning they were mostly taken through the Rangie window so they are not my best work but they give an idea of the area. The first few are of a police chase and take down we got stuck in the middle of just outside Memphis, TN. Too bad that we didn't think of sending them to a newspaper or news channel until it was too late - would have been fun to have a byline!
As per usual, the Texas Rovers put on one of the best events I attend. Last year I wrote a three part blog on the entire weekend but this year I just do not have the time (this is good actually - as anyone self-employed will tell you being busy is a really, really good thing!). But I do want to thank all the guys that came to my rescue when my rig was all bent to heck and took time away from wheeling to replace the mangled trailing arms (which is a story unto itself). Moses of Mo-Fab and Ian Minenna both donated replacement trailing arms as well as their time and tools - thank you, thank you! Robert Fleming, Chris Kelley, TR Burrus from ARB, Greg ?, SteveO, Tim and Steve Woolford and of course Jon Button all turned a few wrenches to get me back on the trails and Alan of Rovers North provided the wrenches that had to be turned - thank you very much gentlemen! You made my weekend and now it is time to go after the guys that bent the trailing arms in the first place...!
Click here to see the pics!
Honestly, I am not afraid of heights but if I ever was, my recent trip to Montrose, Colorado for the Solihull Society's National Land Rover Rally would have either cured it or put me in the funny farm. With elevations topping 12,800 ft and ledges just wide enough for a Rover, this was not an event to take lightly. For proof, have a look at the pics.
It was a great weekend and as usual, the Solihull Society did an amazing job of keeping 160 odd Rovers and 320 people organized. Next year at Moab, UT, they are planning on 400 rigs for the 60th anniversary of Land Rover and most of us LR enthusiasts already have the dates blocked off on our calendars (Sept 16 - 20th).
For more on this year's event, pic up the December issue of Land Rover World or keep an eye on this Blog for more stories and information.
Note: LRW's September issue has the article on SCARR that I covered in April. I haven't seen it yet so I have no idea what it looks like or if they edited it down at all so be kind please!
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