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It was a long week but my jeep is now good to go! I'm heading to Gore after rush hour. If anybody sees me broken down on the shoulder just give a good old jeep wave.

Quote from shorebird

I'll be looking for a right seat.

Randy, I have a seat available.

I have to pick my daughter up at soccer practice tonight so I won't be at the Cove until later....probably 11:00 or so.

Quote from altierior

Damn, lke 80% of my trips I am looking for a passenger, but this time I'll have my woman with me.

Speaking of which, who else is bringing their wives/girlfriends?

Think they are all just planning to share yours.

Everybody got their cat packed?

Quote from shadyluke

Think they are all just planning to share yours.

She laughed when I told her you said that. But I can't promise that someone's not going to get smacked for it. And it ain't going to be me.

Sitting here at the off-ramp on the Gettysburg / Route 15 exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Out of fuel. Guess I'll be setting up camp in the dark.

Quote from altierior

Sitting here at the off-ramp on the Gettysburg / Route 15 exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Out of fuel. Guess I'll be setting up camp in the dark.

Like ran out on the side of the road?

Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk

Quote from shadyluke

Like ran out on the side of the road?

Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk

Yep, right on the off-ramp, almost to the toll booth. Blocking the Turnpike employee parking lot. AAA arrived in not too bad time. Now 20 mins to Cove.

Quote from altierior

Yep, right on the off-ramp, almost to the toll booth. Blocking the Turnpike employee parking lot. AAA arrived in not too bad time. Now 20 mins to Cove.

Your luck didn't get much better when you got there.

I had a blast this weekend. This event is always fun. I'll get pics and video up shortly. Here is a link to one of the only things I've uploaded so far.

Matt going up V trail with a lead foot.

The mud pit. What a mess. So much fun though.

I'll post pics soon.

Quote from altierior

Sitting here at the off-ramp on the Gettysburg / Route 15 exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Out of fuel. Guess I'll be setting up camp in the dark.

I didn't even see this until now. Damn, that sucks. What exactly did you break on the xj? Just the box or part of the unibody "frame" mount?

Great weekend, even from a right seat! The "Barbie" Jeep didn't overheat to or from Gore and seemed to like 65 to 70mph for a change, now to get her back off road again. Thanks to Gino and Wayne for dragging me around.

Here's a couple pics.

Big Dogs Main Jambo 2016 https://imgur.com/gallery/kdPRr

http://imgur.com/a/3gQT2

I'll try to write up a trail report for the JV group but if Randy or John wants to go for it

I sure had a great time this weekend. It was a pleasure to meet everyone and put in some serious trail time with like-minded individuals. The weather couldn't have been better, sunny and 65 every day! The facilities at the cove are first rate, the bathrooms were so clean I actually tipped the attendant.
The trails were awesome for the JV group and Stafford was a fearless leader. Saturday we got a bit of a late start by some accounts, but we quickly made up for any lost action by heading down some trail that we probably should have avoided. I found myself in the middle of a rock slide that was more difficult than anything I've been on before, and it slowed me down a bit. Lucky for me an old buddy from Virginia was riding shotgun with me and was a damn good spotter. Gavan was spotting too, but his spotting seemed to be more like just watching me tear my stuff up in the rocks, so my friend helped me through there.
Then we did a lot more reasonable stuff for a while until afternoon. As we rounded a corner there was a jeep climbing a huge shelf and the front tires were both off the ground at one point. The guy was nuts! Then as I got closer I realized it was Stafford. As he winched up the cliff and drove off he was yelling "see you later suckers!" Or something like that. My hearing is not that good. Then Jeff and someone else said get out of the way fools, we got this, and took off up the hill! The rest of us were left to fend for ourselves. So we chose multiple new leaders and drove around for about an hour trying to find the others to no avail. Finally, we gave up and decided to go back to camp. We drove around a corner and we were in camp 6 and those guys were all there. We called it a day and went to camp.
Everyone cooked large chunks of dead animals and feasted heavily while consuming mass quantities of beverage. I hit horizontal mode when a rain shower went through and unfortunately slept through the night. There was word of more wheeling later and mud pit action, but I didn't see any of that.
Saturday we headed out closer to the scheduled time frame with Stafford once again in the lead. He turned off a perfectly good trail and went up a creek, no paddles! The rocks were pretty big and they were slick from the white water rushing through. We passed a group coming down who waited patiently as we went by. I was behind Slowpoke and John and Stafford. They all went up this one rock and I didn't. I high centered on that thing big time and was not going forward from there. By then, the others were up ahead out of sight. I think Yeager winched me out with his bad-ass ecotec custom thing and I headed on up. By then John was walking down to see what happened. I told him some fool got hung up in front of me and held us up, then kept on going so I could get by before he figured out who the fool was.
I rounded another corner and there was Stafford stopped on a pretty steep hill, hood up, engine stalled. After everyone got there and looked at it, we took a vote and decided it was the fuel pump, he was done as leader. So John pulled him down off the hill and we looked at it some more. Turned out to be a burnt fuse. He replaced the fuse and we were back in business. Some people would have thought it wise for him to head back, but like a guy getting on I-95 in the morning riding on a donut spare, he continued seeking impassable routes for us to try.
We got to a pretty gnarly hill with some trees and rocks the size of picnic tables. John was like "Hold my beer, I'm gonna jump this thing like speed racer" and started blasting over the rock. Then he stopped. Then he got out. Then he was standing there on the side of the cliff with the Cherokee slam tight high centered and he was ho,ding steering parts in his hand, not the steering wheel. Another vote was taken and we decided that the steering was broken. I did the go around so that somebody with some sense could get in there and help him, and Chris stepped up big time. Now I have only heard tell of the Moab all night recovery, which is said to be more epic, but this was pretty epic as far as I'm concerned. Chris got ahead of him, winched him off of the huge rock and right on up the hill onto his bumper. Then he threw it in reverse and backed both rigs up the rest of the climb. He only stopped once to tell some dude to move his stupid Willys out of the way or he was going to run over it with both rigs!
When they got to where the trail was relatively flat, Chris turned around and pulled him with a short strap and everyone that was waiting for us to get out of the way was running out and kicking his tires. I guess that's better than everyone kicking his ass.
Then we went down some pretty serious stuff with Chris and John leading. That was an awesome hill in itself. At this point Stafford was walking and his passenger Dan (I think, I'm not good with names) was driving his rig. Stafford didn't want to miss his ride home, so he was ready to bolt if he had to. We got back to the beautiful newly paved access road and rolled back to camp all before dark.
We again feasted heavily and then some of us went to the rock crawl bonfire party thing. The crazy neighbors with the funky tubed samurai buggy things tore them up on the rock. The guy that won only won because he had his hot looking girlfriend in the truck with him naked! His actual old lady to be came out of the crowd and beat his ass, it was hilarious. Since he won he was allowed to go at the rock pile freestyle until the radiator boiled over. It knocked the wind out of his girlfriend, but she could take it. Then John Hunt lit the bonfire and they started playing some kind of techno rave music, Since there were no mud-wrestling girls we went back to camp.
People then chilled out around the fire, and called it a night.
Sunday morning we all packed it up, said see-you-later, and rolled on down the road. I'm happy to report that I made it home with my rig intact, except for the huge dent in my custom roof from the tree Stafford led us into. (Ok, maybe no one else hit the tree). My trailer was a success, and I'm looking forward to getting a lot more use out of it. And I dented three of my fenders too, but they will buff out.
Thanks to all involved, I'm glad I went. I will look forward to next time. Sorry if I rambled.

My spotting involves honesty and apathy. It's been so long since I've spotted for a stock-ish rig I would have been more harm than good. If you had seen my jeep, and it's resounding lack of straight body panels and the amazing amount of actual wear on the top bars of the cage you would understand

I should note here that Gavan did provide a verbal disclaimer regarding his spotting abilities. He didn't mention the wear on his roll cage though! Despite that, it was nice to meet you, it's all good.

Quote from gavan

My spotting involves honesty and apathy. It's been so long since I've spotted for a stock-ish rig I would have been more harm than good. If you had seen my jeep, and it's resounding lack of straight body panels and the amazing amount of actual wear on the top bars of the cage you would understand

Gaven can write up the trail report from Saturday.

Another amazing Big Dogs! Thanks to Matt for reserving the camp sites; Geno, Matt, Gavan and Geoff for the great food; Gavan and Ed for the entertainment!

Great trail report Andy!

Can't wait for the next one!

Quote from JKgray10

Gaven can write up the trail report from Saturday.

Matt and I got so far on our side we almost rolled on an access trail for no good reason, jeff's attention span and hub locking times were about the same, which caused some problems with group cohesion, aaron decided we left him at about the time we decided he left us, I almost died on Billy's cargo rack, lunch was good except for the garlic I may or may not still be burping up, aaron and I went up that "impossible trail" Stafford avoided with him steering and me using the hand throttle with no pedal application just because it was amusing, then we all climbed k2 despite stern warnings about it being "down only". We were pretty sure it was just a paved road that was poorly marked until a Toyota spent 20 mins trying to bounce his ujoints out of his driveshafts. After passing a gigantic buggy driven by a 10 year old someone brought out the moonshine, the rest of the night is a little splotchy.