I got invited to join some friend on a trip to Alabama. We were meeting someone there that was going to show us around to some good areas to wheel. I rode with Eriic (grape ape) out there, and we left on thursday afternoon. We drove all night and finally arrived in Huntsville Alabama about 5:30 in the morning. All the hotels were booked up so we had to wait till 10:00 a.m. to get a room. Ended up only sleepng about two hours till it was time to go wheelin. We went by Moe's house (the guy that invited us) and helped him put the finishing touches on his ride. We also lost one of the tow rigs when we got in town so we ended up having to borrow one of Moe's friend's trailer that would fit two rigs. We finally got loaded and arrived at our first wheeling spot late friday afternoon. It was in a guy's back yard, a huge hill loaded with rocks and ledges. The place wasn't real big but had tons of challenging areas. Moe tried like hell to get up one of the larger ledges, but would end up standing his rig on end every time. Finall he rolled it onto the side. We all helped set the rig back on the wheels and he gave it one more shot. He did finally make it.
Lining up:
front tires up:
sliding over:
point of no return:
final resting spot:
captain morgan pose:
There were tons of cool ledges and rocks we crawled until it got late and it was time to go. Here's a few more pictures. The place was called the proving grounds.
We headed back to the hotel to get a night's rest and woke early to make the four hour ride to morris mountain. This place was like Alto on steroids. All the hi;;s and rock ledges were ten times bigger than Alto's, making helicopter hill look like the bunny slope. There were a few other buggies that showed up too. We saw a nice blue torch buggy that had rolled and was now pretty much junk. We poked around and found a huge hill with a nasty double ledge on the top. Mike tried it in his new rock buggy, making it up and over both lrdgrs, only to climb a tree straight up at the top. With a little wiggling he got another shot at it and it was our turn next. We tried to crawl it to no avail, so we gave it a bump and carnage struck. The left front wheel stopped pulling. We backed down defeated and pulled to the top of the hill as Moe lined up for his turn. He first tried to crawl it too, without success. He gave it a good bump and slammed down on the rock, breaking the lower link on the front suspension. We spent the next three hours strapping the link in place and winched it up to the top of the hill. After getting lost we finally found the trailer and loaded up to make the journey back to the hotel, where we finally pulled in about 5 a.m.
Mike's scary moment:
Finally driving out of the scary moment. The picture doesn't show the 600 foot hill we went up to get to this ledge....
Our turn:
Moe's turn:
Moe's carnage:
The next day we fixed Moe's link and worked on his cronic over heating problem. As soon as it was done we loaded up to meet up with a few other folks to check out this guy's back yard called house of pain. As soon as we pulled in to the driveway there I knew we were in for a treat, he had some awesome toys. He had four jeeps on rockwells, a m715 on rocks, an old half track from WWII a samurai rock buggy and numerous other cool toys, such as dozers, graders, tractors, and a million parts laying around. The owner was super cool and fired up his rockedjeep to show us around. Another guy, JR, had brought out his yota, and we headed up into the mountain behind this guy's house. Quickly the rocks got bigger and progress slowed as we watched everyone struggle to make it up a nasty crevasse.
this yota fought hard to get up this one
Mike almost re arramged his sheetmetal here too:
Moe made it up with ease but bent his newly repaired link:
Moe pulled off his link and took it down to the shop at the bottom of the mountain for a quick fix up. We all played on the many obstacles, Mike tried out his buggy on some extreme rok formations and Eriic and I cruised up a few of the trails and ledges.
Eric tried to go down one of the ledges we went up. By now he had enough seat time to do it without a spotter:
After a moment or two of panic we hooked a strap to him to prevent major carnage to the new paint job he drove it down. The motor smoked for a few minutes and cleared up quickly.
Here's a picture of a couple of the jeeps posing with Eric's
Once it was getting dark we loaded up, went into town and ate dinner at tgi friday's. After dinner we loaded up and drove home. We arrived home at 2:30 pm after driving all night. I was wiped out and very tired, and also got ate up by chiggers at the house of pain. I probably have 40-50 welts that are dribing me crazy. they itch more than anything ever has. Hope it clears up soon. Everyone that was with us has em too. Now that I'm home it's time to get ready for werock....and a big thanks to Moe for showing us around and the use of his shower....
