Cruise the Woods has once again come and gone. Cascade Cruisers did another good job with trying to put that many rigs in the forest.
Sooz and I drove down Thursday minus the boys, as they didn’t want to miss school. Not what I would have done at their age. We were pleasantly surprised to find Kevin at the campground already. The weather didn’t look too promising with a constant drizzle and then broken showers after that to set up camp in the rain.
Friday started out foggy but that burned off by the start of the run. Turn out for the Friday run was really good, most rigs I have seen yet, about 25 I would say with lots of wagons too. Kevin decided to sneak over in his jeep, the guys from Cascade were not put out so off he came with us. For all the rain, the only trails that were a mess were University Firepower and part of Firebreak Five. Kevin and I did a lot of spotting in the trees and especially in the mud to stop any carnage. For the most part we succeeded. We met a few new faces, Doug from Seattle and Chad from Eugene, both with wagons and both with their sons. Doug might make it to a meeting one of these days. After a good 15 miles or so it was time to get back to camp. That is where the fun started. Kevin heard something that wasn’t right so we stopped and found his right front u-joint destroyed along with the right side axle shafts. At least it was at the end of the day and we were on the road back to camp. So after a little prying and bending we got the tangled up yokes free, a little knitting with some electrical wire to hold them in place while they spun and off to camp we went.
Another surprise was waiting at camp. Our long lost Ross with his wife, Cadri (my apologies if I didn’t spell it properly) had driven in with Doug and John. Fortunately the weather held through the night so the campfire was filled with the usual laughs along with some new ones. As usual the drunk motorcyclists and quad riders were out in force, wondered where they were staying as the campground was almost all wheelers.
The weather was even better for the Saturday run and we managed to get out of camp early, pretty much the first group on the trail. We met up again with Kyle (light blue 40 from two years ago) and had him jump in line with us. Off we went to the first big obstacle, which turned out to be the muddy mess on University Firepower. This time we were going, up not down. Needless to say, it took about 200 feet or more of winching to get me over it. Thanks to Kevin, John and my spouse for help with the cable. Found out Kyle took quite the lean going up the hill, one side came off the ground.
After that we got separated. Doug, John and Ross out front while Kyle and his boys and Kevin, Doug (from Seattle) and me bringing up the rear. This year’s run was a long one with bypasses on the nasty stuff. Fortunately, I had been on pretty much all of the trails. Checkpoints were interesting as usual and Sooz kept pulling a lot of Clubs for the Poker run part of things.
Sadly, for Doug and John sometime before checkpoint four the ignition module gave up in Doug’s rig. The bad part is that he was on Rocky Uphill and it took some winching to get him to the top. The rest of their trip was spent on a strap behind Ross’s rig. We finally caught up with them after we went through checkpoint five. They had missed it so after we parted ways Ross drove back to the checkpoint to get his scorecard finished up.
A pleasant run down the upper part of Firebreak Five and all of Cedar Tree trail took us back to camp. The Raffle was good to the group, most everybody took something home. It was a good thing Ross went back to checkpoint five as he ended up in second place for the run. Remember those Clubs Sooz kept pulling, we won the poker hand with a flush. Better yet, I got to leave Oregon with both my tail lights and no new dents. That may be a first for me….
The weather gave up the ghost for load out on Sunday morning. The rain came back at about 4am so pretty much everything got wet, at least we don’t need to use it until the next trip. All in all another good run in the woods of Tillamook State forest. Everybody had a good time and we are looking forward to the next one.
