Father and Son take a cross country trip..

[45Kevin]

Hey Alex, it was great hanging with you and your ol' man. I wish mine was still able enough to do something like this with me.

Here's a couple of the wagon run at the staging area. We camped up on the that big slab behind the night before.

The third pic is the first steep bit where you locked up. That is Tom at the top in the red sweater.
.

 

[concretejungle]

Thanks Kevin! I'm going to borrow those if you don't mind.

 

[concretejungle]

After hanging out for about 45 minutes (we were actually way ahead of schedule) and watching a lot of really amazing trucks come through, we jumped back on the trail. We should be at Buck Island in no time. There were some really cool sections on the trail that lead from our lunch stop into camp that i don't really have any pictures of.

As we arrived in camp, there were some pretty large jeeps off to our right and they were blasting their music. It appeared they had been there for a while and it also appeared that the three biggest jeeps had some serious issues. Axles were out, wheels were off, trucks were sitting on hi lift jacks, they must of had some serious fun.

As we continued on further into camp, the lake was just ahead of us along with another cool little water crossing. Seeing that some folks were already there and cooking up a storm, i tried to find a level spot to park the cruiser and to look for some dirt to let dad put his tent on. It's about this time that i realized and had a moment.... dad has a cot! He doesnt' have to find a cushy spot for the tent! Anyways, i tried to pull down in the trees and out from the middle of the rock area and out of the sun.

We set up camp and started chatting with others as well as snacking and drinking some cold ones. I went up to the lake and snapped some pictures. It was amazing as was pretty much every view out here. Clear water, but cold! Made me wish i had my fishing equipment.

Walked back down to camp and bumped into retrofive. We chatted and walked over to met Jarod (sorry man i don't remember your screen name, i know it's something 4runner ). It was a small world for him to remind me that he had reached out to me through the mud board years ago to ship him a locked diff from a local junkyard. Awesome to meet both these guys and put names and faces together and to see friends helping friends. That was one of many great things about this trip was meeting folks that i've known through the internet for years.

While we were chatting some drunk jeepers decided to get a little crazy. All of a sudden you hear revving and crashing.. some idiot decided to just floor his jeep bouncing all over rocks, hitting them and crashing over huge rocks. Music blasting... couldn't help but think they were morons. He had to of broken something.

After the excitement, we saw mudrak come through and a few other folks, then walked back down to camp where Kevin was getting a fire started. I walked around and looked at a few more trucks, met cathead and pedro, then sat down around the fire.

A few beers later and i was out!

THe next morning we were getting up and heading down the "more exciting parts of the trail" before making it into rubicon springs. Even though i had some anxiety, i was out like a light.

 

[concretejungle]

The next morning i woke up early

It was COLD and there was Kevin laying under his 45 on the cold ass rock slab.

Made some coffee, packed up and hit the trail. I jumped in behind Jarod this time around. Destination, Rubicon Springs.

This too me proved to be the funnest part of the trail. It was more of a down hill section, but it was gnarly. I really enjoyed following Jarod and watching him pick some lines that i couldn't fit in

Also, my dad was absolutely getting a kick out of watching Brian and Brock push each other's buttons.... Brian was driving and Brock would jump out to spot him. Brian would hit on something and/or completely ignore Brock's line suggestion, so then Brock would walk away leaving Brian hanging and in a bad spot... it was pretty darn funny. Dad was hooting and hollering out of the window at those guys and i was just hoping they found it as funny as we did.

Like i mentioned before, this was a great part of the trail. Most of the downhill sections were still very technical and i used my sliders and rear bumper ALOT! At times i was using my sliders to literally slide down rock chutes and to pivot around huge boulders... i guess that's why they call them sliders.

We got to see where little sluice is/was and how it's been "paved" and then after crossing a cool bridge over a crystal clear stream, we stopped for Cameron's son, Andrew. It was his birthday and they had brought a box of cupcakes and candles to celebrate. How cool! We all relaxed and had a cupcake, sang happy birthday and let the kids run for a few minutes.

We were just around the corner from Rubicon springs.

 

[concretejungle]

After reading through cameron's write up, which i highly encourage you to read (https://forum.ih8mud.com/ms-cottonland-cruisers/747783-three-dudes-one-truck-rubicon-bust.html )

he was spot on with his description of arriving at the springs. We thought it was going to be a big open, green field with a river, spring fed, running through it.... ummm, no not really. Again, just when you thought you were done for the day, the crawling required to get to camp was pretty puckering. Had to locker her up a few more times to get through a few spots.

We passed by the helicopter landing pad in case of an emergency and found out that we were pretty luck, we were early and pretty much had pick of camp spots. Knowing we were going to be here for a while, dad and i really wanted to get a prime camping spot. I think we did! We really lucked out and got a nice flat spot with dirt for dad to set his tent up and a nice flat rock surface for me to park the cruiser on. I draped the camo tarp over the cruiser and we were camping! We got the chairs out, unpacked pretty much completely and started to explore.

We had the river close to us for washing and swimming during the hot days, and the cool thing was that we had this little cliff side access trail that took you down to some little water pools that we could lay in and bath in. We broke out the biodegradable soap and got in the FREEZING cold water. Holy cow the water was cold! But, we were feeling clean for the first time in a few days and we had time to just relax for a couple of days.

We reached into the fridge, pulled out a few ice cold brews and took it all in.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Unreal man, just unreal.

 

[concretejungle]

Now that we had landed at the springs and knew we had a couple of days to chill, i decided to walk back up to the main springs area to buy some more raffle tickets and to sign up for a breakfast. We scoped out the place, got to use a porta-john which was nice. Checked out the schedule and pretty much just explored.

Cooled out in the stream a few minutes which was really refreshing, drank some more brews, took a nap or two and ate some more food. Now one thing that is important to mention is just how dry the air is out there. Back east, we are used to god aweful humidity and after a hot day, your shirt would be soaking wet, but not here. Before I even had time to realize it, i was getting tired, irritable and a head ache... oh, my lips were chapped! Damn i was getting dehydrated. I went over to dad's tent and he was laying out on the cot saying he had a headache. We were dehydrated. It snuck up on us. I broke out the pedialite (a trick from my drinking days) and we both chugged it. I tossed him a water bottle and within about 20 minutes we were both feeling better. From that point on we realized we needed a water bottle with us at all times.

About this time Alvaro was telling my dad about the rock chef competition that was coming up and that he wanted him to be a judge. Dad was asking me what that was and i told him "just say yes man, it's a food competition and you get to eat food and judge it"... his eyes blew up like balloons and he said "I"M IN!"

The evening rolled around and we all started to head up to the springs where the rock chef competition was. I thought this would be cool and i'll get to eat some killer food......wrong! This was for the judges only, not enough for me. :whoops:

So i remembered that Seth and his crew were camped in front of us and they had invited me to dinner. Seth had arrived in his big ol' 80 and had sheared off three of the four knuckle studs on one side of the axle. I just happened to have every tool on hand that he needed (except an easy out and spare studs), so i walked back to camp to eat with seth and crew and had planned on returning in a few to check on the competition and join back up with dad, it was also the night that they were having the bar..........

 

[sethzilla]

hey i recognize that rig. . . . .

 

[concretejungle]

Now this is where a funny side story comes in...

As we sat around at buck island and i started bringing up old mud characters and chatting with woody and others about them. I brought up TYLER and then i brought up Mickey Rubicon... They informed me that after his sleeping bag caught on fire at pismo last year while he and a porn star were passed out in the fire, he was banned, pretty much from everything and that he would not be here this year. I then brought up Pismo Jim and his tequila shot outfit and explained to dad who all these chacters were. I told him that these guys were legends in the mud community, at least in my mind they were, and i hated that we would miss them.

As i walked back up to the springs to catch back up with the rock chef judges and to get ready for the bar, i could hear that it was getting rowdy up there. As i got there, Brock and Brian were having a good ol' time laughing at my dad since apparently the cooks had been feeding him shots to help improve their scores and so he was drunk as a skunk.

Great, i would be babysitting... but no, he did well. He kept trying to hand off his flashlight and i kept insisting to keep it that it was a saftey net that he needed just in case we got separated. I turned around to go get the tickets for the bar and came back to look for dad and he was gone again At least i thought he was gone, nope, there he was taking shots with two legends! I just busted out laughing and thought holy crap i cannot believe this! After all the stories, there they were, all three of them.

 

[sethzilla]

Soooo much awesomeness in one picture! Hearing your Dad talk about it the next day was equally awesome!

 

[concretejungle]

I also should mention that there was also a wine tasting event that had some killer CA wines! There was also a raffle and i ended up winning a bottle of killer wine. Thanks again for that!

As the natives were getting progessively more restless, the marauder bar finally opened. The killer thing about it was a. there was a secret handshake or codeword kinda thing going on and everyone in line was wispering to the others "ask for it in a metal tech glass" so i did and got a killer glass. Dad steps up to order a drink and i tell him "ask for it in the metal tech glass" and he was in a rush and said "i just want a drink man".... i was like WTF dude! "Dad, ask for it in the damn glass man! So you can get a souveneir to take home!! " so he does and gets a sweet glass and a stiff drink.

And, B. they served just liquor drinks!

Stumbling back to camp i was discussing if drinking and driving might actually be safer than trying to walk out here. It was dusty, dark, we were drunk and the rocks were BIG!

As we were walking down the trail back to camp some totally random dude popped out of the woods... he was stumbling and didn't have a flashlight. He tried to ask us if were were "going that'a'way" and pointed pretty much in every direction. We told him sure and kept walking towards camp. He just kind of stumbled back into the darkness and we continued on.

We got back to camp and passed out, after chugging some pedialite btw..

THe plan was to wake up early the next morning and get out up cadillac hill before it became a traffic jam. So we planned on hitting the trail by 6 AM.

(I stole one of these pics)

 

[angerhater]

fantastic....

 

[custyota]

I love pedialite!

 

[JohnVee]

I love pedialite!

Pediaphile!

 

[custyota]

Pediaphile!

Uhhh OK whatever you say weirdo.

More pics of the sierras please!

 

[concretejungle]

The next morning did actually come a little early. I guess my sleep schedule was shifting to west coast time and i'm sure the tequila and beers last night didn't help either.

We packed up pretty quickly. For me it felt like a strange atmosphere; it was quiet, early, the sky was overcast which was the first time since we had gotten there that there was not a crystal clear sky, it felt like rain was rolling in. We all know that this was the end and now it was time for the haul back home and real life was just around the corner.

I was also a bit nervous to be honest because i had heard tales of cadillac hill. But, i felt like it can't be any worse than what we had already been through.

In my haste to pack up and jump in line to get out, i didn't mount the go pro and i also had my phone inside the console. So i didn't get any pictures or movies of the exit. The pictures attached are stolen from Seth.

The goal was to get up cadillac and rally at observation point where Tom wanted to share something with the group. We also had heard that you can pretty much guarantee carnage on Cadillac and it also can make it a parking lot. Dad and I were wanting to try to make it to Fallon, NV that night and get a hotel so we could have a proper shower, so we didn't want to get stuck on the side of a mountain until 4:00 in the afternoon.

Just before we jumped back on the trail early in the morning i crawled under the truck to check for loose bolts or any leaks. Everything looked good so we jumped on the trail.

I was second or third in line, i don't really remember, but the exit started out pretty tame. Then, we started to get on the north side of a mountain so it began to get really shady and wet. Wet! That was really the first "muddy" spot i had seen on the trail so far, it kind of almost, just a tad, kinda sorta felt like tellico; shade, mud, rocks, mountain side down to the right.... you know, roll to your death kind of thing.

We got into a few spots that were starting to get tight, and that's where i jinxed myself. I looked at dad and said "I can't believe i've been on this whole trail and hadn't got a single dent! I was sure i would have gotten a dent somewhere."

And... then we got to the pictured area where the guys in front of me had pulled up and away so i didn't see their lines. I was just feeling confident and felt like i could get this no problem. Tried to swing out wide left of the big rock on the right, as we went up the muddy rock face on the left i started to tip like crazy! Holy S$*t we both said. I then lifted my front left tire and then slide down and BAM.... i was resting on my pasenger side rear door right on that huge boulder.

Well, so much for the dent comment i thought. Then i decided it was more important that the darn glass wasn't broken and could still close... i rolled the window up, it worked and i told dad we were in it now. I turned on the front locker and slowly scraped my way down the rock and tried to line up for a pretty large rock climb. This was pretty darn intense, actually one of the most intense sections we had been on and i was nervous. The BFG's started digging and i slowly crawled, all four digging each on their own up the loose and wet rock slab. I made it! Wow that was amazing and i now have a souvenir.

Observation point should be just around the corner..... or, the next corner..... or at least after this next big boulder field.... surely, it's around the next corner....

 

[concretejungle]

We finally made it up to observation point. I felt like saying mission accomplished, but all of a sudden it hit me that we were on the other side of the continent and had a long trip still ahead of us.

Cameron did an excellent job telling about our group roundup and heartfelt personal story from Tom at observation point.

https://forum.ih8mud.com/showpost.php?p=8650796&postcount=128

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Oh man, that last shot next to Drew's rig. That should be my truck!!

I've got to go change my underwear, I just made a mess.

 

[spressomon]

A little late to this story...but most excellent reading!

You're going to sooooo relive all those crazy precious memories apart of that trip with your Dad infinitum!

I've shared many awesome times with my Dad...and now he's 82 and slowing down. So take nothing for granted and grab every second like there won't be another...

Enjoy. And thanks again for the read!

 

[elkaholic]

I had been struggling with how to get the sentiment that spressomon got across without sounding preachy. He said it a lot better than I probably would have. I'll emphasize his point ..... Cherish the times you have and the memories they create because you never know when the time suddenly won't be available or under what circumstances it is taken away.

I had a few good trips such as the one you documented here. Experiences like this are the "great stuff" in life!

Sent from my iPad using IH8MUD