Parker 4-Wheeler Rally Veterans Day 2010

We went to the Parker 4-Wheeler Rally this Veterans Day weekend.  We were not sure what to expect.  It is a really different rally than any of the Land Rover Rally's we have been to in the past.   When we pulled in to La Paz County Park on Thursday evening, we registered and signed up for a trail the next day.  We knew nothing about the trails and when I asked questions the staff didn't really understand why someone would want an easy trail.  So we signed up for El Supremo Wash.  It was rated a 3 and did not have any pictures of cars on their sides or turned over.  Plus it said there were "go-arounds" for obstacles.

We asked about camping and the guy helping with camping asked if we were the people in the "Range Rover"  We laughed and said we had the Land Rover, but it is far from a Range Rover.  He didn't know the difference and didn't think there was one. 

Camping was kind of open and we could camp anywhere we wanted.  We went and found a small tent site near a restroom.  We camped by some people who live at the campground and a few others from the rally.  They were all very nice and welcoming. 

On Friday, we lined up for our trail.  On our trail we had one Toyota, 18 Jeeps and an Old Chevy Blazer.  We headed out toward the Buckskin Mts.  Then up El Supremo Wash.  At this point I started driving.  I needed to be spotted through the wash at a sharp turn.  The trail leader is looking at James and telling him what to do.  All of the sudden he realizes I am the driver and that our car is right hand drive.  After a couple of loud bangs from his spotting.  I tell James to get out and spot.  He tells me he is not so good a spotting. (which is true) But in this situation he is the best.  He knows our car, clearance and handling better than anyone else there.  Everyone one else has at least 33 inch tires and 3 or 4 more inches of ground clearance than we do.  So, I explain this to him and he decides he should help with the spotting from here on out. 

Here are two videos of me driving.  On this trip, it is the first time we have let Grace out of the car. We gave her the video camera and you can see she listens well to her parents. 

Video: Grace Listens Well

The second video is me getting up the wash.  Guess how many times I stall the vehicle.  

Video: Kelly may stall, but gets through

During that obstacle I think I stalled 5 times, but that is how you learn.  Grace is the videographer.  One thing I must say is the guys on this trip were so great!!  I have been on lots of Land Rover trips where men make me feel small and inferior because I am a woman.  Not these guys!!!  They didn't care if I stalled or took all day.  They kept saying we were there to have fun and that is what we were going to do.  It was awesome to have them be so great towards me.  

After this we came to a really hard obstacle where I asked James to drive.  I am not good at stick and without power steering my arms were getting very tired.  As we moved up the wash, I did not notice that James was moving again.  I was out talking with others.  And that is when we got the dent in the side of the car.

May not seem like much, but I had damage to my car.  The car has gone 42 years with no damage and here I am not paying attention and we get a dent.  Once I realized James was moving I ran up and took over the spotting for our car.  They wanted him to back up and go over a rock.  I knew this would be very bad.  So, the guys did some road building.  At one point, one of the guys was spotting James and I was standing next to him, spotting too.  The guy said, "He is only looking at you.  Do I even need to spot?"  I said, "No"  He said, "James listens only to you and what you say seems to trump what all of us say."  See I am a good spotter, and I have learned over the years that when I don't speak up, because I let some guy make me feel inferior, something breaks on my car.  I have decided that I don't care if I hurt people's feelings or egos.  It is my car and so I have the final say.  At our lunch stop one of the guys said he really liked me because I was more like a man and didn't care what they thought. I was just going to do it my way.  Not sure if that was a complement, but that is how I am going to take it.

Video: Jeep getting stuck

As most of you who have been on a trail know, there is always one person, usually a guy, who thinks he is the best driver and doesn't need any help or advice.  This video is that guy.  For this obstacle we were happy to take the "go-around"  Everyone was told if they did not have lockers they should take the "go-around"  This guy did not listen.  It is always nice to see someone else's truck get stuck.  It is worth noting that on a earlier "go-around" he did not take it either and also got stuck.

After this we had lunch right there.  At lunch we realized we were the only people who had driven our car to the rally.  Everyone else had trailered their car.  They were all amazed we could take ours on the freeway and also be on the trail.

After lunch we went up to the Vampire Mine and down through a cool wash.

Video: Cool Wash

Here we met up with the main graded dirt road.  It was around 1pm and I was tired.  The group was going to take off down some other wash.  I was exhausted and wanted to just head back to town.  So, at this point we broke from the main group.  On our trail the owners of ASFIR 4X4 were also on our trail, the father, Eitan, and his daughter Karen.  Karen was doing the driving and she did great.  I was so glad to see a young woman out there driving off road.  Yeah!!  Anyway, they did not want to leave us by ourselves so we drove into Parker and had lunch together.  Great people!  Here is a link to their website.  www.asfir.com  They sell skid plates among other things.  We are getting a diff plate from them. 

That evening they had a car crush at the campground.  We had never been to one of these before.  Grace was so excited and couldn't wait.  We went over to where ASFIR was set up and Grace was able to sit on their car so she could see the action. She was mesmerized.

It was very interesting.  A morbid fascination.  Like I shouldn't want to watch, but I just can't help myself.  Like gawking at a traffic accident.

I was not there for the beginning of the car crush, but I was told that several guys tried to get over and rolled.  The first two to get over were women.  Girl Power!!

On Saturday, we signed up for the easiest trail they had.  It was Finger Mountian on the California side of the river and was rated a 2.5.  It was much more our speed.  It was "scenic"  which I figured out to a lot of people is kind of a bad word around there. 

We were on a trip with 4 other Jeeps.

It was a very nice drive and just what we like.  A little low range, but no danger of damage. 

When we finished a couple of other trucks wanted to go up and drive over the Parker Dam.  So, we went to the dam.

That night a camp they had a dinner and raffle.  Since the kids get bored very easily they had a "Kid's Quest"  It was a jumpy castle and blow up obstacle course.  Grace loved it!

For the kids there was also a "quarter dive"  They buried $30 in quarters and the kids got to find them.  Grace found $2.

There was also an articulation ramp.

 Here is an 11 year old in his Dad's golf cart trying the articulation ramp.
Not the smartest thing I have ever seen.

They had two raffles, a raffle with mostly Jeep stuff and a 50/50 raffle.  We bought tickets for both, but did not win anything.  Too bad about the 50/50, the take home was over $1200. 

On Sunday, we woke up early and headed home.  Grace had a piano recital and we needed get home for it.  We had a fun weekend and met lots of great people.  We know we didn't quite fit in, but people were still very friendly and nice. It was a good weekend!

Buckskin Mountains – Spring Break 2010 and The Amazing Flying Roof Rack

During Grace’s spring break we went to the Buckskin Mountains for some rockhounding. The Buckskins are in the western part of Arizona, near Parker. We had heard the Buckskins were a great place to go rockhounding, since most of the mining in this area was done before mining became mechanized.

The first day we left Tucson and headed out for the 6 hour drive to the Buckskins. In the driveway, when I went to get in the Rover, my side step came lose and I fell to the ground. My ego was very bruised, but my body was only a little bruised. James fixed the step and I got in and said, “Well, there is our problem for the trip.” I probably should have kept my mouth shut.

We were on I-10 west of Phoenix going about 65 mph. All of the sudden, we hear a big bang. James pulls over and says the roof rack blew off. I just had to take a deep breath, because that thing could have done a ton of damage or killed someone. Luckily we were near one of the closed rest areas. We could see the roof rack in the break down lane about 100 yards behind us. I had James pull up behind the temporary barriers they had put up to close the rest area. We told Grace to stay in the car, and James and I went to retrieve our things. Amazingly, everything survived, except for the two bags of charcoal that were all over the two lanes of traffic. One of the chairs had come lose from the rack. Everything was a little beat up, but everything survived.

We carried the rack back to the Rover. Then we had to figure out what to do with all the stuff, and had to find a place inside for it all. At this point a DPS officer stopped to see if we were okay. We told him what had happened and then he said that we needed to be careful when we merged back into traffic, and he left. It was interesting when James posted what had happened on the Dormobile List that several Europeans said that we would have been given a big ticket and they probably would have given us a sobriety test.

With some adjustments we were able to fit everything into the Rover. The question was what to do with the roof rack. Of course, James wanted to keep it and of course I thought we should just leave it with all the other trash on the side of the road. But it is an “original” Dormobile rack. So, just like all the other stuff that I would get rid of, we have it stored for if we ever sell it to someone who wants to restore it to original. I doubt this will ever happen, because I will only sell it to someone who wants to use it for their family. Not win car shows.

James won the argument. So, how do we fit it in the Rover? We decided to take it apart. James got out the wrench and some other tools. This did not work because the bolts were so rusted. What did work was just breaking the bolts with our bare hands. Then we shoved it across the floor of the back seat. When we got back in the car, I didn’t say anything about this being our problem for the trip.

The Buckskins are beautiful and full of old mines. We had picked out a few places to hit before we left home. We got to one mine just before dark. We decided to camp there for the night. The mine had an old mine cart and equipment laying around. It was pretty neat to see the old stuff. It sure was a lot of work, for not much of a mine.

About an hour or so into the night we figured out that our air mattress had a leak. It made for a very uncomfortable night I think that is problem number three for the trip.

The next day we hiked up the hill to explore the other prospects in the area. We have discovered that the age of the average rockhound is around 65. Most have ATV’s and don’t go cross-country. Consequently, we go cross-country and usually find some cool stuff in hard to get to places.

On the back side of a hill, we found a ton of chrysocolla. It was the most we have ever found. Grace and I spent at least an hour deciding which pieces were worth carrying back over the hill. We also knew our space was now limited in the Rover, since we had lost the roof rack, so we had to be selective.

By the time we were done exploring the area it was late and we decided to stay another night here with our flat air mattress.

The next day we woke up and headed towards the Planet Mine, which is quite popular with rockhounds. Several people asked us if we had been there or knew where it was. The Planet Mine is very cool, lots of neat rocks and all very easy to get to. I don’t really know what is valuable, so we just collected the rocks that we thought were pretty.

The next area we went to was a canyon, which you have to hike into. What a canyon! It was awesome. Mines and tailings were everywhere. We were told that you can find lots of drusy in this canyon. Drusy is a mineral with clear quartz crystal over the top. We didn’t really know what that was, but found lots of cool stuff. About halfway down the canyon we ran into some rockhounds, who actually knew what they were looking for. Most rockhounds don’t like to share their secrets with anyone. But having a cute nine year old really helps. The two gentlemen showed us some drusy and actually gave some to Grace. They were very helpful. We then went about collecting several other pieces of drusy ourselves. I found a chrysocolla drusy piece that I am quite proud of.

After getting back to the car we were all pretty tired and hot. The weather was supposed to be in the 70’s and turned out the highs were near 90. So, it was much hotter than anticipated. At this point, we needed a place to camp for the night. I suggested we head to our favorite State Park, River Island. It is on the Colorado River and has hot showers and flush toilets. This would also allow us to go by Walmart in Parker and pick up a new air mattress for the night.

I decided to drive out. I did really well with the double-clutching. We stopped a few times to look at different things, including the Bill Williams River that was very high. We had hit the pavement and all of the sudden James yells, “Stop, stop!” I pull over and realize I have been driving with the parking brake on. It was ready to catch on fire. Poor James, he really has to deal with a lot from me. The worst is I don’t really feel all that bad about it. James drove after that. That could be problem number four.

We got to Parker and went to buy the air mattress. Yay!!! Here we get to the next problem. Walmart no longer carries full size air mattresses, therefore one more night without sleep.

We make it to River Island and took showers. Once again we get lots of questions about our rig and lots of pictures are taken in the campground. We both love talking about our Rover. Grace is getting pretty good at answering all the basic questions.

The next day we headed home and passed through a town called Bouse. They have the best town sign. It reads, “Bouse welcomes you to the town of volunteers. Population 875 friendly people and 5 grouches!” My Dad had better not move there or they will have to change their sign to 6 grouches.

Even with our problems on the trip we had a great time, and will go back someday for more discoveries.