The Virginai 4 Wheel Drive Association (http://www.va4wda.org/) held a member-only event May 14-15 at The Cove in Gore, VA. Below are two reports, one from Virgil and the other from Goerge....
Attendees (Members and Prospects):
VIrgil Moore
Scott Gilbert
Dan Elwing
Preston Crumb
Alan Forney
George
- George broke a yoke on his CJ
- Scott let his wife wheel his new Orange JKUR
- Several people camped at Camp III
- Others with RV's camped at Camp II by the pond
Virgil Moore's report:
The kids and I arrived thursday so we could hang out a little longer. We setup camp thursday, roasted marshmellows, ran around.
Friday looked like a washout but cleared late morning and we did some fishing at the big lake.
Saturday started out sunny and nice and we had drivers meeting at 8. There were about six lines from beginner to buggy, about 45-50 rigs I'd guess. We were in the 4/5 trail group, with 8 or 9 rigs, mostly from Middle Peninsula Jeepers group, who run the event for va4wda. Phil Wolf was trail guide. We ran u turn hard, u turn easy, down winch then moose or something and down minespring to the beginning of trickle for lunch.
Mostly everyone made it through with a spot here or there and one winch use to pull a newer jk away from a tree. I can't remember when I still cared about body damage on the xj :)
And as I was cresting one of the u turns someone noticed antifreeze gushing out. I had just changed my hoses this spring so I figured I messed up tightening hoses. Luckily the cap was not quite turned tight and I was back in business.
After lunch we made our way to the other end of the park via minespring, not trickle to my disappointment, and onto upper road and around horseshoe then eventually over to berkely springs and pinnacle. The rain that started after lunch had cleared and we enjoyed the view of the overlook.
We made our way back to camp and had a nice dinner, except for the wind, at the pavillion by the lake provided by middle peninsula, along with door prizes. I met Scott Gilbert from OCC and Quality Performance who was there with his jk and maybe scrambler. George was also there with his awesome red scrambler on 38s i'd guess.
I bailed on sunday wheeling after discovering a flat on my tow rig. It's like rocket science finding all the jack and handles and spare on this thing so it was too much with breaking down camp to look forward to also.
All in all a nice weekend in spite of the spotty weather.
George's report:
[Virgial] aka Big Money and crew were cool to hang with. Our story was a bit different though...
My friend got in at 1:30am from Dulles so scooped him up after 5 weeks of finding every moment of free time to work on the CJ. I was exhausted and running on fumes by the time I picked him up but conversation got me to the Cove. We slept in front of the office because we didn't want to wake anyone with my obnoxious exhaust which was straight pipe due to busted muffler and ordered mufflers not showing up in time. Anyway- shuteye was at 4:40am for us and who knows how much we actually slept because it was sleeping bags on the ground (no tent) so inhaling bugs the whole time.
Morning came- we got back in the CJ and rolled to Big Money's spot on #3 and made friends with Phil Wolf and other MPJAI guys. Nice people. Shortly thereafter we tagged along for an exploratory run. This was my first time wheeling in over a decade and the CJ's first time willing in at least that much so there were some spiderwebs to brush through but we managed fine. I didn't know the trail names and my CB doesn't have an antenna yet so clueless what they were but Phil said we made it through a couple 5s and maybe a 6. Anyway that was cool.
Friday night my friend Calixto and I ran into a group of guys from Richmond- one was a trackday rider like myself and another is a pilot like Calixto and all had rigs so we hit it off and drank beer and rum together. Calixto must have been more tired than I was because he managed to eat dirt 3 times that I saw. One of those was from the nerf bars on my SOA CJ on 38" tires (good eye Cash Money) and he didn't even try to break the fall (like chopping down a tree). Anyway that was unpleasant to watch.
Saturday was wheeling fun. We joined a string led by a guy named Eric with a silver TJ. 15 minutes into the trail one of the Richmond crew began leaking gas from his CJ's return hose. We capped it and zipped it up and kept on rolling. The trails I remember were down trickle and wahoo. There were others including two short parallel uphill climbs where we took the steep one with a rock ledge near the top and that's where I broke the rear yoke on my dana 300. Got winched out and made it to camp in FWD. End of wheeling for me and end of torture session for Calixto who looked like he was holding back from blowing chunks the whole way.
At the raffle I won the TWCDS $100 gift certificate which bought me 2 yokes (not jokes, yokes!) and a big smile for the sponsor pic....
Anyway, after swapping my D44 front yoke with the D300 I was able to drive the CJ home in RWD because doing it in FWD would not have been fun. No yoke bro!
So that's it for me. Pardon the bad jokes and fould humor.
George