What a day!

We had excellent weather and an excellent turnout of 14 vehicles in a nice cross-brand mix spanning 47 years. The list included (sorry for not knowing all the passengers)

BobbyO in a TJ
Carroll Jenkins in a 92 XJ with 2 passengers (wife and daughter?)
Charles Galpin in a '63 Series IIA Land Rover
Chip Woods in an 04 TJ
Chris barker in a 01 f150
Dan Finnegan in a 1984 D90 300TDi with wife and dog
Dana Gramling in a '07 FJ and 2 daughters
David Short in a 1980 stage 1 defender with his daughter
Grant Miller in a 1998 Toyota 4 runner with his wife
Jonathan Short in a 94 Bronco and his son
Pedro Luina in a '96 Disco I
Rick Vergot in a 2003 Jeep Wrangler with his gf Carla
Scott Riney in a 2010 JK unlimited with his son and a friend
Stephen Gibbs in a 2003 TJ Rubicon with a nice pickup cab fitted

We met up at Wendy's but David Short called to say he was running late as he missed the exit. Pedro needed to gas up so he offered to wait for him and the rest of us got going. My truck doesn't go super fast so I knew they could catch up ok. It was an uneventful trip other than the rear section of my exhaust breaking off about 20 miles before Harrisonburg, but that in no way diminished the pumped feeling I had that I had passed 2 trucks on the way. I lost count of how many passed me :)

Carroll met us at Sheetz, and after we fueled up and I attempted to re-hang the rear section of my exhaust with a coat hanger from Bobby, we headed out to the trail. Once on the trail I decided I should just pull the rear section of exhaust and some of us aired down to have a smoother ride. The ride to the top was uneventful but pleasant. In just a week the leaves had changed colors quit a bit. We also saw far less trash than I did the week before, but we still picked up a fair amount.

At the top we had lunch and chit chatted for a bit, before heading to meadow knob for more chit chat and photos and then headed down the mountain (Jonathan Short peeled off at this point and took the fast/paved way down). There were 2 interesting spots on the way down where we paused and took photos, and made sure no-one had any trouble.

We headed back to Sheetz to fuel up and get a snack, take potty breaks etc before heading back. At this point David, Chip, Chris and I decided we wanted to run Peter's Mill on the way back, so we peeled off at Edinburg and got passes at the first gas station before heading to the trail. I missed the trail head turn so David jumped into the lead and led the trail. The trail had some nice loose rock sections and in general was great fun. We got off the trail around 7:15 and David stopped for dinner while the rest of us high-tailed it back to town.

I had a number of folks tell me how much fun they had, as well as how much their spouses enjoyed it, so very happy about that. It sounds like it's just the right level of trails for first timers.

charles