Big Dogs Main Jambo September 9th-September 11th 2011

We had originally planned on leaving Thursday night, but due to Tropical Storm Lee and the massive amount of rain he gave us we decided to leave Friday...Route 1 was closed and we could not get to our trailer and Jeep.

We finally arrived at The Cove about 3:30 pm on Friday. Pete Soski met us at the Big Dogs sign in table and then we headed to Camp 2 to set up camp. We got a new "Family Tent", which we decided to try out. Chip Woods arrived about 5:30. He forgot his tent, so it was a good thing we bought a new tent, so we could lend him our other one. We decided to venture over to the mud pit around 8pm. Not much to talk about. Same spectacle, different year. We headed back to camp around 9pm. After many attempts to start a fire we gave up. Pete Soski even tried spraying brake cleaner on the logs and then lighting it, but that did not even work. The wood was to damp.

Saturday the drivers meeting started at 9am, the meeting was surprisingly short.

John Hunt had told us the day before that he was not going to talk as long as he usually does, and he stuck to his word! The meeting was over at about 9:45. While at the drivers meeting we did notice that the turn out for this event was rather small, not like the usual Big Dog events. I am assuming that the weather had something to do with it. The weather on Friday and Saturday was great!
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Our group consisted of: 
Scott LeLacheur & Suzzy Lewis Green YJ Members
Pete Soski Black YJ Member
Peter Converse Yellow CJ7 Potential Member
Chip Woods Silver TJ Member
Ed Salas & Shannan Danish Blue TJ Members

We headed over to Trickle; we thought it might be a good trail since there had been some rain. Trickle made for a nice trail ride, there was a good bit of water. We decided to stop at about 11:15 for lunch at the clearing of Trickle were K2 is. No one wanted to attempt K2. We finished Trickle around noon with no major problems. Wahoo was next on the agenda. When we got to the first bail out on Wahoo I gave everyone the option to bail out, but no one wanted to. When we got to the second bail out, Chip Woods decided to park his rig and catch a ride with Pete Soski. We finished Wahoo around 12:50 and we got back on Middle Road to pick up Chips rig and head over to Cobra. We started Cobra around 1:00. Pete got a little hung up, but with a little tug from us he made it through. Pete also got stuck on another hill and I had to winch him up the hill. We finished up Cobra at 2:20. The group was not ready to call it a day, so we headed over to U Turn Hard; we finished that trail easily without anyone having a problem. U Turn Easy was next on the list, no problems there either. Our last trail of the day was U Turn Hard, again. We got back to camp around 4:30. We had an awesome day on the trails! We did 6 trails in one day, which is awesome. Our entire group was great. Once back at camp, Peter, Ed & Shannan aired up. Peter headed back to his hotel. Chip and I cooked up some dinner. After dinner Ed & Shannan headed home. The rest of us who were camping hung out at camp and we tried to get the fire going. We headed down to the bonfire for a while they did a really nice tribute to 9/11. A lot of raffle prizes were given away. Pete was the only one from OCC to win anything. He won handles that attach to the bars of your rig. He turned around and donated them to OCC for the Holiday Party. We were determined to get a fire going, we continued to try and try and finally at about 10:30 we finally had fire! 

Sunday, September 11, 2011
Our Group consisted of:
Scott LeLacheur & Suzzy Lewis Green YJ Members
Pete Soski Black YJ Member
Peter Converse Yellow CJ7 Potential Member
Chip Woods Silver TJ Member
Sunday was very low key. Before I got up it rained, but not for long. After Peter showed up around 10:30 we decided to take it easy and headed over to Pinnacle. We were going to go through Canyon on the way. On the way to Canyon, Chip mentioned that the access road might be a good "trail" for next year's 101/201. Once we got to a hill in Canyon, and I was having trouble getting up it we decided to go back down Canyon and take a different route. Everyone turned around and on our way out of Canyon, Peters rig was having some issues. His center pin broke and he was having issues getting his CJ started. After about 45 minutes of messing with the CJ7 we were ready to head back to camp. I was able to strap the axle in place so Peter could make it home. We broke down camp, aired up, loaded the trailer and headed back to NOVA to make it to the OCC Membership meeting.

All in all it was a great trip, one of the best trips I have been on in a long time.