It's All About the Gear

Rach, Lisa, Rocky and I made another trip to Tahuya State Forest this weekend. We went up to drive in the 4WD Rally. This time we managed to get the campsite that is directly on Twin Lakes. BEAUIFUL!!!! I tried to give Rocky some swimming lessons, he's one of the rare black labs who is afraid of the water. He's a great swimmer, just scared though. I thought I was going to be driving alone but I managed to convince the girls and dog to join me for the 10.5 mile trek and we all had such a great time. A bunch of the local 4WD clubs put the event on and the grand prizes were all things that I NEED for my Jeep, though we managed to conquer the entire trail without having to push or pull on the Jeep at all. They had a new lift, an 8000 lb. winch and a set of lockers as the top three prizes. Along the trail there were five or six checkpoints and ateach one you had to answer questions and play little games for points. Lisa pulled through for us on the "guess what's in the bag" game, correctly naming five out of ten of the items. Rach's aim at the dart toss was dead on but, she made a pretty tight pattern but just missed the 40-point baloon, must have been the wind. We didn't manage to rack up enough points to be top three but we did come away with a handful of glow in the dark camping mugs, a new ballcap and some SUPER-cool camoflauge winch gloves!!! It was a decent trail, a few moderate hill climbs that tilted the Jeep pretty well and lots of watery mudholes to drive through. Not too bad though thanks to the finely honed skills of the driver..........heh heh. The next campsite over had a fun bunch of people, many of them active-duty Navy (Bubbleheads). We drank a lot of beer with them and talked shop. They are regulars at Kells' Irish pub here in Seattle so we may have to meet up with them sometime, they are the pound-the-table while hollering drinking songs type, woohoo! We also made friends with a local guy out there named Wild Bill. He ran a little shack out of his house where you could get cheap beers and good food, and lots of biker stories. This place was literally a shack, a bunch of pvc with canvas draped over it and Harleys parked in front, some of the friendliest people I've ever come across in a small town like that. Here's more camping pics from this trip: