4 JLURs head from Michigan to Alabama and Florida to Wheel. Pick up some more Badges...

[HungryHound]

While not directly related, this is a video from our hike. BunkHead was not good Jeeping, but hey the hiking was beautiful. This was from about 2 miles of hiking...... That is out and back to a total distance of about 1 mile. There were many water falls.




Well we had Wednesday to burn as we thought that the Stoney Lonesome Off road park did not open until Thursday. So hit up the US Space and Rocket center in Alabama for something to do. It was worth the price of omission.

Got busted trying to put a Jeep sticker on the moon rover vehicle.....

Apparently NASA has some cool recovery gear too.

I played the video games this guy developed back in 1984 or 1985 on my Apple IIC computer. I had a lighting fast 400 baud modem. Fuck yea.

Okay back to Jeep stuff. Asked the guy if he wanted to race, He said hell no, I know that thing has a 3.6 PentaSTAR in it and 5.13 gears. Wise choice my man.

This is the 3rd Blackbird type aircraft I have seen in person. I am always awestruck by the awesomeness of this aircraft.

As a side note, I have a long time friend. We don't talk often, but hey we have been friends for 49 years of my 53 years of life.... Long time friend..... He is a space nut. I call him out of the blue and say hey it is your birthday in two days, turn on your video chat and I will walk you through the gift shop and pick you up something. He is like dude, I know exactly what I want. It was a mouse pad.

Now back to wheeling. While there were no decent trails that I could find for a full day of wheeling, Using Gaia, I was able to find a little bit of wheeling by a lake and a decent place to cook dinner.

So as we plan to head to Stoney Lonesome Off Road park on Thursday, we discover a shanfu.... They are closed on Thursday..... WTF, The Jeep Badge of Honor app shows them open on Thursday, Google shows them open on Thursday, their web site states their office is open, but the park is closed. FUCK we have already burned two days waiting for them to open. Just a small vent...... WTF Jeep, stop putting trails in places that have limited access or are closed for part of the year. We already missed the badge trail in Georgia because it is closed for winter......winter in Georgia and there are badge trails in parks that are only open occasionally.

Well we say fuck it and show up on Thursday with the hopes that after traveling a longways, they will show mercy and let us wheel in a closed park. We show up and they open the gate and let us wheel. We have the whole park to ourselves. Hats off to Stoney Lonesome. They are awesome. We each spent over $50 dollars in the gift shop to show our appreciation.

Stoney Lonesome is a great park. The wheeling is fantastic and while we only had about 5 hours of time left, it was a glorious 5 hours of wheeling. It was worth the 10+ hour drive from Michigan to wheel at Stoney Lonesome and we will be back.

Air down them tires, we have some wheeling to get done. Finally after 4 days in the Jeep, some real wheeling.

Just so you know the struggle is real.

The ledge at Gut Buster. It is at least 6 feet tall and the approach is a very steep angle. The trail was real wet. Looked like a small creek running down the tail. I tied getting up to the ledge and made it about half way. The conditions with the trail being wet would hav required winching almost the whole trail. We just did not have the time for that as there was still a lot of things to see in our limited time.

More to come on Stoney Lonesome. Still looking and editing to be done.

Would have been a great photo with the Jeep sticker on the Rover.

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[wibornz]

LOL ive lost count how many times i have been there. My son and i are going in june on vacation. No wheeling just one heck of a road trip which we will wind up in michigan.

Where in Michigan are you headed to?

 

[Punknhed]

Where in Michigan are you headed to?

Starting in the upper at picture rocks and the falls. May hit the locks. Possibly coldwater and Cadillac see family. End up in Sterling heights for a few days.

 

[wibornz]

Starting in the upper at picture rocks and the falls. May hit the locks. Possibly coldwater and Cadillac see family. End up in Sterling heights for a few days.

Not stoping at the sand dunes???

 

[wibornz]

Okay, back to work on this thread.

There are crosses on Gut Buster??? Maybe people have died on this trail.

There was a lot of mud on the trail, but we tried to avoid it if possible as we still had many days left before we headed home.

Might be the coolest picture of some of my badges while on the way to the mall.

Just hanging with friends and scoping out the next obstacle.

Heading back out of the park. We had limited time at Stoney Lonesome and it is a shame. We could have easily spent a couple days here.

Out to the parking lot, to air up and cook steaks and mash potatoes for lunch and then press to Florida. The Punk'N Jeep and Bill will be heading back to Michigan as the rest of us keep heading south and east.

Sure we could have hit up a fast food joint, but a properly prepared steak is less than 10 minutes to the table. Sure it is on paper plates and a plastic fork, but we use real knives.

Steak done right.

I still have not had the time to get to the GoPro vids and pics. So more to come. I Amy even pull some dash cam vids.

 

[Rosco P]

Dammit, Gary.

 

[wibornz]

So lets talk milage. The best milage I saw for a tank of fuel was 20.6. The pic is showing 20.2, but I ended up averaging 20.6 for the that tank of fuel.

The second best tank of fuel got me 19.5. Pretty pleased with that. On my way home. I jumped on I95 North by Daytona and was averaging 15.2 with the cruise set at 81 mph. At 81 mph, I was getting passed often. I normally drive right around 68 to 71 mph on the hwy. I think if I would have drove that slow on I95, I would have created a huge traffic jam. I took I95 all the way to Fayetteville North Carolina.

The worst mileage was in Ohio to Michigan. Had the cruise set at 72 mph and was getting 9.5 mpg. There was a horrible headwind and side wind. It was the terrible. It was blowing the Jeep al over the place. 5 hours of suck.

 

[wibornz]

Back on task, after leaving Alabama, we headed to Florida to wheel in the Acala National Forest and to pick up the Florida badge trail. The trails were tight, and pin striping is highly likely. We drove slow and minimized it as much as possible. The trails were very easy and basically all sand. We spent a full day there had a good time. One of the Jeep girls from our local Michigan Jeep club met us at the trail head and wheeled with us for the day. She has a lifted Gladiator. She is super cool. She spends the winter in Florida and wheels the area often.

We ran along side of a Naval Bombing range.

All kinds of warning signs including Lasers

Group photo of us misfits.

After a day of wheeling, and with pleasant weather, we decided to skip the hotels, and hammock camp in the national forest. I think it has been 40+ years or more since any of us had slept in a hammock. I marked this spot earlier in the day as a possible camp spot. It work well.

A time lapse GoPro vid of us setting up and into the evening. Not many thing better than hanging out with ride and die kind of friends.

A night shot of the stars This was taken with a Samsung Note 10+

The badge trails are done and off to Orlando to pick up my wife. She is super cool. How many wives just say hey gather up your buds and go wheeling for a week before I fly in. Then she worked four 16 hour shifts to pad the spending money while I was gone.

She is a keeper, going on 32 years of marriage.

So after hanging around the pool and doing some touristy stuff for a week, it was time to head back home. After doing some mapping, discovered that if we left the Orlando area, drove to Daytona Beach, cruised the beach, then hit up St. Augustine and Fayetteville NC on our way home, that it was only about 100 more miles. Kind of pissed though because I wanted to run the Georgia badge trail too on this trip. The web site said that it opened mid March. After 2 hours of research, calling and leaving messages trying to determine what mid March meant, I got a call back. And just how does a US Forest Ranger work from home?????? Still can't figure that out.

Mid March is March 19th. Fuck I would have passed through there on the 17th. Not to worry though I received another call stating the trail would not be open until at least the 22nd. Well no big deal, It is only a 20 hour drive to come back and get it...........

On to Daytona sorry for the rant,

We arrived early and had to wait for the tide to go out so that we could get the Jeep on the beach.

It was cool, there was not hardly anyone on the beach.

Did some drone flying at the beach.



Then headed back to St. Augustine. Had lunch at the marina and looked at boats while we waited for our table. We plan to buy something like this in about ten years and do the Great Loop with it.

This is the Great Loop, by boat, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, around Florida, up the east coast and back into the Great Lakes. With the right boat, you can also do the Caribbean chain of island along the way,

Then in the car for the dive back to Michigan. My wife had a round trip ticket, but she said fuck it, took another day off and did the drive back home with me.

So in closing. I would not drive to Florida just to run the badge trail. It is just okay, but if you are in the area, it is fun enough to run. Stoney Lonesome is a great Off Road park and I hope to make it back. We did the park a disservice by only having 4 or 5 hours to spend there. I would have liked to had at least 2 or 3 days. The people that run the park are awesome.

Total miles traveled is 3199 miles. Or just a little less than going to Moab and back from my house. No regrets, as hanging at the pool out of Michigan weather was nice. The weather at Moab while it is nice, it was not Florida nice.

 

[mikem20]

Amazing!! Thanks for sharing!

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