Jeeping. The latest.

One might get sick of reading about Jeeping in the coming days, I  may even get sick of writing about it. However, Jeeping, for me, involves a lot of mental and emotional energy (is trauma too strong of a word?) and so blogging about it will most likely continue. To my grandchildren who may read this someday out of boredom or curiosity, I apologize.

Did we go to Moab two weeks in a row? Why yes, we did.  Here were the reasons:

-It snowed up here where we live and that made us want to go south.

-Frank's jeep got lifted this week so he, of course, really wanted to try it out.

-Frank doesn't really need a reason to want to go to Moab. I think he would do it every single weekend if he could.

We went on a new trail that we had never tried before. This time around (vs the last time we owned a jeep) I am trying to put my foot down and say I refuse to do anything crazy. I do not like the feeling of "I might die doing this stupid thing".  It is not in my nature. I don't get it at all, to be honest.

However

(You knew that was coming didn't you?)

Frank picked this trail and said it was mostly a medium trail-yellow- with nothing really dangerous. It was only considered hard in parts-red- because of rocky terrain.  We ventured on.

An example of "rocky terrain". This kind of stuff isn't scary to me unless it's too steep.

I kept to my stated intention of getting out of the car if I had any doubt of the scariness of the terrain. I got out about 4-5 times on this trail. I took a few pictures and a couple of videos, although neither the videos nor pictures do justice to how scary it looks from inside the car. 

That is disappointing to me.

Take this for example. Inside the car it looks very steep and rocky, like driving off a mini cliff. In this picture...no big deal.

This is me trying to get a picture from inside the jeep of how scary it looks. Even I admit that this picture doesn't look that bad. But seriously, those are big rocks and we are going to drive over them.

Here is a little video that shows my feelings and Frank's feelings all in one short clip. I was trying to keep my commentary to a minimum since all I ever say is how scared I am. Ha!  But as you will see, I let some noise slip out...

It was beautiful. A perfect day, weather-wise. I do love the gorgeous Red rocks of southern Utah as well. I can never capture the beauty of the place (how surprising...using my iPhone only and sometimes through a window) but it really is quite spectacular.

About halfway though our drive, Frank heard a noise he did not like. Since he just got the lift done this week, he was keeping a close eye on things and making sure it was all installed and performing well.  Turns out, this sound was the sound of part of the jeep's guts coming loose (Yes, guts...something underneath...that's all that matters to me). He found that a bolt had come loose, so loose that the nut was missing and it was almost out completely.  During his investigation he found another bolt that was also loose but the nut was still intact.  As we have done with the past Jeep, he jimmy rigged a fix with duct tape. Yes duct tape held our vehicle together as we finished a difficult four wheeling adventure and drove the 3 hour drive back home afterwards. Ridiculous.

Shortly after "repairing" the jeep, we arrived at a cool arch called Uranium Arch...apparently named after the mines that existed around Moab back in the day.

For me the upside of 4 wheeling is that you get to see things that you would likely never see in any other circumstance. Most of these beautiful places are only available to people with serious 4 wheel capable vehicles or to serious hikers. We don't really fall into the serious hiker category though we hope someday to be less pathetic than we now are.

Arches are so cool in person and kind of hard to capture with an iPhone. You'll just have to trust me.

_____

We have a book that we use to map the trails. It gives info on what kind of terrain you will find and obstacles that you will experience. We knew this trail had an optional hill called "Wipeout Hill".

I told Frank that we would definitely not be taking that side trip.

We got to a point in the road where there was a fork and it wasn't clear which way to go, so Frank just starts going left. I tell him to stop while I read the book...turns out if we had continued to the left for a few more feet we would have gone down, you guessed it, Wipeout Hill.

OY!

We turned around but as we were about to drive away we see a couple investigating the hill and then getting into their jeep and heading that way. So we got out to watch.

I was so stressed watching them go down it that I couldn't even bring myself to take pictures. I wasn't in any danger whatsoever but I was beside myself.

At one point the jeep went up on the two front wheels and nearly tipped.

Frank immediately turned to me and said,"You did not just see that."

The jeep did make it safely to the bottom where they stopped and looked back up at the hill for quite a few minutes. I'm sure they were thinking back to that moment when they almost went end over end.

Then a group of vehicles arrived that were all going down the hill.

Turned out they were being trained to take tourists down this way...so they had a guy showing them where to put their tires and how to steer as they went down.

I wish now that I had a decent picture of this monstrous hill but I was at this point pretty sure I was about to have a full on panic attack just watching.

I ended up leaving the area to do some deep breathing and questioning of my life decisions. 

Frank watched the first guy go down and said he did fine.

I made him vow to never talk about that hill to me again. 

A vow he has already broken numerous times (accidentally of course) 

Here is a picture I stole off the internet showing the beginning of that hill. It gets worse after this part:

Below is the only picture I managed to get. You can't even tell it's a hill really except you can see the guy at the top waiting, and the guy headed down.

Anyway, after my little breakdown we kept going and the road was less stressful for the rest of the ride.

We had a lovely little lunch with a nice view, as usual.

I also got out of the car for this part

The book described this part as "uncomfortably tippy" and "scary looking".

I agree.

I took the above picture as I hiked over the scary, tippy hill while Frank waited at the bottom.

So that was the latest adventure in Jeeping from the Hills.

I am happy to say that this coming weekend, we are not going 4 wheeling because we are doing an escape room!  I'm actually excited about this idea and I will not be in danger at any point.