Introduction
In 2022 I was tired of going to the same off-road parks and standing around watching a group of people doing the same obstacles. But I do enjoy gathering around a campfire later in the evening with good food, good drinks, and good friends. In 2023 I decided to host an event in the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area which offered more areas for people to explore and a far broader variety of things to do, while still having a dedicated camping area to gather in. We returned again for 2024, but I don’t want to travel across the country just to keep going to the same places.
For 2025 I came up with the idea for a Ranger Adventure. I have to admit that some of the influence came from watching the Ultimate Adventure (which is now the Unreal Adventure) and combined the idea with those that have been floating around in my head for years. The difference between the Ranger Adventure and the Ultimate Adventure is that I’m not going to make you push your truck until it’s either broken or damaged. Although I can’t guarantee that you won’t end up breaking or damaging something. But if you do, that’s on you.
The point of the Ranger Adventure is to get people to take their daily driven Ford Ranger on a weekend adventure, do some off-roading, camping, discover new areas, and build on friendships in the Ford Ranger community. I don’t want to spend a weekend confined to an off-road park. I want to do some off-roading but see some sites along the way as well. There’s nothing like pulling into a gas station in some small town with a bunch of modified Ford Rangers and getting looks from the locals.
My other goal was to get the guys with Ford Rangers that have been built for off-road and trailered to off-road parks to actually drive them somewhere for a weekend and enjoy them. I was one of those guys. My TRS-2 1996 Ford Ranger 4×4 would get trailered once a year to an off-road park and wasn’t being used and enjoyed the rest of the year.
The plan would be to have people fill out an online entry form with details and photos of their Ranger and then pick six people to join us so that we had a good variety of Ford Rangers ranging from mild to heavily modified. All of the trucks would have to be street legal, they couldn’t be trailered to the event, and the participant would be required to camp with us. No hotels.
Unfortunately, people immediately assumed this was an ‘overlanding’ event which turned off the off-roaders. Suggesting an overland type of event to off-roaders is like telling a bunch of straight men that they’re invited to a birthday party at a gay bar.
This inaugural Ranger Event would take place in the Daniel Boone National Forest near Slade Kentucky from Thursday May 1st to the 4th. There is some challenging off-roading around Slade Kentucky, and this had the potential to be an epic adventure.
I only had a few people express an interest in attending. One couldn’t attend because he already had a trip planned for the week prior. Another wanted to attend but was informed by his wife that they had a family event to go to, one was interested until his buddy told him he thought it was an overlanding event, and another had to drop out for medical reasons.
It was turning out to be only Robert Mangrum and I that would be going. Robbie had a friend that was supposed to come along and was going to film everything and I had to go to Ohio anyway in April, so we decided to do it even if it was just the two of us. Unfortunately, even his camera guy had to back out.
There were three reasons why I chose the first weekend in May versus other times of the year:
- My daughter and daughter-in-law were both scheduled to deliver their first child in April, so I needed to come east for that.
- I had already spent the past 2-years off-roading in Kentucky in the fall and wanted to experience a different time of the year.
- I knew there would be more water and mud to challenge us in May
Life Changing Event
Sometimes just everyday life can be challenging. While working in my shop on Monday March 31st I got a phone call from my sister that she was at our mothers and found her on the floor unconscious and barely breathing. It was a dire situation, and chances were that she wasn’t going to pull through. I grabbed my bin of camping gear, a duffle bag of clothes, and took off from Texas to Ohio with my dog Marley. Somewhere in Indiana I got a call at about 5:00 am telling me that my mother had passed away. I had lost my father in 2013, and my mother was someone that I could call anytime day or night if I needed someone to talk to. I will miss her dearly.
I spent the entire month of April in Ohio dealing with my mother’s death, funeral, selling what furniture she had in her apartment, cleaning it out, meeting my two new grand-daughters, and seeing my son and daughter. By the time this Ranger Adventure came around I was mentally exhausted and ready to go home.
Finally Getting To The Adventure
On Thursday May 1st I met Robbie at Callies Campground in Stanton Kentucky. Robbie had sent me a message and told me that he had made camp (top photo) and sent me a photo from under his awning of the rain (photo above). Not wanting to make dinner in the rain, I had stopped at a restaurant to grab some dinner hoping that the rain would end by the time I got to the campground. No luck. I arrived to find Robbie and his son Zane sitting by a propane firepit under their awning on Robbie’s Ranger.
For a while I wasn’t sure if I was going to get to set up my tent or have to sleep in the truck. It wasn’t that bad though. We just hung out under the awning by the fire pit and relaxed until the rain stopped. With the rain over, I was finally able to setup my tent and let Marley out of the truck. Once it got dark, we turned in for the night to get some sleep. After getting settled into my sleeping bag a group of people arrived and set up camp behind us. For a while I had to contend with the light from someone’s flashlight and some late-night music. But the music wasn’t blaring, and they had good taste in music, so I didn’t mind.
Friday started out as a beautiful day with a clear sky and temps in the mid 70s. Robbie had cooked some breakfast tacos, so I didn’t have to cook anything. That was a blessing because unlike other trips, I didn’t have a very good food selection. I had stopped at the store along the way to get some things, but wasn’t as prepared as I usually am. Honestly, the circumstances that led up to this event left me the most unprepared I had ever been on a trip.
The first obstacle was this creek crossing. But it wasn’t a typical creek crossing because we had to drive down the creek, drop off a concrete ledge, and then come out on the other side. While the creek bottom was pretty solid when we started, it got pretty soft and sandy where we came out.
Above you can see Robbie starting to drop off that concrete ledge and me approaching it in the photo below.
Every trail we were on was an old county road, but most of them had been neglected for a long time. One of them had a sign stating that it was a dead end, but we knew it went through. It just wasn’t passable by car or even some stock trucks anymore.
Some of these rocky sections were still slick from all the rain that the area had received the day before.
Pumpkin Hollow is a fun road to take. Especially if you traverse it north to south. Robbie got hung up on this rocky ledge for a moment. Between the mud and wet rocks, it was a lot slicker than it looks in this photo. This is where the experience of being an off-roader comes into play. It was also a good obstacle to teach people with lesser experience on. Contrary to what some people may have thought; we weren’t going to be driving down gravel roads picking wildflowers. There would be some legitimate off-roading on this adventure.
This ledge is taller than it looks and came up to the front bumper. 4WD is definitely needed to climb up and over it.
For those that know that I switched to Maxxis RAZR AT’s and wondering how I like them, I’ve been very happy. They took almost no weight to balance them, they’re quiet and smooth on the highway, and have performed awesome in the mud, sand, and on rocks. I also like that they have a 50,000 Limited treadwear warranty. These cross-country adventures eat up mud tires. Believe it or not the best prices I find on these tires is through the Maxxis Amazon Store.
Here Robbie found himself resting on his rock slider. At first, he thought he was going to have to winch over it, but I spotted for him, had him back up and then take a line more to his left. When my time came, I had the advantage of seeing the line that worked and pretty much went up and over it.
Some of the ruts can get deep and you have to straddle them to keep from getting hung up on your differential.
There was definitely no shortage of water.
And no shortage of creek crossings.
It seemed that the further we went on this adventure, the deeper the water got. When we went through this mud hole the water was up to our bumpers.
And then we came to this shit show…..
I numbered some points on the photo above for reference.
If you look at #1 it appears to be a bypass to the left of this huge mud hole. This bypass slopes down to the left and you can see where vehicles have slid down the hill and hit the trees. Some trees actually had the bark ripped off of them.
The bank shown at #2 was pretty tall and the incline at #3 leaned you left into that wall. There was no way to go through there without dragging the entire left side of the truck along that bank and ripping the door mirror off. You could see the grooves in the embankment where people had tried. If I had a piece of crap truck and didn’t care about body damage I would have tackled it, but it seemed stupid to even try it.
You have to remember that there’s a couple feet of water in here. So, when you look at that area between #2 and #3 it’s a pretty extreme angle because most of your left tire is going to be submerged in that water.
There was no way to get up on the right of #3 and go around that way.
We decided to turn around which was fun in itself because there was no place to turn around. We had to do what I would call a 100-point turn where you keep driving up the bank on the right, backing up while not dropping off the ledge behind you, and repeating until you’re facing the way you came in. OK, it may have only been a 6-point turn.
Here Comes The Storm
When we left there, we decided to head for the rock garden on Fincastle Road. This was the area that we both had been looking forward to the most. When we stopped so that I could walk Marley and give him some water I noticed that there were a lot of clouds rolling in. I looked at the weather map and saw that there was a massive thunderstorm heading for us and the forecast said that the rain would continue throughout Saturday.
There was a realization that by the time we got to the rock garden we may be doing it in the rain. We also knew that if we weren’t going to stay and wheel in the rain on Saturday, then it didn’t make sense to stay the night just to have to pack up in the rain in the morning. If this had been a group event, we would have stuck it out and made the rain part of the adventure. I’ve hosted trail rides before where it rained all day, and we just accepted the mud and rain as part of the challenge. Robbie and I made the decision to head back to camp and pack up our stuff before the storm hit.
Robbie and Zane only had a 3.5 to 4-hour drive back home to Tennessee. So, packing up and leaving early wasn’t an issue for them. I had a 980-mile drive back to Texas that was going to take at least 15-hours to complete. Plus, I was going to stop off and see forum member SenorNoob (Luke) in Tennessee on my way home to pick up some parts I was buying from him. And lastly, I had been ready to pack up and head back to Texas a week before I even got here.
When we got back to the campground you couldn’t really tell that a storm was coming aside from the fact that it was getting cloudy. The sun was still shining through, and the sky wasn’t getting dark. But as we were finishing loading our trucks it started to pour down rain.
We were all packed up and left the campground around 5:30 pm. I headed towards SenorNoob’s in Tennessee, stopped for dinner, and then got to his house around 8:50 pm. I had returned to Central Standard Time so it would actually be 9:50 pm if I were still in Kentucky. After picking up the parts I headed west and decided to keep driving until I got too tired to drive.
More Tragedy
Shortly after entering Arkansas, I came across a crash on IS-40. An SUV had gone off the left side of the interstate, struck a guard rail, rotated counterclockwise, and ejected the driver. The driver was on the berm wrapped around a guardrail post off the right side of the road. Someone was standing over him asking him if he was ok, but I’m pretty confident that he was probably deceased from internal injuries. His vehicle was a little further down the road facing oncoming traffic. There was debris everywhere and a bunch of people had stopped to help, so I continued on.
Finally, Back In Texas
I ended up stopping at a truck stop outside of Texarkana, Texas around 5:00 am and took a nap. I was actually surprised I drove as far as I did. I probably should have stayed at a hotel somewhere in Tennessee, but there was a part of me that really wanted to get home.
After a 3-hour nap I woke up, finished the remaining 3-hours of my trip, and got home around noon on Saturday.
It wasn’t the adventure that I wanted, but sometimes you just have to endure the adventure that life puts you through.
I’m really disappointed that we didn’t have a group of people on this adventure, but everything happens for a reason. Even if we don’t know what that reason is.
I haven’t given up on the idea of a Ranger Adventure, but after spending the last 7-years driving from Texas to Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky to go off-roading with other Ranger enthusiasts, I think it’s time to do something west of the Mississippi. The question is, can I find people to join me? Time will tell.
Trail Damage
I don’t know if Robbie had any trail damage. It’s not unusual for him to end up with a dent and a few scratches. Even though his Ranger is his daily driver it sees a lot of off-road time.
In the photos below you can see where I scratched and gouged the Pro Comp wheels on the rear of the truck. That was courtesy of some large rocks we encountered climbing up a hill. You can also see where the sliders had done their job. Theres wear marks on the side as well as on the kicker on the rear of the slider. I think that was from a huge log on that same hill.
More Information
For more information on the Ranger Adventure check out Ranger Adventure or Ranger-Adventure.com.
Ranger Adventure Video
Be sure to check out this video for a better look at the trail and to see the Rangers in action.
Jim Oaks is the founder of TheRangerStation.com, the longest-running Ford Ranger resource online since 1999. With over 25 years of hands-on experience building and modifying Ford Rangers — including magazine-featured builds like Project Transformer — Jim has become one of the most trusted authorities in the Ford off-road and enthusiast space. In 2019, he was loaned a Ranger FX4 by Ford Motor Company to test and document across the TransAmerica Trail. Jim continues to inspire and guide Ranger owners around the world.
