Kansas Rocks Creepy Crawl

[gw33gp]

It is about an hour drive from Garnett. That is an easy round trip, but it sounds like our arrival and departure times are going to be too close to make the trip worthwhile. I am usually back there that time of year every year. I might try it again sometime when my schedule is not so tight.

If my family has no plans for Sunday, I may still come down to run the trails. That is not the kind of thing I normally do off-road, but it could be fun.

Enjoy

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Last time we did have a lot of fun playing around in the park.

I hope to get there by 5 and I doubt we will get out of there much earlier than noon, last time we caught lunch in KC IIRC.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Deadline is Thursday if you want to register for the creepy crawl @Uncle Gump and anyone else who may be on the fence.

Last day to register...

 

[Curious Hound]

I'm not going to make it.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Broke the oldest out of school a couple hours early and hit Missouri:



The ratchet strapped road cover really completes the look...



Had some fun with books on the road



Kansas!



Yeah, we saw this later...



I tried to get Amanda to shift formation to follow the heep so we would have a Land Cruiser, Range Rover, Wangler and a Bronco all in a row but she wouldn't...



Just what every V8 swapped Ranger pilot wants to see while pulling a trailer... stop and go traffic for miles. Oddly it actually ran cooler idling along than it did running 65.



Amanda didn't know if I saw the Jeep so she took a picture of it for me.





Got set up right before dark, lots of lightning around on the horizon but clear skies... it was weird.



At at 6am a good storm rolled in, very dramatic thunder.



After it blew threw the morning started out pretty nice.



Handy dandy oatmeal cooker didn't miss a beat.



Can kinda see the playground behind our site and the shower house beyond that. Very nice campground for the most part.



They have a RC rock garden in the campground which Oliver had fun with. My newly installed wheelspacers on my RC backed out and it yeeted a drive pin. I didn't have any tools to work on it with so it hardly got ran.





By that morning they had totally changed the forecast and were talking about constant rain from late morning into the evening so I popped up the canopy to discover I had left the stakes in our normal camping tote that has our main ground tent in it at home... so we ran to Fort Scott to grab stakes for that. While there they had a really heavy thunderstorm roll thru and then varying intensity of rain well into Saturday night. We were starting to have doubts about just how much fun offroading was going to be.

So we got back to camp, got the canopy staked down and thought to give it a try. It... wasn't much fun. I remembered the main loop being fairly tame so I though we could just stick to that but it was steeper in places than I remember. Just grease on rock, we were sliding everywhere. Not super fun in the family Conestoga with steep drop offs everywhere in the rain. Last time we were here it was super dry, I couldn't even run my gas lantern because of the burn ban.

We did get a little muddy.



Yes even up into the wheel well like this:

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

But mine got muddier just driving to the office/gift shop lol. Since it was raining and otherwise miserable Oliver and I cruised around looking at rigs for something to do.





Then we did some wheeling in the rain from inside our canopy.



I did throw a wall panel up on my side since rain was starting to blow in, having never used them before they worked great and the canopy can be collapsed just fine with them on as well.



The main parking lot is supposed to drain into the ditch we were R/Cing in earlier. Water was flowing in there but there was a problem with a culvert up above so it started backing up and then flooded our campsite and our neighbors.

Here it comes!



Much better!





Wasnt feeling stumbling around in the mud to do the trunk or treat thing so we keep R/Cing and otherwise having a good time until it was time for supper. Turned out they had moved the trick or treating to the pavilion so we did catch some of that.



Pretty good supper.



After the trail ride attempt earlier we sat out the creepy crawl, not sure how much we would get out of it with the windows up in a downpour anyway.

Picked Oliver up one of the DJ books about conquiring your fears at the office, we read it twice. Pretty good books really.

DJ's Off-Road Adventures - Story by David McBee

When DJ decided to finally go for his dream, he was made fun of by some bullies. This made DJ wonder if he would ever overcome his fears to become a real off-roader. Thankfully, DJ didn't give up and met some nice friends who encouraged him. He was still afraid but remembered a

djsoffroadadventures.com

Finally, the end is in sight!



Camping with a baby... it seems like all I do is heat water and wash things.



While waiting for that and for awhile afterwards I read this book I had found with Oliver's book, same author. It was relaxing reading by Coleman lantern in a tent in the rain.



Everybody else wheeled in between me needing help breaking camp in the morning.





On the road again...



Not much to note about the trip home aside form I got passed by a Skamper that was older than mine. Guy wouldn't look over or wave or anything.



So yeah, we didn't really get to do much and it was kind of a bummer. Rain wasn't really forecasted at all like what we ended up with before we left home. It was a pretty quiet relaxing weekend though.

 

[Curious Hound]

Looks fun. Quiet and relaxing can be fun.

 

[bobbywalter]

still an adventure.