Merry Christmas

Wow, I've been slacking.  Between the holidays and beer brewing we haven't had much time for jeeping this past month.  There's a new spot I'm dying to check out, but I'll save that for next month after deer season ends.

We did manage to sneak in a ride to Windrock last weekend and it was a blast.  I almost saw a Jeep roll over, I thought I got stuck, and I did get stuck a couple of times.  Here's an obstacle on trail 21:

And here's Jason attempting it:

There is a lot of awesome scenery at Windrock:

And lastly, here's Jeff negotiating the creek.  Please ignore the idiot cameraman pointing at a rock.  ;)

Post Turkey Ride

Black Friday presented an opportunity to get up at 4am, fight the shopping zombie hordes, and try to score some crap from the local malls. We here at IronJeep said nay, we will not conform. We went wheeling in the Jeep! Our first stop was Royal Blue for some mild rock crawling:

Next on our agenda was a little known area called Eagle Bluff overlooking the sprawling metropolis that isn't Lafollette:

For our grand finale we headed up to the upper end of Royal Blue to check out a trail at the Hatfield Knob elk viewing tower.  We rode down Overlook Trail which lived up to it's name:

And lastly here are a couple videos from the Royal Blue trail we started on:




The second one was taken by my co-pilot and step son Brandon who was in for the turkey day festivities.  Sorry it's sideways he's an IronJeep rookie:




* - No harm either real or imagined came to any Knoxville area Jeep clubs in the making of this blog post.

A ride I did with the East TN 4wd Club

This was a great ride, with the ET4WD.ORG guys doing  the cascades at Windrock.

This was way out of my league. :)

Windrock

We headed up to Windrock this weekend and had a blast Jeeping up and down the mountain.  There are tons of awesome trails to ride up there, we managed to hit 3 of them despite the rain.

Trail 13

The InJeep camera continues to perform way better than the driver.  We've had it set up for a few rides now and I have to say it's been flawless:

The camera operator leaves much to be desired as I left it on through lunch and filled a quarter of the SD card with me munching Fritos.  :)  This video ends abruptly due to the card filling up:

Petros

We found a few trails in the Petros area this weekend.  Nothing too exciting except some cool views and a back way into Windrock. :)

Oh and deer muzzleloader season started so it was way too crowded on the trails to do much exploring. :(  I can't wait til deer season ends to take the Jeep back up here and check this place out thoroughly.

I'm not sure what that white stuff's called, but it was everywhere up there. 

Pickett State Forest II

Here are a couple more pics and a video from last weekend's Jeep trip to Pickett.  The Wagon Gap Overlook was amazing:

 

I also finally got around to uploading another video:  

Pickett State Forest

We went to Pickett State Forest today.  This was without a doubt some of the most fun and most extreme off roading we've done so far.  Mainly because of 1 particularly wicked hill descent and climb.

As usual, you can't really tell how steep it is from a picture.  Here's the InJeep video:



I have tons of videos and pics to upload this week, so stay tuned. ;)

The Weekend Approaches!

I'm really excited about this weekend, we have a new set of Jeep trails to explore up at Pickett State Park and Forest.  I hope to have some info up on the new trails Sunday night, so stay tuned!

I'm also planning on doing a write up on my Jeep mirrors.  I got tired of not having mirrors when my Jeep's doors were off, so I made some special ed ones. :P  They look kinda redneck, but they keep me from running over people in other lanes. lol

More Royal Blue

I have 1 more video and a couple of pics from yesterday.  The video's pretty bumpy, we're working on that for future videos.  :)

 

Trail Cam

Yeah it was a little muddy.

Royal Blue

We manged to pull a double header today.  We started the morning at the Norris Watershed with David from the Jeep club and finished it up with a trip to Royal Blue in the afternoon with our friend Joe.  The leaves are almost finished turning up there:

The Royal Blue trail we checked out today was one I had been wanting to try for a few weeks, but didn't want to risk it alone.  All went fine, but it was nice knowing there was another Jeep with us.  It was a really long trail that took us over 2 hours to complete.




Despite the drought we're currently in, there was plenty of water and mud waiting for us.

Norris Watershed

Jeep riding today in the watershed.  It was fun but a bit too tame for my liking but still a fun ride in the woods.

The Grist Mill

The problem with the hobby of trail riding is the more you do it, the more extreme trails you seek.  And consequently the more money one must dump into the bottomless pit that is Jeep.  :)

 Hi Point Trail

I've seen this illness strike others and it's not a pretty sight.  It starts off innocently enough maybe with bigger tires and a small lift.  Soon it balloons into 1 ton axles, welded differentials and a Jeep that has to be trailered to your destination since it's undriveable on the street.  Let's hope they find a cure soon, let's hope.  :P

Joe Gets an Extension

We think Joe's compensating, but he got a 4 inch lift and 35" tires installed on his Jeep yesterday. I played gopher and chief cameraman as I have no l33t mechanical skills, but the rest of the crew carried me.

 I think they have the makings of a NASCAR pit crew.

 Here's Randy's best side

The finished product, very nice Jeep!

Pilot Mountain

We found some new jeep trails up in Wartburg at a place called Pilot Mountain.  There were some challenging sections with some deep ruts and some fun hill climbs.  Here's a video of one part:

Folly Beach

We just got back from Folly Beach today.  FB is just south of Charleston, SC and is a really nice place for a vacation.  Unless it rains for 2 days and you're planning on staying on a boat at the marina.  The plan was to stay on my brother in law's boat at the dock in Folly, but it rained the whole first day and night so we ended up getting a motel room.  We came back to the dock the next morning and had a fun day of fishing, then it was time to head out as another huge weather system was coming in for the next 2 days.

Ok, his boat is the one on the right, not the huge yacht. :)

We have a couple friends in for the weekend, so yesterday I took them to see Laymance Falls and the train tunnel up in Wartburg.  The tunnel was still creepy the second time through, but at least I remembered (with help) to check my odometer this time.  It was a little over 3 tenths of a mile long.

 

Jeeping through a Tunnel!

Wow, what an awesome ride yesterday!  We went through an abandoned flooded train tunnel in the Jeep, it was cool beyond words.  We explored some new trails in Catoosa, as well, but the tunnel ride was FTW. ;)  I have more pics and the video on my website: www.ironjeep.com.  Hit the trails button then the Nemo Bridge Area section.

Royal Blue

Well me a some friends ended up Jeeping in Royal Blue yesterday.  It was a muddy mess up there and came a pretty good thunderstorm on us

The exciting part was meeting another Jeep on the trail and as he tried to get around us he nearly slid off the side of the mountain.  We ended up winching him back on the trail and finding a wider place to pass each other.  It was a great time out in the woods.

Here's a pic of someone's poor truck we saw up there.

Lions, CSS, and HTML, oh my!

I'm in the process of relearning HTML and teaching myself (mostly unsuccessfully) CSS.  And why am I tormenting myself?  Well I'm too cheap to buy Dreamweaver and really want my website to look better.  While it's ok for now, I know it could be much better if I could write more of the code myself.

So far I have my index page and default css file set up the way I want them, so hopefully next week I'll have the new and improved IronJeep.com up and running. :)

Busy Holiday Weekend

Yesterday was the big day in Sneedville and we took a ton of pics and videos of the rockcrawlers.  I've uploaded the pics to my website www.ironjeep.com and the videos will be uploaded to youtube as I get time.  I made a new youtube account called ironjeeper :)  and all the videos will be under that username.

Today we went up to Catoosa and rode some trails up there.  We also found a trail that leads to some really awesome falls up in Wartburg.

Laymance Falls

Rock Crawlers Galore!

I am sooo stoked about this weekend!  There is an off road event in Sneedville we'll be attending.  I know most of you are like, so?  These vehicles are custom built to go over any terrain.  We're talking about $20k on up (way up) in mods to build some of these rides and they'll be testing them on some seriously tough trails.  Imagine a 500 hp engine burning all 4 (monstrously huge) tires as a vehicle climbs a near vertical wall. 

Ok I didn't expect to convince everyone but for the converts and true believers I'll be taking tons of pics and some videos.  I hope to have them all up on youtube and www.ironjeep.com by next Monday. 

Oh and I hope everyone likes the new look, the other one was kinda lame. :)

ironjeep.com

It took most of my Sunday, but I finally got ironjeep.com set up and running to my satisfaction.  Now the work begins as I have a ton of content to post up. :)

Solid!

I got the Solid differential cover installed yesterday for my front differential.  It was a very easy install and looks great.  Even better than how it looks is how it'll help compensate for my total disdain for the undercarriage of my Jeep on rocky terrain.

I think I'll go out and bash it on stuff today. LOL

Recent events

Well last week I managed to pop the cherry on the dry interior.  I ordered some really sweet Raingler grab handles that wrap around the roll bar.

In order to install them I decided dropping the top would make for a much easier process.  They went on without issue, and I figured I'd just throw a car cover that my wife had over the Jeep to keep it dry.  Unfortunately I didn't realize that car covers aren't waterproof and we had a monsoon rain the next day.

After drying it all out, pulling the carpet and drain plugs, all is good once more in Jeepland.  :)  Another Jeep lesson learned and fortunately this one was free.

Welcome

Hey guys welcome to my blog!  I'm gonna post things happening in Dave's World here with pics and write ups about my current interests.  This first picture was taken in Royal Blue by a friend of mine Karen Riffey.  That's me and my poor dirty TJ Wrangler.