On Wednesday September 9th, my wife and I took off for Moab, Utah to attend Blazer Bash 2015. The first day we drove straight through to Moab and had dinner at the Moab Brewery. Daisy ran like a champ the whole way there, AC blasting, pulling hills at 80mph, sucking down 91 octane at a rate of 10MPG. We checked into the Moab rim RV campark and set up our bed in the Suburban. After mingling with everyone there at the camp ground and checking out the other rigs we made s'mores over a fire and headed to bed. Sleeping in the suburban worked well, the ceiling height is a little low but I knew that going into it, we'll be fine. That night we left the windows open and enjoyed temps in the mid 60s, it was a nice break from the 110+ temps back in Vegas.
This felt like a victory in its self.
My wife loved the view from the campground
Thursday morning we headed into town for breakfast and then out to Arches NP. We had a great time, hiked some of the shorter trails and spent the whole day wandering around the park. We didn't take the time to hike out to delicate arch, we weren't really ready for it, not having enough water with us. It was really cool seeing some of the sights out there. We wrapped up the day with dinner at Zax in Moab and s/mores at the camp fire.
This one might not work on the forum...
Friday morning we headed over to the old city park to meet up with everyone and check out all of the rigs there for Blazer Bash. Sadly I didn't get any photos at the meet n greet, it was a little overwhelming, so many awesome trucks. After the meet n greet, we all split up for our trail runs. I joined my group at the trailhead for Metal Masher, about 15 trucks total. Metal Masher was an awesome trail, more challenging that I expected but definitely a fun trail. I had one small mishap on the trail, I was trying to climb up an undercut ledge that I shouldn't have and slipped the front driveline out. I guess it's time to have it lengthened again. A friend blew his rear ring & pinion and a front axle shaft at Mirror gulch on the trail. His rig ended up having to stay the night on the trail and it was recovered the next day by the guys from Offroad Design. With the breakage we had on the trail, it ended up being an all day thing, we barely made it to the Offroad Design BBQ at the park that night.
The view from the overlook was awesome!
This is the ledge that my friend killed his truck on.
https://youtu.be/v6vNSuqjPRg
Heres a quick video of a small crack near rock chucker on Metal masher.
https://youtu.be/EXglf62te74
Saturday, we met up at the same trailhead to run a trail called Crack-n-back, basically the first part of Gold Bar Rim, out to the Golden crack and then back out the same way. Smaller group this time, 5 trucks. This ended up being a harder trail involving some bigger obstacles and bigger cliffs. Crossing the Golden Crack was a dream of mine, I really enjoyed that. We had one issue with the truck running this trail. The baffle in the fuel tank came loose and knocked the fuel pump out of the sending unit. Eventually the pump pulled the hose loose and the truck died. We had the tank out, reattached the pump with a longer hose on it and reattached the baffle with hardware borrowed from another truck's dash pad and had it running in under two hours. It helped that three of us on the trail are professional mechanics, one of them GM certified. We all had a great time, it was a bit much for my wife, she doesn't handle cliffs very well.
One of the great things about Gold bar rim is getting to see the Jason Payne memorial plaque at butt scratcher rock. He was a member on CK5.com and he passed away on the Rubicon trail, wheeling with friends.
Here are some videos from Crack-n-back.
https://youtu.be/fjc2Ker1MSc
https://youtu.be/o70xPPXGR4A
https://youtu.be/ZGPFSojCbrA
https://youtu.be/6h94VQL1guo
Sunday we were scheduled to run Hell's Revenge but passed on it, Ive kicked my self in the *** since but my wife was almost in tears by the time we made it to the crack the day before. Cliffs REALLY aren't her thing and Hell's is full of them. So we had breakfast in town and started heading south. We took 89 south rather than I-15, the drive down 89 is much prettier. We camped in Cedar breaks Sunday night, it was absolutely beautiful up there. As we rolled into camp, thunder was cracking in the distance. We made a fire, cooked some chicken fajitas and as we were cleaning up the rain started falling. We crawled up into the Suburban for the night and listened to the rain on the roof all night. The sunrise the next morning was awesome and as we drove down off the mountain we went through some of the thickest fog I've driven through. (I'm a desert rat) We stopped in Saint George for lunch and headed home from there, trip complete, 1,155 miles all total.
I had to stop and dip my feet in this river alongside the road.
And we're home... It was a blast, can't wait for Blazer Bash next year!
