Rubicon Trail - Thursday June 24th 2004 prelog

The days before the Rubicon/Tahoe trip were full of anticipation in the preperation for the great adventure.

Wednesday night of June 23rd I installed my old Currie Rockcrawler II bumper that had the tow points mounted. It's really no big deal to swap out the bumpers, just 6 T30 bolts (4 on top and 2 on bottom) as well as the off road lights. Total time to get the customer bumper off and the Currie bumper on was about 15 minutes in near 100 degree heat of Sacramento. I'm not sure why I haven't just mounted some tabs onto the customer bumper that Steve (stevesjeepfab.com) made for me; something I need to do in the future. I needed to do a local test-tow of the Jeep behind our new 2004 Dodge Durango. Let me tell you that installing the hitch on the Dodge and manually tapping into the wiring for the trailer connector was no picnic as I was working in the driveway in the blazing Sacramento-June-Heat. I wrapped up the install and then hooked up the Jeep to the Durango. The A-frame trailer bar was almost perfectly level and so it would not feel like the Jeep was doing a nose dive into the Durango when slowing down. In the picture you don't see the safety chains on, but they were there when I did the test trip around the neighborhood!

Jeep hooked up minus the safety chain

Even with the time it took to prepare both rigs it was worth it... I was going to run the Rubicon for the 8th time!

On Thursday night I felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve with anticipation. I went straight from work to Black Angus to meet my wife (kids were at their Grandma's house). We had a great dinner and then went to see "Dodge Ball" at the movies. We got home around 10pm and luckily all that was needed was to throw together a tool box and fluids, find the Mag lite, and throw some clothes together. Bed time...

Rubicon Trail - Friday June 25th 2004
Friday morning of June 25th I woke up early to throw some gear in the back of the Durango. We were planning on sleeping in the back of it instead of pitching a tent since my 4 year old son and 4 month old daughter were coming along. The plan was to stay the night Friday at Loon Lake and on Saturday run the 'Con with Eric Rench (wheeling buddy since 1997). Going to work was a blur, I don't even remember the drive really. Work was a bit different as the last few weeks there were some strange promotions and rumors flying. After a shocking announcement my company let go 4 valuable people in what they call a "re-org". I call foul there; none-the-less I was going wheeling so the problems of work were left at the door as I headed out at 5pm. My wife showed up minutes later and we hooked up the Jeep and off we went!

The drive up Hwy 50 on a Friday night in the summer time is a real treat. The traffic was backed up well before Prarie City in Folsom where we were getting on at. The speed was 1-10mph almost all the way to Bass Lake Road. We took the first exit in Shingle Springs and decided to de-hitch the Jeep and drive it up seperate since the temp gauge in the Durango was getting a bit hot.

Rubicon Trail - Saturday June 26th 2004
Saturday morning of June 26th I woke up early, sometime around 5:30am. Since we were parked near the spillway all night long new vehicles were coming in. The great majority were either Jeeps, Toyotas, or ATV's with a few rock buggies as well. The kids were awake, my wife got everyone around and we drove over to the Loon Lake campgrounds where they left in the Durango and headed to South Lake Tahow where I would meet up with them later that day. I then walked back to the spillway and met Eric who was already airing down the tires on Ol' Red. The preperations were complete, we were at the trailhead and the adventure was about to start...

On to Eric's Review of the trip!