2012 JK-Experience Heartland Tour : Day 2 - Redbird Off Road Park

[wayoflife]

Day 2 - Redbird Off-Road Park
South of Terre Haute near the town of Dugger, Indiana, there is a wonderful 1200 acre, state owned and managed off road park known as, Redbird. Originally established as a coal mine back in 1945, operations would continue for 5 years and produce over 2 million tons of coal before it was finally shut down. Of course, what it left behind were extreme hills and rugged terrain perfect for wheeling. Today, Redbird has become a premier off-road destination and our very first chance to hit the dirt... or, should I say MUD!! Oh yeah - thanks to the 6" of rain that fell the day before and with more predicted to fall that day, there was little doube that we'd get to experience heartland wheeling as it should be and in all it's glory. Here are some pics from our trip, I hope you enjoy.

To help lighten up the our load while wheeling, Discount Tire was kind enough to bring out a trailer and use it to haul our luggage from town to town...


Mel giving a drivers meeting before heading out...


Say good morning to Lonnie and Dillard or Skyjacker, sponsors of the 2012 JK-Experience...


Here's Jim from Dynatrac, another great sponsor of the JK-Experience and his co-driver Ned...


Lining them up and getting ready to head out...




On the road and heading south...


Making a stop to meet up with the guys from Hi-Lift and our trail guides for the day...


Breakfast of champions!! Greg was sick as a dog but was a trooper to the bitter end...


At the Redbird staging area airing down and getting ready to play...






Seriously? None of you guys have wheeled in mud before?


Here we go!!






Things are starting to tight, steep and slick...


Of course, having a little help from a HEMI makes things easier...


And, when all else fails, you can always pull rope...


The Nitto Trail Grapplers did an awesome job of hooking up on the slick stuff...


Roger that, we've got a flat...


With that little warm up out of the way, it was time to head on over to some of the harder trails...






When everything is slicker than snot, even getting around a simple as a tree takes effort...


Of course, a lot of times, the best you can do is point your Jeep in the general direction you want to go, give it gas and hope you squeeze by without hitting anything...


At 88" wide and trees planted at about 87" apart - that wasn't always the easiest thing to do...


Even the narrower rigs were having a heck of a time...


Do it just right and you'll sheer off some bark but, you'll squeeze by...


Maybe if the ground weren't so slick, this would be a bit easier to do...


And again, when all else fails, you can be glad that you have a WARN winch handy...




Moving on, the trail went from slick to soupy..


To make things even more interesting, the next hill climb sloppy slick and super steep. The good news is that there were 3 different lines you could choose from. Granted, they were all just as hard to climb. Here's Vengeance powering his way up...


The line off to the far right was so steep that you ended up crashing your nose into it just as you started your climb...


In an effort to keep things moving along, all 3 lines up were being used at the same time and everyone was given 3 tries before pulling rope...




For a while, it thing started to look like a winching race to the top...


Being from Washington, slick terrain like this was old hat for the ARB guys...


Phill hit it just right and was able to rooster tail his way up...


With a HEMI under the hood, Alejandro was able to muscle his way up the far left...


I'm still amazed at how much power the new 3.6L Pentastar puts out. With it, Dave was able to power his way up...


And then you got guys like Greg who just know how to get the most out of a running start...


More pics below...

[wayoflife]

Back at the staging area, it was time to relax for a bit and have some lunch and enjoy the memories left splatter on our rigs...










After lunch, we were ready to get back into the thick of things but, we would break up into 2 different groups...


Unfortuantely, there weren't enough of us and so unfortunately, we only have photos of Mel's group for the 2nd part of the day. Here they are heading out...


A lot of the terrain on this run involved really steep climbs and descents - weeee...










Good breakover angles like what you would find on a 2-door made clearing some of these ridges a lot easier...




Clearing these in a 4-door proved to be a challenge but fortuantely, we all had WARN winches...


And, as you could have guessed, there was no shortage of this stuff...




EVO1 having some fun in the mud...


Vengeance joining in before successfully tearing his way up Powerline Hill...




Randy making easy work out of this hill...


Alejandro and Jim both giving it a go - let me just say, the one with the HEMI made it...


Wouldn't you know it, the rain would stop just as we were done for the day and covered in mud...


Time to head on over to Bloomfield and to the home of Hi-Lift - literally, the owner's home where they invited us over for a BBQ dinner...




Once there, Mel explained that there were 2 pressure washers we could use to clean up our Jeeps and to direct us to where a local car wash was. We were told that our rigs needed to have the underside totally clean and devoid of ANY mud but, gave no reason as to why this was important....


Spray away...




Lining them up as they get cleaned up...






The owner of Hi-Lift giving us a very warm reception...




Dinner time - YUM!!


Signing a banner before leaving...


Time to head on over to our home for the night - Indianapolis...


A BIG Thanks needs to go out to Hi-Lift for their awesome hospitality!!

Click on the link below to see more photos from our first day on the 2012 JK-Experience:

Day 3 - Indianapolis Motor Speedway

[Linebacker]

No matter whether the terrain is Rocky Mountain rock crawling or gorilla snot in the Heartland, the JKX is the ultimate. Yee-HA!!

[RanchoRubi]

That looks like a great change up from rock crawling. Did Moby make it up powerline hill? Good thing you had the powerwashers

[wayoflife]

unfortunately, i was camera man #2 following the other group and wasn't driving during the second part of the day. needless to say, i never got a chance to give it a go.