Virgin Mud!

Have you ever heard the term "Hurry up & wait?"

It's the Saturday before Christmas, the presents are bought and wrapped, the stocking are hung by the chimney with care, with hopes that Saint......never mind.

The point is, I'm all ready for Christmas and have some time to kill. Since I am two entries behind on my blog, I thought now would be a good chance to catch up.

This one will be dedicated to my friend Blake. 

With the holidays approaching we hadn't done any mud bogging. Between finding the time, finding the money, and fixing any issues from the last outing, the mud trucks have sat idle.....until the week before Thanksgiving.

A local guy opened up his virgin pasture for a "Pasture Party" to see what kind of a turn-out he could get. We were thrilled with the opportunity as it's about 10 miles from our front door. 

Just as in any sport in todays economy, mudding has taken a hit. Not only can the trucks be expensive to build and maintain you also have to consider the cost of a weekend trip

Fuel for mud trucks and tow trucks.

Lodging of some sort.

Entry fees to hole.

Food & BEER for the weekend.

Fun hardly ever comes cheap. To have somewhere that doesn't require long travel and to be able to return to your comfy (free) bed afterward, is priceless.

Saturday morning we loaded up the trucks.

Even my neighbor who had purchased a "parts truck" for his nice Land Cruiser-in progress (which you can see behind the junky one), loaded it up to put it through the test.

Nate's all strapped down, with a big tow rope to boot!

After a quick stop for fuel, we were on our way

We had no idea what we were in for, how big the hole was, what kind of mud it was (Oh yes, there's good mud and bad mud) so we stopped at the gate to scope out the situation

We headed through the field....did I mention it had been drizzling all morning?

 No big deal

 Rain = More mud!

Before we even got parked, someone was struggling

The "built, bigger trucks" were cruising around just fine.

Be sure to take note of all the grass and brush surrounding this hole.

Because of this grass, everyone was sort of tentative about driving off into it. At a normal bog, you learn quickly (or someone will warn you) where the bad spots are. Because no one had ever bogged here, it was all an experiment.

We met up with some friends, whose nephew had been acting up and was put into what I called a "Redneck time-out"

Slowly but surely trucks were driving in and getting dirty.

Some were having great luck....some, not so much

There are some other downfalls about a virgin mudhole....Nate hopped on his four wheeler and ran a couple of hawks out, then hit a stump. Being the considerate bogger that he is, he hooked a rope around it and was about to pull it out when he realized he had disturbed a nest of water moccasins that were living in the stump.

ABORT MISSION!!!!

Instead, one of his friends pulled the stump out from the safety of his Jeep, while Trevor went all gangster with his shovel. 

By the time I heard it was safe to walk over with my camera, this was all that was left of the moccasin.

His head had been removed and buried. *shivers*

Nate had a guardian angel watching over him that day as he had been thigh deep in that hole. We could have been hot-footing it straight to the hospital!!

But crisis averted and we're back at it!!

Here are a couple of short videos of the boys. Notice how much of the grass is beat down now.

Also note how that damn junky Land Cruiser crawls through without hesitation.

And another one of Nate driving through the hole that Trevor just got stuck in. You'll see Trev turn around and say something to me. 

It was something like "What a little asshole" 

Genia, your seat awaits! 

(My friend Genia has decided that she wants to ride in the back of the Toyota as a counter-weight, and we are all too happy to oblige)

A big part of mudbogging is a 'cooling off period' and camaraderie.

Throughout the day Nate and I ventured out and found some other holes. Some were really bad!

Some just soupy

And some, all but dried up

By the end of the day, we had eradicated most of the brush surrounding the hole and the fun was on!

The Swamp Donkey was having some overheating issues

So Nate took the Toyota out. 

I had been the photographer/videographer and tried not to get too dirty, but it was my turn!

This is the view from my seat. Notice that's it's raining pretty hard now and people were starting to take cover.

Having sufficient mud in all my cracks and crevices and soaked from the rain, we decided to call it a day.

Double thumbs up on the local mudhole!! There's another one scheduled for January so stay tuned......

But up next, we head to Disney for a week of Christmas camping.