So Ducky and I went out past Carbonado yesterday and explored some trails out there. You basically get there by going toward the Evans Creek ORV area, but instead of turning up towards Evans Creek, you take the left at the fork. You will eventually go past a sign that says, "Huckle-Chuck". What a name for a town! :) Ducky has some GPS traces of our adventures on his site. There are 2 GPS traces, the second one being of a trail we need to go out exploring further. I got some pics of the day, but none of that trail as it was getting to dark for my digital to take good pics. Click here to see them.

Had fun yesterday out in Greenwater with the Yotatech crowd. Took some pictures, though I am not happy with the first few. The lighting conditions were less then ideal. It was either Mt. Rainier or the trucks that got properly exposed. :-/ Oh well, click here to see them.

The day started early enough at the Safeway in Enumclaw at 9AM, but I was surprised to see that the majority of the people decided to call it a day after only about 1PM. And all we had really done at this part is drive down some FS roads. Not too terribly exciting. So this is when about 5 of us decided to stay and do some more exploring. We ended up on FS road 70, and got up on some of the ridges. Ducky got a GPS trace and has posted the map so we can go exploring further later. :) Those of us that continued on included myself, Ducky, Mad Chemist, Jim, and Mike. Didn't get any pictures of the latter half of the day because my dinky little 16MB card was about full. Did get some of Jim filling his tires with a hand pump though. That was amusing! :)

Ow! My scalp hurts! Went out to Greenwater yesterday with the WATTORA crew. I put on this sunblock stuff I got from Melissa that worked well, cept that I didn't put any on my scalp. heh Stuff worked great! Even repels bugs, couldn't have been more perfect for the situation. Most of the snow that had blocked us from continuing when Ducky and I went up last time had melted away, so we could get to a lot of the spots I wanted to last time. Took a few pics, you can see them here. There are also a few panoramic pictures of Mt. Rainier in there from two of the best spots I have been taken to so far. I have higher resolution photos of these pictures. If you would like them, just specify which pictures in a comment to this post. Remember to fill in your email address so I can get back to you though!

Added several new folders to my images directory on the server. Click the following links to see them:

Installing Ducky's suspension on 05-16-2003.
Ducky's 4Runner on 05-19-2003.
Greenwater run with Ducky, 05-24-2003.
Greenwater run with Ducky, 05-26-2003.

Ducky, if you want any higher res version of those pics just tell me which one. I am currently using this one as my desktop. Hehe, looks even better at full res! :)

Basically Ducky and I went up to Greenwater this past weekend on two different days. We pretty much explored all of the forestry roads from number 71 - 75. Basically drove down them till either we got stuck by snow, or came to the end of the road. Then on the way back down the road, we would explore most of the smaller trails that branch off. I don't know, but it seems like a lot of what was open a year ago has already been closed. Either that or I have yet to go to the end of all these trails. Either way though, at the end of most of these trails, you can see that they used to continue on, but that they have put in some tank traps and it has started to get over grown. Pisses me off. How are we supposed to enjoy our countries beautiful scenery if we can't even get there. Blah...

Pics are up from the Grant County ORV park run on 05/18/2003. Click here to see them.

Ah, what a fun weekend. Want to know what I did? Check out this video(3.74MB Windows Media file). Ok, I will have to admit, I am not one of the ones that are 3 or 4 feet in the air. I am the one who gets stuck going up at one point and then coming back down, but in the next shot finally make it up. What the hell am I talking about? Click that link and take a look! You won't regret it. :)

I ran the Naches Pass Trail and all I got was this separated bumper... Heh, actually I was expecting MUCH worse. I am proud of myself that this is the only carnage I got. I learned a lot today, thanks Rob. If you haven't ever run this trail or heard of it, its a very tight and technical trail. From what I hear its mostly a jeep trail, and our group today ran it with Rob's 9in or so lifted Tacoma, my completely stock TRD Tacoma(w/stock tires), and Gene's slightly lifted(I think) 4Runner with a locker. It was a beautiful day, couldn't have asked for anything better. I really enjoyed the trail, and look forward to running it again in the future. It is probably running towards the end of the season up there since most of the puddles we came across were frozen over. I didn't take any pictures of the scenery or the trail because I was just having too much fun driving it(more likely scared shitless from the countless times I felt like I was going to roll over). Though I did have a lot of pictures taken of me as I was driving, and will try and get a hold of them and put them up here.

As for other things, I get on a plane to go see Melissa in Utah tomorrow. I will be there on vacation for a whole week. Kinda nervous about meeting her family and friends, but really excited at the same time because I am looking forward to seeing her again. The break from work will be nice too. :) I will be taking a laptop with me and my digicam so I can take pics and post them. Stay tuned!

Another beautiful series of pics I took of Mt. Rainier. I think I am obsessed with this mountain. Look in my photography section and you will see why I say that. Woke up bright and early and headed out to Enumclaw to meet up with the WATTORA crowd. We took off then up to Greenwater, to start the Trail 101 class. We went over the basics of offroading, recovery, etc. And I got to see first hand how to use starter fluid rebead a tire. That was neat! I had always heard it could be done, but dismissed it as myth. Welp, its real! Thanks for all the great demo's and instruction Rob!

I didn't think we were going to be out in the sun for so long, so I didn't bring any sunblock. I got burnt to a crisp. My neck the worst, but also on my arms, face, scalp, and even my legs to some extent! Oww, I'm in so much pain. Anyone know what the best stuff is to deal with the pain? I know of lotion an aloe and stuff, but it isn't soothing the pain much in my case. Help!

Oh it was beautiful. I went up to the Greenwater area past Enumclaw this past Saturday with Amber. Rob took us down this one little off shoot of a trail that ended up at the spot where I took the above picture from. The trail pretty much dead ended right there, with about a 25ft drop down all around. Great lookout spot, with an excellent view of Mt. Rainier. We were fortunate enough to have the clouds burn off when we got to that spot.

Later in the day, we found a mud pit. Ever since I got my truck I have been wanting to go play in some mud. So I dived right in. There are some good pics of me stuck here and here. Thanks for those goes out to Shawn and Gene respectively. After 2 days of crawling around under my truck getting soaked, cold and dirty have made me come to a realization. Although playing in the mud was fun, the cleanup afterwards is not. Not to mention I did get a little bit of damage on that little stint in the mud. My rear skid plate ripped off, but luckily after my thorough inspection afterwards, seems to have been the only carnage. I should be able to bolt a new one back up, after bending one of the mounting brackets back into place. Hopefully I won't have to replace that cross member.

So, what's new. Not much really. Same old thing, day in, day out. I'm starting to question the point of it all...

I went back up to French Cabin Creek again this past Sunday, met a lot more of the members from WATTORA, and explored some trails that were previously snowed in. Man, amazing how much snow can melt in a week. The most interesting part of the trip came when we stopped back at the hill climb that the chapter president Rob went up last week. First off, when we got up there, we all noticed that there was something there that wasn't there last week. A charred mid 90's Celica, and when I say charred, I mean that even the aluminum alloy rims were partly melted. There was really nothing left of the thing. Well, we go about our business that you can see pics from here. No, none of the trucks you see in those pics that are doing crazy things like having both back tires off the ground are not mine. :) I'm definatly going to have to get at least a 3in lift and better tires sometime soon though. -=sigh=- Yet another thing I need more money for. Ahhh, the joys of being impulsive with money and having a lust for expensive toys. Children, don't do this at home... Ok, sorry bout the tangent. Anywho, so yea, there is this completly charred car on the trail we are on, and the forestry service rangers pull up and block off the only exit from where we were. We asked them why we were being detained, and they said it was because of a report of a burning car, and of two women who were harrassed by some "off-roaders". Well, sure, there was a charred car there, but that thing had been out for at least 24 hours, there was no way we had done it. Second, we never passed any any women walking the trail we were on. I mean, if they were this far up the trail, it would have been one helluva walk back down. Well, eventually the county sherifs show up, and I think I overheard something on their radio that said they were on the wrong road for the harrassment report. Next a group of guys show up from behind the sherifs, and one of the guys is wearing a shirt that says FBI on the front. We were all like, "WTF??" Then he turns around and the shirt says, "Federal Buerea of Intoxication" Heh, we all pretty much busted up laughing, and one of the sherifs asks for a showing of hands of who wanted to leave. We all raised our hands, and they told us to get back in our trucks so we could file outta there. We were stuck there for almost an hour I think. Oh, and I got a picture of a fawn that was just chillin under a bush. It was alive, barely breathing. It was very cute, I just hope we didn't scare it too badly.

As for me, I really don't know what to think about things. Things are going the way they always have gone. I have heard thorugh the grapevine that Ducky is going to be proposing to his girl sometime soon, or that its in the definate future now. And don't get me wrong, I'm all fine and dandy with it. True, I don't get to see my "bro" all to much anymore, but if he is happy, I am happy for him. But to get to the point, I guess it just seems that I don't ever think that I'm going to be able to meet someone. I mean, Melissa never really email's me anymore, which I don't blame her, I know I don't really have anything interesting to say either from day to day. I can feel that feeling I have for her starting to fade. I mean, how serious about things can we be when she is so far away, and we both seem so stubborn as to moving to be with eachother to even begin to see if there ever really could be anything between us. -=sigh=- If things could just be easier...

As for other things, hey I can't really complain. I have my family. I have my friends. I have a job. I have my truck. I have my saniterrr well ok, maybe I don't have my sanity. Welp, I think I am going to call it a night. Oh and hey...

Sarah rawx! :D