Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

Day 5- Moab Rim Trail

             After arriving at around 12:30, and getting settled into the Sleep Inn for a good night’s rest we set our rendezvous time at 8:30. Joe had to get up extra early for some carburetor tuning at the local 4x4 shop. This was also the morning that we were to meet up with Joe’s uncle Brett and his fiancée Beth. It was necessary for Joe to leave his Jeep behind so that it would be right for the rest of the time we were there. It was decided that we would do the Moab Rim trail that day because of its proximity to our location. Great, I think to myself, let’s do the shakedown run on my newly built, untested Bronco on the fourth hardest trail in Moab.

    The trail head was only minutes from the hotel. The trail immediately started to rise steeply from the Colorado River below. This trail was no joke. There were 3-4 feet ledges that were off-camber. All of this while the driver tire was only feet from the edge of a 40, 80, and eventually 200 foot drop straight into the Colorado. After less than a quarter of a mile the first breakage of the trip occurred when Wes was trying to get up one of those ledges. He tried a couple of times and gave it a little too much of a bump because the driveshaft yoke exploded and spat out from under The Pale White II. Wes, being the well-prepared wheeler that he is, retrieves his spare 4 driveshaft from it holder and fixes it in no time.

   After about a mile the trail turns up and away from the cliff edges. It was then that the rear drive shaft on John Stowe’s Jeep let go. He also had a spare, but it had to be cut and welded in order to fit. No problem, Wes breaks out the Mobi and does the job. After fixing the driveshaft we broke for the nice lunch that Jennifer Stowe had packed all of us.

    We climbed and climbed till the trail was about at its pinnacle when after stopping, I heard a sizzling sound coming from under my hood. It was the radiator hose that goes by my header pipes in order to make its way to the radiator behind the cab. There was a small leak that we patched up the best we could. We continue on about another quarter mile to the top of the trail where we looked down on all of Moab. I didn’t stay long because of the still small leak. Joe decided to ride down with me since I was going to just make a bonsai run to get to the bottom as quick as possible. That was very interesting since we had to go down the same terrain that we just came up. There were a few really off camber moments, but we made it down intact and made a run to the local Car Quest to get the parts necessary to fix it properly.

   That night after Joe picked up the Scrambler, two large pork loins and potatoes were prepared to perfection on the Charcoal grills by John and Jennifer Stowe. We had set up two tents grills and coolers in our takeover of the Moab Sleep Inn. We gathered over beverages to discuss tomorrow’s trail ride. It was decided that we would do a scenic run including Gemini Bridges and Bull Canyon.

Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14