Ok, back from an interesting weekend!!
Got to the park around 8:30 on saturday. People were lined up all the back to road just to get in! The entire parking lot was full, about half the road in was packed on one side, and more people were still coming in!! We got all checked in and got our Jeeps thawed out(took almost an hour for them to warm up/thaw out!)
Went back to the staging area where there was already 300+ rigs lined up (I heard over 400 total). They had a DJ there, and a big table setup with the items for the raffle. At about 10:30 Kyle came up and filled everyone in on what was going on, and what his plans for the future were. It was basicly the same as he had posted on line, but he just wanted everyone to know that he plans to fight till the end, and he plans to reopen somewhere else if he losses his current location. He was fighting back tears the whole time, it was really sad to see/hear in person all the details straight from him.
After his speach, they had the raffle. We figured from the ticket numbers we all had, there were several thosand tickets sold($5 each, or 5 for $20)! Most of us just emptyed out our wallets! Brad won a Skyjacker Duffle bag.
After the raffle, it was trail ride time, they were WAY short on trail guides, so it just turned into a free for all. The group of us from NEC/HRJA/BLWA/PGH-Offroad all went out together. We had 7 rigs, which was just about right, we covered a ton of ground, and only had one wait for a repair! Thanks to gonecheenin for leading our group! We hit mostly Blue 1'2 and 2's, but with all the snow and ice, it was more then challenging for all of us!
When we got back to the staging area, we got to watch the PAP workers load up all the equiptment and start unloading the office, hopfully not the end of the park though!!
Brad and I talked about coming home last night, but descided we'd stay and wheel till noon today and then come home! Well a froozen truck, a busted fuel line spraying gas everywhere, and 2 dead batterys changed those plans! Once we got everything figure out it was noon so we headed back home!
It was a fun/sad trip to Paragon!!
Things learned this weekend:
- 2 bolts, finger tight are NOT enough to hold a transfercase on!
- Froozen brakes will cause a Jeep to slide off the trailer with no way of stoping it!
- A certain NEC member was crazy enough to lay in the snow for over an hour to rebuild a fuel pump, when we could have very easly towed him back out to the trailer!!
- Some people are crazy enough to wheel buggys with no tops/doors/windows/heaters in single digit temps!
- If the tree you are winching too is dead, just have the smallest guy in the group, push on it lightly, if it doesn't fall over, its good enough!
- All hotel rooms should have a bottle opener on the bathroom wall!
I'm sure everyone else that was there will have more to add. I'll have the few pictures I took online in the next day or so. Brad was on photography duty for the weekend, so he will have most of the pictures when he gets them online!!
Thanks again to Brad for hauling me out there and back, and to Gonecheenin for being the trail guide(did you tell Jay you rolled his CJ5 yet??? )