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At lunch time, Chris went to a local junkyard to grab parts for his broken front driveshaft. That happened in a pile of rocks in the quarry by the Purgatory sign. Thanks to Nick for bringing Subway sandwiches for lunch! We were the only ones in the parking lot that day, and I wish we were not. If we had more vehicles, maybe the wind would not have been so strong. It was so windy you had to hold onto your camp chair until you sat down or it would blow over. We ran all over the park that afternoon, ending up at a pile of cement. There is an area where the cement trucks back in, and dump and washout their trucks. The pile is now 20-25 feet tall. The bottom half is solid, and looks like old broken up sidewalk. The top is loose cement which is the consistency of loose sand. We had so much fun on this. The only casualty was Chris breaking his rear driveshaft. After that we packed up and while we fueled up, Chris went back to the junkyard to get parts for fixing his rear driveshaft. As the Badlands Offroad Park was now closed for the weekend, we decided to drive to Morris, IL. This is only 10 minutes from the Cliffs Insane Terrain park. We made it to Morris by 6:30pm and after cleaning up at the motel, headed across the street for some Pizza Hut. A few beers and Day 1 was in the books. Below are another couple of clips from that day. The undercut at the top of the hill worried me, as it was much taller than my rear tire!

November is usually cold and windy in the midwest. This weekend was no exception. We left Friday morning at about 3am from Elkhorn, hoping to get to Attica, IN by 9am. We planned on staying at the Attica Family Campground, adjacent to the park. We rolled in just after 9am, and checked in with the campground. That’s where we got the incredible news that the Badlands Offroad Park was going to be closed this weekend! How is this possible? Well, it turns out there are people that will pay $150 each to run around in the freezing cold (on foot) through water, mud, and up and down hills. The park was closed for the Tough Mudders! We pleaded our case with the park, and they said we could wheel the park today, Friday, until 4pm as long as we didn’t destroy any ribbons, course markers etc. Good enough. We basically had the park to ourselves. We had four rigs, and saw only one other truck and trailer in the parking lot. Below are a couple of clips from climbing walls in the quarry. I got a little over-zealous with my rig. In June this year, I broke the upper four link off my rear axle. This trip I went right back to that wall, and climbed it without issue. So, having conquered that I wandered off to a wall I’ve never tried. Well, I finally lost a tire on that one, but winched myself up and out and put on the spare.

I had a blast at the Genoa City mud bog. Here are my two runs. The first went well, and I got first place in the 35″ tire class. The second run, with the 44″ Boggers, started out well. However, I hit a really big hole full throttle and snapped an outer stub shaft in the front axle. With only three tires turning, I managed to make it to the end, for a third place finish in that class.

Sorry for the bad quality video in the first one, I got it from a friends cell phone.