A group of us, mostly from the Just Jeeps of Omaha club, went camping and wheeling for a weekend. The Taylors & Al even drove in from Colorado Springs just to hang out with us for the weekend. This was Al's first wheeling trip in his new Jeep. My family had to leave after about 24 hours, but here are photos from while we were there.

The cast:

• Ben "Obi-Wan", Stacy, Micah & Noelle Hollingsworth (us) - black YJ with spice hard top, brown Wagoneer tow rig
• Michelle & Rachel Davis - red YJ with black soft top & window sticker, no rocker guards or aux lights
• Pat Pinegar - red YJ with black soft top, aluminum rocker guards, and aux lights on bumper, no window sticker
• Darrell & Joanne Swenson - yellow TJ with black soft top
• Jim & Kim Lee - white TJ with white soft top
• Bob, Sue, Robert, Brooke & "Bruiser" Taylor - grey-blue TJ with black soft top, brownish Grand Cherokee support vehicle
• Al Haupt (Bob's friend from Colorado) - dark turquoise YJ with black soft top
• John Frost - brown YJ with no top
• Phil Jacobs - blue CJ with white top
• Ethan Joy - Patriot blue TJ with black soft top
• Ethan's friends - white TJ with no top

We had a fun night Friday at the Fancy Creek campground setting up & relaxing before our day of wheeling. Pyromaniacs Jim, Pat, and Joanne set fire to a huge log that was left from their last camping trip. It burned all night and was still hot the next morning.

Before heading out Saturday morning:

We started the day by playing on the three narrow sets of ledges in the northwest corner of the park. While there, a group from Wichita (white & orange CJ's) caught us. We let them play through.

The low area below the whoops was amazingly muddy. I've never seen such a huge pool down there. Only Bob Taylor was crazy enough to try climbing the whoops after fording that mud. He never made it, despite sacrificing the cleanliness of his son, his gerbil, and his Cheezits.

Back at the first set of ledges, we'd run into a pair of guys (Phillip Sanders sand-colored YJ & Peter Eiberger in a black 4Runner) from Missouri that were visiting the park for the first time. They tagged along with us on & off for a while. They dipped into Scrambler Creek east of the whoops, and Phillip got hung up on a dangerous trail climbing out of the creek. I saw him teetering on the edge as we drove by, so I swung over to pull him to safety.

We took various routes up the north side of the big plateau...

...then stopped a while to play on the big ledges. I got both front wheels airborne at one point, and Bob & Phil tried unsuccessfully to overcome the Double Whammy effect while climbing some of the taller steps.

After the ledges, we headed back to the campground for lunch. A few of us climbed Corkscrew on our way out.

While the rest of us were eating, Ethan and his friends managed to ingest water into the white TJ's engine. They pulled the plugs and cranked it over to remove it all, then cranked for a while more before about a half gallon of mud spit out the exhaust pipe. It then fired right up. I didn't have my camera with me at that point, unfortunately, but Peter Eiberger sent me these:

Stacy and I had to get back to Lincoln that evening, so we left the group after lunch and headed home. This was our second time flat towing the YJ to Kansas behind our '77 Wagoneer. It did OK, but it's got some kinks to work out. The steering is a bit loose, which makes things interesting with a strong cross wind. The timing was also a bit off this weekend, so the Wag didn't have full power when accelerating. That should get resolved after I install my MSD ignition.

All in all, it was a fun trip.