Memorial day Weekend 2013, 16 Ford Raptors embarked on a majestic journey in the Black Hills National Forest and Badlands National Park.
Before I start on my recap of this wonderful weekend, I want to give a shout out to our sponsors. Also before I go any further I should tell you that this might get long winded. I know we've said it a few times, but this trip started as just a cool idea for a vacation and evolved into this awesome Raptor Run. We did not seek out any sponsors, but both RPG and WSI willingly stepped up to the plate. RPG sponsored our BBQ dinner and provided t-shirts and stickers for everyone. WSI hand fabricated awesome 5 foot cooking sticks for each truck and provided stickers and an FE mount for the patriotic Raptor contest.
I also wanted to give a shout out to all the participants including a couple that we've been calling spur-of-the-moment Sponsors. First Wilson, he made each child attending a marshmallow shooter and brought marshmallows. He got hats donated for all of the participants as well as provided enough cookies for an army! Also Sitdown and Bethany, while at the corn palace they thought of the rest of us and brought popcorn balls for everybody. Every person on this trip was what my dad would call “good people” and Joe and I are thankful to have gotten to meet such generous wonderful men, women, and children.
For the Support trucks our weekend started a little early because we decided that it would be prudent to pre-run some of the trails.
All the routes were planned by Huck off of Google Earth and we really had no idea of what we were going to encounter. We planned on being at the camp around 4pm on Thursday May 23rd to get set up. Of course we didn't make it until 9pm. Wilson Family were the only ones there and Mariah, their oldest, was teasing Dad that it was all just a prank to get them out there and none of the rest of us were coming…lol The campground was a little wet from all the rain, but I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Wild Bills Campground. They were friendly, accommodating and provided wonderfully clean facilities.
Friday May 24th, we planned on running a couple routes to double check the terrain and mostly to make sure that our Creek Crossing route was passable. The rushing water in the Creek at the campground did not give us high hopes. We got out of camp a little later than planned and made our way to the first route. We stopped at a Ranger Station and had a nice conversation about the trail with a Native American gentleman who described the conditions as likely to be “gumbo”. The route started on Reservation land and continued through the Badlands and Buffalo Gap grasslands.
We hit the trail and sure enough after a few miles we encounter some of that “gumbo” and Yukon gets us nice and buried in a muddy section. We used Huck as an anchor and winched ourselves out relatively easy.
continuing on, we found the Creeks to be passable and fun.
The trail was a fast drying clay/sand mud to the point that if you didn’t wash your window immediately you were using an ice scrapper to get it off.
Yukon was temporarily immobilized at another point but was able to power himself free with the help of some sticks.
We marked hazards and slight route changes on our GPS and were feeling really excited for everyone to experience it the next day.
On to the next section we had another few slight route changes and one more temporary immobilization of Night Raptor Yukon. We pulled free and carried on. We were impressed that this trail was completely different than the previous section, it was loamy dirt through grassy hills and culminated with a technical sandy section that looked like quad trails. We scouted everything and headed back to camp for registration.
Before registration I poured out half my drink on the ground for all our homies that couldn’t make it… just kidding, I accidentally spilled my drink, but the other way sounds so much better doesn’t it? At registration each truck signed a waiver that I didn’t even read (stolen from GLRE with names changed) and got awesome goodie bags. After this we went out on a short night run. The idea was to make our way to a section with a big field, stop and admire the stars.
With all the rains the field ended up being a lake and we turned back, we did a little driving around looking for something similar and were chased away from a large gravel lot by a couple of drunks worried about their machinery.
No big deal, back to camp where we hung out, had a few drinks and talked trucks, runs, and life.
Saturday May 25th, After a quick drivers meeting we embarked on the first leg of our journey, the Badlands National Park Scenic Loop. First we picked up pwjstruebig in the umm…lovely… ? town of scenic as he had driven through the night to get to the run and we started on the loop.
We would be driving through this town 2 more times this day. Breathtaking doesn’t even begin to describe the Badlands scenery. I’ll let some pictures and video do the talking.
BadlandsSD 4 - YouTube
Next came the first real off-road section of our trip, long flat grassy sections with this wonderful sign to welcome us…
We ended up missing a turn (very easy to do since the turn in question looked like to tire marked in tall grass. We continued on and even jumped out for a quick picture opportunity. So not only do we off-road in known plague areas, we also jump out near dead carcases for photo ops… woot woot!
(umm…please refer back to said waver if someone ends up contracting the plague!.... Although I’m fairly certain no one touched, licked, or gnawed on any of said bones).
It was either at this point or a little earlier that some folks declared the trip a wonderful success even if they saw nothing else. I could barely contain my giddiness knowing what we still had in store for them that day having pre-ran the next two sections. We carried on to the Creek crossing trail and stopped for a little picnic lunch.
Thank you everyone for being great sports about locations, wind, and lack of facilities.
We started on the section with Ironman bravely leading us and everyone was having a blast shooting mud up over the trucks though the mud puddles. This was Labraptor’s youngest, Nicki’s favorite part… “muuuuud!”
After a short stop because Ironboy was getting leaked on from where the antenna mount comes through the door, we came to the section where Joe got stuck the previous day. Ironman got bogged down but powered his way through, we had no speed and sunk… haha, two stucks in the same place, win! After a quick tug we were back moving. Here is Acepkt getting sideways in the same spot.
Sideways in mud SDBR - YouTube
I believe there were 12 crossings, in various levels of difficulty and such. Some with sandy banks, others with decent drop offs, ext….
SD buffalo run 33 - YouTube
The only issue we had was due to a wrong turn. Somehow the GPS had eaten the changes and points marked the previous day which is how Ironman ended up in the cement creek bottom. Although if you’re going to get stuck, I can’t imagine much of a cooler looking spot.
We finished the creek trail all covered with stinky quick drying dirt and headed up to the next section. The loamy windy section on grass covered hills. It was so cool watching all the trucks snake through the bends in front of us. And I loved hearing the kids call out truck numbers on the radio! Wilson family lead us through some of this section. There was a 19 degree hill climb, a couple blind hills, an off camber section, and finally the sandy technical stuff. Yehaw!!!
After this we headed back to the camp for the delicious BBQ and some campfire discussions and bonding.
Sunday May 26th the day started a little rainy and foggy. We had a quick drivers meeting and hoped it would clear so we could actually see Mount Rushmore. We took a scenic route to Mount Rushmore that became extra scenic when I missed a turn (red route, red road…whoops).
After we saw bison on the extra section I felt considerably better about the mistake. We snaked through the mountains on skinny, barely fit your Raptor paved roads. The weather had cleared and it was a beautiful drive with one lane tunnels, roads that snaked over themselves in little loops and cool glimpses of Mt. Rushmore.
SD buffalo run 13 - YouTube
We stopped at the monument, Stared in awe at the faces,
tested out some of the train/air horns in their parking lot
and carried on to a picnic area for a nice shaded leisurely lunch. At Crazy Horse we spotted a Raptor in their lot and left him a love note. We made a date to come back in 30-40 years to see the progress and started for our off-road trails.
Huck had more than 200 miles of trails planned with bug-outs if anyone needed to leave. Well with not knowing what to expect, we had assumed that the forest service roads would be similar to snowball and we could roll pretty quickly….wrong. The trails were actual trails! They snaked through the hills, valleys, ravines, etc…
We also did not expect any jumps on this trip but it soon became obvious that the trails were riddled with awesome little rollers that made for some safe air. We were able to pull into a field and get a few pictures of the last roller on that section, but most were not in great spots to pull off for that photo opp.
Some of the trails snaked over hills that had been cleared by a forest fire, they were riddled with downed trees on either side.
We even passed a few not so happy ladies…
On this day we had several fearless leaders, Big Blue, Labraptor, BadgerScab, Sitdown, Ironside, Kmandoske. Everyone did a wonderful job leading the group and communications were excellent.
We ended up doing only a third of the planned route, but I certainly didn’t hear anyone complain.
The last bit of the last trail had a few mud holes that seemed to me to be a perfect ending to a wonderful day of wheeling.
On the way back to camp Ironside got in touch with a good burger joint, the Sugar Shack, that ended up staying open late to serve us all dinner. After a quick vote, Wilson had won the fire extinguisher mount from WSI for his wonderful home-made Flag mount.
CONTINUED in post 3
Before I start on my recap of this wonderful weekend, I want to give a shout out to our sponsors. Also before I go any further I should tell you that this might get long winded. I know we've said it a few times, but this trip started as just a cool idea for a vacation and evolved into this awesome Raptor Run. We did not seek out any sponsors, but both RPG and WSI willingly stepped up to the plate. RPG sponsored our BBQ dinner and provided t-shirts and stickers for everyone. WSI hand fabricated awesome 5 foot cooking sticks for each truck and provided stickers and an FE mount for the patriotic Raptor contest.
I also wanted to give a shout out to all the participants including a couple that we've been calling spur-of-the-moment Sponsors. First Wilson, he made each child attending a marshmallow shooter and brought marshmallows. He got hats donated for all of the participants as well as provided enough cookies for an army! Also Sitdown and Bethany, while at the corn palace they thought of the rest of us and brought popcorn balls for everybody. Every person on this trip was what my dad would call “good people” and Joe and I are thankful to have gotten to meet such generous wonderful men, women, and children.
For the Support trucks our weekend started a little early because we decided that it would be prudent to pre-run some of the trails.
All the routes were planned by Huck off of Google Earth and we really had no idea of what we were going to encounter. We planned on being at the camp around 4pm on Thursday May 23rd to get set up. Of course we didn't make it until 9pm. Wilson Family were the only ones there and Mariah, their oldest, was teasing Dad that it was all just a prank to get them out there and none of the rest of us were coming…lol The campground was a little wet from all the rain, but I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Wild Bills Campground. They were friendly, accommodating and provided wonderfully clean facilities.
Friday May 24th, we planned on running a couple routes to double check the terrain and mostly to make sure that our Creek Crossing route was passable. The rushing water in the Creek at the campground did not give us high hopes. We got out of camp a little later than planned and made our way to the first route. We stopped at a Ranger Station and had a nice conversation about the trail with a Native American gentleman who described the conditions as likely to be “gumbo”. The route started on Reservation land and continued through the Badlands and Buffalo Gap grasslands.
We hit the trail and sure enough after a few miles we encounter some of that “gumbo” and Yukon gets us nice and buried in a muddy section. We used Huck as an anchor and winched ourselves out relatively easy.
continuing on, we found the Creeks to be passable and fun.
The trail was a fast drying clay/sand mud to the point that if you didn’t wash your window immediately you were using an ice scrapper to get it off.
Yukon was temporarily immobilized at another point but was able to power himself free with the help of some sticks.
We marked hazards and slight route changes on our GPS and were feeling really excited for everyone to experience it the next day.
On to the next section we had another few slight route changes and one more temporary immobilization of Night Raptor Yukon. We pulled free and carried on. We were impressed that this trail was completely different than the previous section, it was loamy dirt through grassy hills and culminated with a technical sandy section that looked like quad trails. We scouted everything and headed back to camp for registration.
Before registration I poured out half my drink on the ground for all our homies that couldn’t make it… just kidding, I accidentally spilled my drink, but the other way sounds so much better doesn’t it? At registration each truck signed a waiver that I didn’t even read (stolen from GLRE with names changed) and got awesome goodie bags. After this we went out on a short night run. The idea was to make our way to a section with a big field, stop and admire the stars.
With all the rains the field ended up being a lake and we turned back, we did a little driving around looking for something similar and were chased away from a large gravel lot by a couple of drunks worried about their machinery.
No big deal, back to camp where we hung out, had a few drinks and talked trucks, runs, and life.
Saturday May 25th, After a quick drivers meeting we embarked on the first leg of our journey, the Badlands National Park Scenic Loop. First we picked up pwjstruebig in the umm…lovely… ? town of scenic as he had driven through the night to get to the run and we started on the loop.
We would be driving through this town 2 more times this day. Breathtaking doesn’t even begin to describe the Badlands scenery. I’ll let some pictures and video do the talking.
BadlandsSD 4 - YouTube
Next came the first real off-road section of our trip, long flat grassy sections with this wonderful sign to welcome us…
We ended up missing a turn (very easy to do since the turn in question looked like to tire marked in tall grass. We continued on and even jumped out for a quick picture opportunity. So not only do we off-road in known plague areas, we also jump out near dead carcases for photo ops… woot woot!
(umm…please refer back to said waver if someone ends up contracting the plague!.... Although I’m fairly certain no one touched, licked, or gnawed on any of said bones).
It was either at this point or a little earlier that some folks declared the trip a wonderful success even if they saw nothing else. I could barely contain my giddiness knowing what we still had in store for them that day having pre-ran the next two sections. We carried on to the Creek crossing trail and stopped for a little picnic lunch.
Thank you everyone for being great sports about locations, wind, and lack of facilities.
We started on the section with Ironman bravely leading us and everyone was having a blast shooting mud up over the trucks though the mud puddles. This was Labraptor’s youngest, Nicki’s favorite part… “muuuuud!”
After a short stop because Ironboy was getting leaked on from where the antenna mount comes through the door, we came to the section where Joe got stuck the previous day. Ironman got bogged down but powered his way through, we had no speed and sunk… haha, two stucks in the same place, win! After a quick tug we were back moving. Here is Acepkt getting sideways in the same spot.
Sideways in mud SDBR - YouTube
I believe there were 12 crossings, in various levels of difficulty and such. Some with sandy banks, others with decent drop offs, ext….
SD buffalo run 33 - YouTube
The only issue we had was due to a wrong turn. Somehow the GPS had eaten the changes and points marked the previous day which is how Ironman ended up in the cement creek bottom. Although if you’re going to get stuck, I can’t imagine much of a cooler looking spot.
We finished the creek trail all covered with stinky quick drying dirt and headed up to the next section. The loamy windy section on grass covered hills. It was so cool watching all the trucks snake through the bends in front of us. And I loved hearing the kids call out truck numbers on the radio! Wilson family lead us through some of this section. There was a 19 degree hill climb, a couple blind hills, an off camber section, and finally the sandy technical stuff. Yehaw!!!
Sunday May 26th the day started a little rainy and foggy. We had a quick drivers meeting and hoped it would clear so we could actually see Mount Rushmore. We took a scenic route to Mount Rushmore that became extra scenic when I missed a turn (red route, red road…whoops).
After we saw bison on the extra section I felt considerably better about the mistake. We snaked through the mountains on skinny, barely fit your Raptor paved roads. The weather had cleared and it was a beautiful drive with one lane tunnels, roads that snaked over themselves in little loops and cool glimpses of Mt. Rushmore.
SD buffalo run 13 - YouTube
We stopped at the monument, Stared in awe at the faces,
tested out some of the train/air horns in their parking lot
and carried on to a picnic area for a nice shaded leisurely lunch. At Crazy Horse we spotted a Raptor in their lot and left him a love note. We made a date to come back in 30-40 years to see the progress and started for our off-road trails.
Huck had more than 200 miles of trails planned with bug-outs if anyone needed to leave. Well with not knowing what to expect, we had assumed that the forest service roads would be similar to snowball and we could roll pretty quickly….wrong. The trails were actual trails! They snaked through the hills, valleys, ravines, etc…
We also did not expect any jumps on this trip but it soon became obvious that the trails were riddled with awesome little rollers that made for some safe air. We were able to pull into a field and get a few pictures of the last roller on that section, but most were not in great spots to pull off for that photo opp.
Some of the trails snaked over hills that had been cleared by a forest fire, they were riddled with downed trees on either side.
We even passed a few not so happy ladies…
On this day we had several fearless leaders, Big Blue, Labraptor, BadgerScab, Sitdown, Ironside, Kmandoske. Everyone did a wonderful job leading the group and communications were excellent.
We ended up doing only a third of the planned route, but I certainly didn’t hear anyone complain.
The last bit of the last trail had a few mud holes that seemed to me to be a perfect ending to a wonderful day of wheeling.
On the way back to camp Ironside got in touch with a good burger joint, the Sugar Shack, that ended up staying open late to serve us all dinner. After a quick vote, Wilson had won the fire extinguisher mount from WSI for his wonderful home-made Flag mount.
CONTINUED in post 3
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