On Friday August 15th 2014, 15 Raptors headed for Hot Springs Arkansas for the Arkansas Raptor Diamond Dash. On a side note, Hot Springs is the most unique and unexpected National Park Yukon and I have ever been to. We did not really check it out during the run though as we were there for the trails in the Ouachita and Ozark National Forests!
For most of the participants, the weekend’s festivities started at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, AR. Armed with exploration tips from our fellow FRF’ers that have been to the park, we went in fully expecting to leave with a butt load of diamonds!
I’m not at liberty to say who found a diamond…. Cough… cough… Yeti Purse!
Ok, ok…the only diamond she found was here ngagement ring that she staged in the dirt for a picture.
As far as I know, nobody walked off with a diamond or they are keeping it to themselves if they did. From here we returned to the hotel to get cleaned up, have a meet & greet, hand out T-shirts, and have a pre-drivers meeting.
Saturday August 16th 2014, we had a quick drivers meeting in the morning and headed toward our mapped trails. Unfortunately, one truck was out with some mechanical issues, but we were able to load the people from this truck up into other trucks so they still got to participate in the trails for the day.
Once on the trails, it was apparent that we were in for some dusty conditions. This was not a surprise to the organizers as the Forest Rangers we spoke with in the planning process had informed us that it would be dusty… I'm not sure we could have been fully prepared for the extent of the dust though. Even with 4 inches of rain the week previous, the trails were dust out (white out) condition.
We found lots of narrow bridges on the trail and a couple small mud puddles. What we called bridges were actually cemented creek crossings that allowed the water to spill over the roadway. We did find a rather long narrow bridge covered by water, with a family and a couple of dogs standing on it.
It looked like a long spill way. We told the gentleman that there were 13 more trucks coming to which he responded in astonishment “No Sh*t!” but did not move his family off of the bridge. 
It was probably for the best though as hitting that at speed might have looked cool, but probably could have gotten hairy. We crossed this cool suspension bridge named Wards Crossing from the early 1900s that we had seen pictures of on Google Earth. 
This is where Yukon freaked a few people out by stopping for this picture.
We don’t need no stinking weight tolerance, trust him folks, he’s an Engineer!
We then started on a trail that Huck had found that should have been about 90 miles long along one of the mountain ridges. Excited for excellent views atop the ridge and not having to worry about turns and intersections, we tore down the dusty trail. About 30 miles into the trail we encountered a road grader. He pulled off the road, and we told him we had more 13 trucks following us and then we moved on. He had muttered something, but we were not sure what it was. Along the way we realized that he said “why?”when we told him more trucks were coming. We had thought that he said “what” and continued on our way… until we ran out of trail a few miles further that is. Apparently that gentleman hadn’t finished that road yet, regardless of what the maps indicated. We turned around and hunted up a lunch spot near Danville, AR.
Lunch was a nice brake from the dust and gave folks a chance to refuel their bellies and their gas tanks. Lunch was cold cut sammies, some potato salad, waters and monster energy drinks. Trail lunches can be a lot of fun with good weather as folks get to check out the trucks and talk about the fun trails that we just ran.
After lunch we headed to the other side of Ouachita National Forest. According to our discussions with the Rangers, this side gets more water and wouldn’t be as dusty. It also contained what they call the Wolf Pen Gap recreation area. Our wheel base is only allowed on a few of the trails in the section but we were looking forward to it as it was to be a bit more technical area of the forest trail system. We hit the trails and were enjoying them as they were far less dusty than the other side of the park. Finally we got to what was marked on my maps as the Wolf Pen Gap area. We hit up some intel from some quad/side by side guys while UPScrazy8 tried to fix a popped out moon roof. (This was caused on a bump when his co-pilot hit it with his head…Ouch… Remember to buckle up kids!
) 
We left the parking area on what we thought was the trail, only to run into a glitch… after some scouting, we figured out that the Wolf Penn Gap area was sooner on our route than we figured and we blew through it without even realizing. This was a little disappointing as a Ranger had recommended that we not stay on trial 8 as it gets rough…she must have thought we were noobs, because we did all of trail 8 without even blinking.
The group ended up on a County Road 519, which was truly a gnarly trail and much better than the designated trail system that we saw.
It was tight though, so everyone now has a little custom Arkansas Diamond Dash pin striping at no extra charge. :mwah: (If anyone has a good picture of that trail let me know)
After our trail running for the day we went to our planned dinner at the Rocky Mountain Grill which was delicious. We had a party room reserved although I don’t think we really needed it as there was no one else in the restaurant at 8:30 on a Saturday night… sleepy town Arkansas I guess. The wait staff was great which included UPScrazy8 dishing out silverware and drinks and making me cringe as his head kept grazing the chandelier. At dinner, the participants surprised the Support trucks by presenting them with gift certificates to FreedomMotorsports… kudos to Witchy for actually keeping it a secret, and huge THANKS to everyone for such a thoughtful gift!
After dinner we headed out to what was planned as a short night run. Basically just take a trail to a field area to look at the stars. Unfortunately, it did not work out as we encountered gate after gate. We finally just called it a day and headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. After all, 8 am drivers’ meeting comes early on these runs!
Continued on next post....
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