A different kind of drive

My husband loves an afternoon drive down winding country roads. From his first car, a 1968 VW Campmobile to his current ride, a 2008 Scion xB, he has racked up hundreds of thousands of miles zipping along the roads less traveled. As ‘zipping’ down country roads tends to make me queasy, this is an activity he usually does alone or with me knocked out on Dramamine in the passenger seat. When we bought the Scion, I pointed out that for the first time he had the sensible, roomy, family car, and that it was MY turn to have the fun car.

Although this idea made Steve a bit nervous, he tried to play along as I evaluated my choices. I have always wanted a convertible and somehow, over the course of about five months, my dream of a little red convertible turned into a Big Yellow Jeep. I drove my first Jeep Wrangler on a whim at the CCU Car Sale in April. It was definitely a fun ride and as I couldn’t afford for my “fun car” to be a “pretty weather only” car, the Wrangler seemed a viable option as a sturdy “year round” convertible. My daughter, Charli, immediately said, “You should buy Lyndsie’s Jeep.” Lyndsie was a co-worker of Charli’s who had just had her first baby. Lyndsie and her husband Derek were looking for more of a family car and were, with great sadness, thinking about selling their Wrangler. Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready to buy. I kept reassuring Steve that “next summer I’ll buy something, I’m just looking now.” Over the next few months I drove several different Wranglers, and loved them all. Then one night in August Lyndsie called, they were ready to sell their Jeep and Charli had told her I might be interested. That was on Tuesday, by Thursday evening Lyndsie’s father had bought my car and I had bought Lindsey’s Jeep. I’m still not exactly sure how it happened!

Now that we had a Jeep, the “road less traveled” became the gravel roads and back roads of Franklin, Henry, Owen and Anderson counties. We try very hard to respect private property while exploring obscure roads listed in our Kentucky Gazetteer map. We discovered Six-Mile Creek Road and LeCompte’s Bottom and finally accepted the fact that despite what our map says, Sawdridge Creek Road does not connect US 127 with 607. We met up with some friendly people on ATVs who showed us where Payton Ridge Road goes, and then surprised them with the ability of the Wrangler to follow their ATVs. My brother Josh (a certified Jeep Freak) introduced us to his friend Ed who is creating a 4-wheelin’ mecca for his friends out in Bald Knob. We learned valuable lessons, like it is best to put the top up before racing through mud bogs, that a Wrangler really will fit just about anywhere, that a barking dog chasing a car can be much scarier when you’ve left the doors at home, that you should always wave at a passing Jeep and, seemingly most important, that it is NOT a car – it is a JEEP! (I have had two different people vehemently correct me when I mistakenly referred to my Jeep as “my car.”) The best news, I found that because you don’t necessarily “zip” in a Jeep, I wasn’t getting queasy and, despite his smart remarks about his Civilized Car versus my Barbarian Jeep, Steve was enjoying this adventure too.

When the opportunity came to take a fall break and get away for a few days, we looked at a number of options: Chicago would be fun, maybe Nashville. Then we heard about the Turkey Bay Off-Highway Vehicle Area at the Land Between the Lakes Recreational Area in western Kentucky. Not completely sure of what we were getting into, we made our reservations at Lake Barkley State Resort Park and headed to the Land Between the Lakes – in our Jeep – which gets about 16 mpg! We spent an entire day wheelin’ around Turkey Bay. We took trails that we probably shouldn’t have taken (especially not alone), we drove down to the shoreline of the lake, we climbed what appeared to be un-climbable hills and we came down hills that were so steep we just knew the front bumper would dig in at the bottom. We took turns driving and both conquered some intense obstacles. We laughed, cringed, held on for dear life, and had a blast. It really is like a low-speed roller coaster. When we weren’t at Turkey Bay we were driving around the back roads in the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. We picked up an official Motor Vehicle Use Map at the welcome station and drove and drove and drove, yet our average speed most days was less than 20 miles per hour.

As we were getting ready to leave Turkey Bay for our lodge room on Friday evening, we met up with a couple of guys in Wranglers. They invited us to join them Saturday morning at 9 a.m. for a Jeep gathering and trail ride. Although we planned to leave for home Saturday morning, we decided to meet up with them for a couple of hours first. A couple of hours…right…we didn’t leave until close to 5 p.m. What we had done on our own was even more fun when surrounded by a bunch of people just as crazy as we were. Within minutes of meeting them, Keagan, one of our new Jeep buddies, had his tool kit out and was disconnecting the sway bar on our Jeep. Don, Rick, and Brian suggested a couple thousand dollars worth of modifications we REALLY NEEDED and we got a lecture on the importance of zip ties and duct tape before the Wranglers even lined up to hit the trail. When I worried that we were slowing them down, Don and Brian’s wives, Vicki and Wendy, assured me that we had made the guys’ day by joining them. For them, teaching the ropes to a couple of newbies was half the fun.

With Rick in the lead and Don as “tail gunner” the line of 8 Jeeps wheeled for hours. They put us newbies in the middle of the pack so it would be easier to pull us out if we got into trouble, which I am proud to say we didn’t. Ever-so-often the group would stop and gather and talk, usually about past mishaps and glories (which were spoken of with the same degree of pride and fondness) and who had made what modification and what they planned to add to their Jeep next. When we came to an obstacle or hill that was too much for our “stock” Jeep, we would be offered a seat in someone else’s Jeep so we didn’t miss the experience. Everyone had packed a lunch because you couldn’t possibly stop long enough to leave and eat somewhere. Every time we passed a Jeep on the trail Don would invite them to join us and tell them about Itsajeep.org, an online community of Jeep enthusiasts.

As we drove the 200 miles home, very dusty and tired, we agreed that we’d had a great time and couldn’t wait to go again. We had made it four days with no damage to the Jeep other than a bolt that snapped when Keagan was disconnecting the sway bar. (No worries -- a zip tie will hold that until we get it fixed!) Some of the guys we met down there are from Louisville and we plan to meet up with them and go to “Hillz and Hollerz,” an off-road park in Henry County in the future.

When we first bought the Jeep, a friend laughed and made a remark about our mid-life crisis…trust me - this is no crisis…now if it only it would rain so we could find some mud.