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New Jersey Pine Barrens
Friday Septenber 19, 1997 - Sunday September 21, 1997

This was my First EVER trip or experience using my Jeep Cherokee in an off-road environment and it was a blast. I loved every minute if it.

The Weird part was that the Pine Barrens area where we went was only minutes from where I work in Egg Harbor City, NJ and this area was huge. It has over 500 miles of trails to explore. The first day we met and went out for dinner at the HI Club Restaurant. We had Allen and his sons Dave (there wife and girlfriend as well) and Joe, who Lives nearby to the Pine Barrens.

On Saturday, we met for our first outing. We met at the the park entrance to the Pine Barrens area. We reviewed the maps of the area and decided what we would do that day and although it was relatively tame that day (most of us were beginners), some portions of the trail were very cool like this water pit we went through. No one got stuck the first day but Joe got his engine real muddy. It looked neat like that :-). Allen's engine was SPOTLESS, though.

On the second day (Sunday), we went into the Cranberry Bogs and people started getting stuck. We had some new people this day. Harry with his less than 2 week old green Wrangler and another person I cannot remember his name (if you are seeing this send me a mail message) This person I felt bad for, because he got stuck a lot; even on some of the not so hard mud holes. We eventually found out that he was never in 4WD. A hose that activates his 4WD was busted so he had been and had to continue onin 2WD so we were impressed. Allen and his son Dave both had 9000lb WARN winches (very cool) that came in very handy :-).

Allen had a Wrangler as well, with a 2.5" lift Goodyear Work Horse Extra Traction r235 meats full front and read ARB Lockers (Drool) and a Snorkel. Because of this, he was first most of the time. Only three of us never got stuck Allen's jeep, Dave's Tacoma Pickup, and my Cherokee. Technically, Allen got stuck really good and deep twice, but I do not count them because we did not go through those parts and we would had to have been crazy to try. That is why Allen went first. The second time, Allen got stuck was in what looked like an artificial pit .He sank below the tires and got hung up and well and the inside if his car became a lake. We doubled up Dave's winch for near 18,000 lb. of pulling power and even then had a tuff time getting him out. The nasty part about this is that all of us, including Allen, wound up going ahead through this pit. We went through the center, which should have been suicide.

Allen went to the left and got stuck about two hours later. A party went ahead on foot to determine whether we should try to go around this hole and continue or turn around but on their way back just for the fun of it they walked through the center of the pit, where we found out it was actually very shallow. Someone with a dozer or something dozed the dirt from the side making the sides (to Allen's misfortune) deeper than the center, whereas a hole as deep on the sides as this one was would swallow a car in the center. So we continued forward and were happy for this, as there were no more deep water holes (5 on the way back if we turned around)

All in all a very fun day as far as us not getting stuck. Well, Allen can we say lift, lockers, and snorkel? But Dave and I attribute our much longer vehicles to the task for all that got stuck were Wranglers which are very short. This can be good most of the time but for this one trip it proved not so good, but still a lot of fun. PS: Man can not make a drug as addictive as this sport.