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Story and Photos by Jamie "Lefty" Sanecki

The Badlands - Attica, Indiana

We finally got to Attica, Indiana around noon. Not too bad, considering that I ran out of fuel and had stopped for breakfast.

We headed for the Badlands OHV Park and paid our entry fees and removed our doors and took care of all the other pre-trail tasks. We decided to try the "Green Trail" since it was not supposed to be too difficult. No sense breaking anything the first day.

We started off and Mike stopped and said the indicator light for his 4WD was on and he didn't think his hubs were engaging, since he was having so much trouble. I watched him slip and slide around and saw that they were not engaging and after checking the vacuum lines, figured it was the modulator.

We headed back into town to the parts house, only to find that they all had closed 30 minutes earlier and wouldn't re-open until Monday. We went back to the park to see if, by chance, some one had a spare, which no one did. We decided to try and bypass it.

As soon as we tried to throw the driver's side tire on a rock to flex it out (easier than digging out the jack) it started to work so in came the logic of "if it ain't broke - don't fix it" and we started down the trail. It worked fine the rest of the day and next.

The trail was awesome. Lots of hill-climbs and off-camber turns. At one point it comes too a hill that dumps into a sand pit that has two trails over it. I opted for the second one while Mike tried the first. I made it over the hill without problems, but Mike and his wife slid off the trail and into trees, leaving him at a very odd angle.

He was fine where he was but if I pulled him straight back, he may have rolled. After several minutes of strapping and repositioning we got him back on the trail and he went over the hill. We continued up the trail after playing in the sand for awhile and met up with John, Kirsten (CJ-8), and Ray (CJ-5) from the Chicago Land Jeep Club, who leads us through the rest of the Green Trail. They said they would be back at 9am to run all the next day.

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