Jeep Jamboree Work Trips

Each year the Jeep Jamboree is held at the Figure 3 Ranch in the Palo Duro Canyon, the ranch is several miles east of the State Park. The ranch is approx 7000 acres on the rim and in the canyon. The Amarillo Jeep Club (Jeep Exclusive) hosts the Jamboree and people come from all over the country to participate. Each year prior to the Jamboree, the club host a couple of work parties to do trail maintenance (trimming trees and overgrown brush from the trails).

These are a few pictures from the trips (two that we took) to the canyon.

We all met at around 8:30 pm, planning on heading down into the canyon at 9:00. Saturday morning was quite cold, in the 30s, but it did warm up quick. Here every one is lined up for the trip down into the canyon, we split up into 3 different groups, the easy, medium and hard trails groups. We started out with the easy trails group the first day and did more challenging trails the second day.

This is the view at the start headed down into the canyon, very steep areas headed down, which equal very steep areas headed back up. As you can tell, there is only room for one lane, so we make sure via CB radio there is no one coming up or down prior to the start or finish.

Once down in the canyon, we followed a dry river bed for a while until we could go no farther. It was just a short walk to the spring, so we headed out to find it and stretch our legs.

There was lots of travel and stops along the way, here we stopped to let a few folks climb a large rock with their jeeps, one of the guys broke his jeep so we were her for a bit while they fixed it.

Group shot as we headed along one of the dry river beds, these beds were littered with rock fields, so it made travel a bit interesting at times.

Here I am climbing up a steep incline, the shot is at the end of the incline. the picture below, shows the area a little better.

This jeep got stuck here, and had to be towed out by another jeep, so I felt pretty good that I had made it through, considering his jeep was better set up than ours.

After a few hours of trails riding and maintenance, we stopped for lunch. The daughter of the ranch owners was in our group, it was interesting to talk with her and to listen to all her stories about growing up on the ranch and the history behind it. As I have said before, jeeping is fun, but it is more about the people you meet and places you get to see. The jeep is just a vehicle to get you to both.

Since it is kinda hard to take pictures of yourself while on the trail, here are a couple of the more difficult places or trails we were on. This is Jackie, the guy who is does all the work on our jeep.

Thought this was a good place for a picture of the jeep and the canyon, we were stopped here for a while as another one of the guys broke his jeep on the harder approach to this same area. It is amazing what these jeepers can do and fix on the trail (broken axles, broken -joints, holes in radiators, etc.)

Of course we can't go anywhere with out the famous us shot, however this one was taken by Cassie. We stopped at this beautiful canyon overlook, we spent a while here as we all explored and enjoyed the view.

We camped on the canyon rim, my boss was kind enough to let use borrow on of the Jumping Jack Trailers from work, so I could show it to the Jeep club members. It sure was nice to be up off the ground. it was pretty cold that night, but the heater we bought made it pretty nice inside the tent. It was a very windy night, you could hear the wind coming up through the canyon and then WHAM, it would hit the tent and shake it violently. Between the wind and the very uncomfortable mattresses, we got very little sleep. It was still a good time and we enjoyed getting away for the weekend and spending time with friends.
Here I come over a hill with a steep down side, and as Sheryl said, YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN WHAT YOU JUST DID!!! like with most of the pictures the photos just don't do the area justice, you really have to see it in person.

All in all we had a great time, good times with good people and the enjoyment of just getting away. Just another way that we Love Our Life and try and enjoy every minute of it we can. So until next time................you know the drill, Love your Life as we do ours!!!