Fun In The Desert is an annual event sponsored by the Victor Valley 4 Wheelers (VV4W) in Johnson Valley and OTR usually has a few folks attend. This year four of us made the event. Lori and I arrived Thursday afternoon and secured a spot on Means Dry Lake bed a short distance from the main VV4W camp. Jed and his dad Phil arrived later that evening. We hung out for a while then retreated to our campers for a good nights rest.
Friday morning Jed and I met up with John from the Jeep Freeks who had a wild Willys buggy with rear steer and an extendable frame that he could shorten or lengthen his wheelbase with a ram set up. Since this was Loris firstt time out at the hammers we decided to try some of the milder trails first. We headed up Resolution first. About half way up there is a ledge that caused some problems for John in his buggy. He tried numerous times on the right side of the obstacle to no avail. He tried the left line and after several more attempts he finally made it up. Jed and I made it up the right side first try. We then headed to Clawhammer. Jed led and I was behind. We were making short work of the trail. At the ledge about half way up the trail we stopped and waited for John. He was way behind. He finally made it up to where we were and said he was going to head back to camp to meet some other folks. Jed and I finished Claw then went back to camp for lunch and run through tech inspection.
After lunch we hit Sledgehammer. As many of you have heard the VV4W guys filled in the shelf at the plaque with rocks and cement. It was very easy to make it up to that point. The section right after that has a narrow squeeze where you have to either put a tire up on the canyon wall to the left or a big boulder on the right. There is a big diff eater in the middle that is tough to get by. It took us about 20 minutes to get through that section but then we were out to the mail box in no time. On the way back we cruised through Chocolate Thunder and went back to camp.
Back at camp we found Bob Marshall and his wife Diane. Duane and Tina showed up a little later and we hung out a while for a little happy hour before Bob and Diane went back to their house in Johnson Valley. The rest of us had dinner and retired relatively early to be ready for the big run Saturday.
On Saturday we elected to do Sunbonnet trail. Jed, Bob and I went over to line up and get coffee around 7:30. We were getting close to departure time but saw no sign of Duane so I went back to camp to see what was up. Duane had his dash apart trying to figure out a no start problem. He had a bad starter switch so he was out for the run.
There were 9 rigs on the run. To get to Sunbonnet you need to head pretty far east and enter the trail from the far end. The ride over is mainly across desert and the beginning of the actual trail is very mild. A short distance into the trail Jed called out that he heard a bang in his rear end so we stopped to take a look. Indeed something came apart as he had no rear locker so he turned around and headed back to camp with another Jeeper who was tagging along to see the first part of the trail. It turns out Jed sheared the side gear in his diff which was a relief as that part is cheap but a new e locker is not.
We continued on down devils slide to the start of Sunbonnet with no major issues. The first obstacle is the squeeze which is were Mike Bourdon almost flopped his rig a few years ago. It took a while to get everyone through but everyone eventually made it. There was a full size Bronco on the run and he made things fun to watch and he jammed and slammed through the obstacles. He wasn't afraid to give it gas and bounce his way through. We eventually made our way through all the obstacles with no major issues other than a slashed sidewall on Craig from VV4Ws jeep. We were off the trail by 1:30 or so and back at camp around 2.
When we got back to camp Duane had fixed his FTOY and had run Chocolate thunder with Jed in the interim. His rig appeared to be working well. One of the rigs that we ran Sunbonnet with stopped by to see if we wanted to do one more run. Duane offered his FTOY to Jed and we headed over to Turkey Claw. We were in Turkey Claw for a few hundred yards when Jed stopped as he heard a weird noise coming from Duanes rig. We weren't sure what it was so we decided to forge on. Jed tried to start the buggy but the starter wouldn't engage. We were able to hot wire the buggy however the noise re appeared. It turned out the starter was engaging randomly in the rocks. Fortunately Jed watched Duane take apart his dash so he knew how to take apart the dash and was familiar with the wiring harness and fuse panel for the rig. We hot wired the rig again then pulled the fuse for the starter so it wouldn't re engage and high tailed it back to camp. We made it back to camp with no other trouble but that was the end of the day for the FTOY.
That evening was the big BBQ and raffle by VV4W. Jed won a few nice prizes but the rest of us were skunked. We headed back to camp and called it a night.The next day we all ended up heading back in the morning as 2/3 rigs in camp were out of commission.
VV4W puts on a great event and I think we all had a great time. Hope to see everyone out there again next year.