A brief off-road adventure, experienced with my friends Tom (TommyP) and Andy (The Sarge).

TommyP and I left Ypsilanti about 8pm on friday night to head up to The Sarge's cabin in Gladwin, about two hours north. The Sarge wanted to go up there to take care of some things before it got too cold. He thought that it'd be a good idea to get us up there as well, and maybe do a little off-roading, and drink some beverages. His wife had to work all weekend, so it was just going to be a testosterone fest.

TommyP and Andy at the cabin

I'd never been to the cabin before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. TommyP and I stopped off a couple of times for food and gas, so it took us about an two and half hours to get there, and when we rolled in at 10:30 we noticed two things right away. First, that The Sarge's wife's car was parked at the cabin, and second, The Sarge waiting outside for us with a couple of beverages. As it happened his wife got out of work early on friday, and was going in late on saturday, so she came to the cabin to spend the night. And she'd just gone to bed, so we couldn't go in the cabin just yet.

Since we didn't dare go in and disturb the wife, and none of us were ready to sleep yet, we had a couple of beverages and talked about what to do. I remembered that I needed to call home to let my wife know I made it, and since The Sarge doesn't have a phone in the cabin, we decided to walk up to the corner store, about 1/2 mile away.

I called from the pay phone in the parking lot at the store, while TommyP and The Sarge stood back and made fun of me and generally made a nuisance of themselves. I had a little trouble making the call because my last payment to MCI WorldCom (who also happens to be my employer) was a whole week late, so they'd placed a block on my calling card. So while I was talking to the operator, the other two were standing back saying things like "I lost my pants!" and "Ask her what she's wearing!" (She was wearing black pants and a silver top). Despite the harassment of the operator, she helped me to place my call successfully.

The cabin

Once my phone call mission was over, we decided to take The Sarge's truck out and hit a few trails. It was still pretty early, and we really need something to do. We headed out into the state forest, and The Sarge took us by the hole that he and another friend had gotten a Ford Expedition stuck in bad enough that they had to spend the night strapped into the seats with the truck laying on it's side. After that we checked out another large mud hole that The Sarge had gotten his truck stuck in last year. Along the way we made periodic stops for The Sarge to empty his tiny little girl bladder and to refresh ourselves with more beverages.

The Sarge at 4 AM

Being hopefully a little smarter now, we avoided getting ourselves stuck, although we had a couple of close moments in a bit of mud. But we made it out of the woods okay, and still weren't ready to call it a night. The Sarge decided that we needed to hit the bar in Albright Shores for a nightcap. It was a very nice small town kind of establishment, with the considerate kind of waitress that gives you five minute updates for last call right up until closing time. After they kicked us out we finished the drinks that we snuck out with us, and waited for The Sarge to pee yet again. By then we were just about ready to head back to the cabin and call it a night.

Total damage for the night (per person):
2 Pabst Blue Ribbon before hitting the trails
4 Labatt's Blue while in the woods
1 shot of Yukon Jack at the bar
2 Jim Beam and Coke at the bar
1 Pabst Blue Ribbon at the bar (okay, so I didn't finish that last Pabst, so sue me).

Cut to the next morning, after a night of almost baking to death because The Sarge had the heat in the cabin turned up to inferno levels

We all felt surprisingly good the next morning. At least better than we would have expected given our adventures from the night before. I met The Sarge's wife for the first time ever - she was very nice, and very understanding. But of course she'd have to be, based on who she married. She couldn't stay long though, she had to head home to get ready for work, so she took off pretty early in the morning, while we sat around drinking coffee and assessing the damage.

We were moving rather slowly, but we did get going. We put our boots on and headed out, with our first stop being a nice little diner called "Robin's" in Gladwin. We went from there to the Police station so The Sarge could pick up a CCW permit application (if you don't know, you don't wanna), and then on to Radio Shack. The Sarge needed to pick up a new antenna for his CB, and had to ask a lot of questions to do it. I came pretty close to picking up a new CB for my truck. It was pretty sweet, it had weather band and a PA. But I'd have just had to carry it around all weekend, I'd ridden with TommyP and left my truck at home.

After putting The Sarge's antenna on his truck, and hooking up TommyP's new CB and antenna, we were finally off more some more off roading, this time in the daylight. We checked out a place called "Grim Hill" and drove through some deep sand and stuff, and The Sarge took us to a place called "The Flats" and we had to stop a bit for him to mark some more territory.

The Sarge has to pee

We took off again in search of some mud holes to run the trucks through, and drove around on some trails that none of us had been down before. I think we wound up driving around an area called "Mosquito Alley," but I could be wrong. We did find some small mud with a bit of challenging terrain, and came to a dead end in the trail we were on, so we stopped and went for a walk in the woods. And The Sarge had to pee again, of course.

Little Dogie with some mud on

The Sarge pees yet again

The Secord Lake Bar

We finally came out of the woods and saw a sign that The Sarge thought he recognized, so we headed for some civilization. We wound up in a little town call Secord, somewhere northeast of Gladwin, and had lunch at the Secord Lake Bar. I had the Sloppy Joe special (and a Coke), TommyP and The Sarge ordered a pizza and some Inferno Wings, and we all dug in. The food was great. The Sloppy Joe was excellent, the Inferno Wings were excellent, the pizza was excellent. We were pretty hungry, but I don't think it affected my judgment that much, so I'd have to say the this place is recommended.

I had to get back home sometime on saturday evening to finish up a project at work that was due the following monday, so after lunch we headed back to the cabin to grab our stuff. We threw everything into TommyP's truck, and decided that we just had to go to try the big mud hole one time before we headed home. So we set out again, with The Sarge leading the way. We made it back to the big hole, and The Sarge ran through fine and waited for us. There are three different paths through the hole, so we got The Sarge on the CB to find out which way he'd gone. He told us he'd gone through on the left side, so that's the way we headed.

The Hole

We of course were not so lucky. We got about halfway through the hole when Little Dogie dropped into ruts and just came to a stop. TommyP tried to get the truck rocking, but we did nothing but spin, we had absolutely no traction. We had come to a stop next to the little island, so I climbed out of the cab and on to the island. I took a couple pictures from there, and then climbed over the back of the truck to where The Sarge had pulled around to help us. While we were sitting in the hole, he ran back through on the far right, and backed up to the hole to help pull us out.

He hooked up a come-along and a tow strap to Little Dogie, and the first attempt involved The Sarge trying to crank the truck out by hand. That obviously didn't work, and so The Sarge got back in his truck and slowly pulled Little Dogie out.

Sittin' in the truck, looking at The Sarge on shore

Steam rising from the running engine

We're really stuck

The Sarge trying to crank us out by hand

Keep crankin'

Here it comes

Once The Sarge switched to his truck, it was all over pretty quickly. We left the come-along in place, mostly because no one was willing to wade out to the bumper to pull it off, and got Little Dogie up close to the shore line. Once we could reach the bumper, we took the come-along off and just used the tow strap to pull the rest of the way. If you drive your truck off road, a strong tow strap with steel hooks at the ends is a necessity.

Success!

Our feet stayed dry!

That's pretty much the end of our adventure for the weekend. Once we were out of the hole, TommyP and I had to take off for home, and The Sarge went back to the cabin to clean up and shut the water off for the winter. Somewhere in the middle of running the hole, we had managed to knock the CB out of operation, so we couldn't even harass The Sarge on the way out. All in all it was a most excellent beginning of a weekend, it's just too bad I had to get home to work on sunday.

TommyP and The Sarge by The Hole

Me and TommyP (yes, that is a Dukes of Hazzard t-shirt