Ken, I have a couple great ones from my younger four wheeling days but I may have to take the fifth on them. But it was a riot involving a bunch of us and a cop and a bunch and an airplane.

 

How about 31 yrs and 550,750 miles on the same old Ranger?

 

Well hell, the two really good ones happened years ago. The Statue of Limitations have come and gone. I will write them up in Word and post them. After you read them, I know the though that comes to mind is how is he still alive.

 

Is Vanessa still looking for stories?
I may have a few, but one that comes to mind is when my wife was pregnant with our first child and we went camping with a couple of stops before we got there. Driving my Ranger, we drove to visit a buddy in Kelowna to hang out for the day. He took us around a bit in his F350, showing us some local spots. She didn't like the truck being pregnant, but that's besides the point. It had a 460, 5 speed, 4x4. Taking to the highway faster than she was comfortable, and having trouble staying in his lane. Anyway, we had lunch on the lake, went and picked up some beer and steaks for dinner.

Next morning, we had to go to Vernon (about an hour away) for another buddy's wedding. Into the Ranger we go. Meet up with everyone at the hotel for drinks and pictures, then off to a ranch for the actual ceremony. Hang out for a bit, as we are due in Princeton (back where we came from plus another 2 hours) just after dark. So off we go.

We had the great idea of preordering pizza for the drive, so we'd only have to make a quick 2 minute stop as we drove.

About 5 minutes past the pizza joint, we start noticing traffic slowing down. Another 5 minutes and traffic is stopped. Then fire trucks. A wood processing plant caught fire, and caused the closure of the highway. We took side streets as far as we could, and since there was no way around, we called up my buddy in Kelowna. He basically said we were hooped, the only way to Princeton was through Merritt, which at this point was only accessible by going BACK through Vernon, over to Kamloops and down.

See, Kelowna, Kamloops and Merritt form a triangle of sorts, with Vernon being almost halfway between Kelowna and Kamloops. Kelowna and Kamloops are both about an hour from Merritt, but to go from Kelowna to Kamloops through Vernon is almost 3 hours.

So off we go again, but instead of trying to get to the campground before dark, we have to get there before they close the gates. Good thing we got pizza.

We aren't the only people with the same idea though, so traffic is just as congested, but we're all blasting down the highway. Cops are going the other way, obviously seeing us (and everyone else) speeding but they're letting us flee the fire.

Stoplight. Speed limiter. Stoplight. Speed limiter. That's how it went all the way to Kamloops. Then we were more relaxed, the road opened up to 6 lane freeway.

But it was pretty cool to see, the majority of people on the highway were in pickups, all loaded to the gills, all getting the "blank" out of Dodge.

We finally got to the campsite about 11:30 that night, after taking a wrong turn out of Kamloops. Find out the turn I took was a "winter truck route", basically truckers used it to bypass the scale. It would have been a scenic drive, had the sun not gone down, but I was under the impression it would have saved us 20 minutes. More like added 20 minutes. But there was a nice logging road once we got back to where we should have been.

My wife was a trooper the whole trip. We took the logging road back out to get home, in the daytime, a few days later, and she was not impressed. Me blasting down that dark dirt road was fine, but once she saw the hazards in daylight, she wasn't happy. But it was a good week.

 

Now I think this is a good story!!

 

My best SUV story...

I had a 2007 4x4 Suburban. Damned thing sat way to low. Stock 17" wheels and the third row seats weren't worth the effort to take out and put them back in. So after about 11 months I told the Queen that I was going to get some new wheels and look into lifting it a couple of inches. A few hours later I came home, parked out front, went into the house and asked her to step outside and look at my new wheels.

Along with new 20 inch chrome clad wheels there was a new 2008 Expedition wrapped around them.

I wouldn't say she was mad but, er, um she was a whole lot less than pleased.

While I survived the predicable exile & excommunication ...The Queen finds no humor in this story to this day.

 

Close the book on it................I gave it away in Oct.
Replaced with a MUCH newer Ranger.

It's still running though.