2022 Windrock TN Jeep 4×4 Adventure.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, welcome back to RView. We have a great show for you today. All about our trip to Winrock in Tennessee to go jeeping on all of their trails. So we will tell you all that right after this.

intro
Welcome to RView with your hosts George and Lisa Hernandez each week listen as George and Lisa talk about their RV and travel adventures all around the world. George and Lisa travel in their 40 foot Class A Tiffin motorcoach and tow their Jeep Wrangler, always looking for fun and adventure

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, welcome back to RView. I’m Lisa RichartHernandez. And I’m George Hernandez and today we are going to talk to you all about our trip to windrock which is a it’s located in Oliver springs, Tennessee, which is about 30 minutes outside of Knoxville. And it’s 73 acres of land and over 300 miles of Jeep trail.

George
Okay, let’s let’s try that again. It’s 73,000 acres.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, sorry. Did I say 7300?

George
Now you said 73 acres

Lisa RichartHernandez
73,000.

George
There we go. It’s like the yellow

Lisa RichartHernandez
stone of jeeping.

George
It’s Yes, it was. Oh my god. All right. Let’s get going. And I’m so excited. I can’t contain myself.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, yes. So we originally started the the idea of this trip to wind rock and the Jeep from our friend Nate Gainey, who has been up there but a bunch of times it’s one of his favorite places to go. He’s got like a super nice, like fairly new Rubicon all like completely decked out that you would think nobody would ever want to actually get a scratch on it. But it’s all parlor. That’s what

George
I say. He’s also actually developing some land out there for a resort camp campground campground. Yeah, yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yep. So he’s a fellow realtor in Charleston. And so Georgia, him got talking about our Jeeps. And they were like, We will really you really want to go to Nassau, or I’m sorry, Knoxville, and go to this place called windrock. And then he started talking and I said, Well, how about on our way back from Michigan, because we’re kind of going right paths there. So that’s how it all came about that we ended up going to windrock. Yeah.

George
So we stopped there on our way, home from Michigan, and he drove up and actually stayed with us in the RV. We had a blast. Yeah. Oh my god.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think I mean, Michigan, we had a great time in Michigan. That was our trip on the way up there before that, which we just did a podcast on. But I think that the jeeping was like the cherry on the top at the end. Yeah, it was fun.

George
We were on vacation in Michigan. But when rock was like, this is when we get to relax.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, because windrock was on a weekend and my phone wasn’t working. Because it was in the mountains. So I could actually. But it was also fun in the jeep. Yeah.

George
So so the trails, I think you’ve got it written down somewhere, the trails range from easy to extremely difficult to the point where they tell you that you require a six inch lift kit or you require 40 inch tires, they tell you what you need. Some of them you better not do without a winch because you’re you’re just asking for trouble. We actually got to use the winch quite a few times.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so one of the big things one of the main reasons why George really wanted one of the main reasons but it was on the top of the list was they have three Jeep badge of honor trails.

George
Yes. And for those of you that don’t know what badge of honor is, so, Jeep has a program, it’s an app, you download the app on your phone. And it’s great, because wherever you are, you can pull up the app, and it’ll tell you if there’s a trail near you. And it’ll tell you whether it’s a badge of honor or trail, what that means it’s it’s a trail that Jeep has designated as worthy of a badge. So when there were three Winrock so when we got to the first one, what you do is before you even start the trail, you check in with the app and you say hey, I’m here. And I guess they do it based on the coordinates and they say

Lisa RichartHernandez
because your GPS works even when you’re

George
just like they get your coordinates and they say okay, good. You’re there. And you go through the trail when you’re done. You click that you completed it and it basically says, okay, great, you would check this one off for you. And then when you get back to your RV or your hotel or whatever time and you have Wi Fi you go back in and you select that the trail that you completed and you Register you’re all they ask for is the VIN number of your Jeep and your name and your address. And in a couple of weeks, you get this cool little badge that you stick on the side of your Jeep or wherever you want to stick it we have to from Moab, I can’t wait to get my next three, I’m going to have five. And when we first did it, I thought it was gonna be like this, you know, whatever, it’s gonna be a little cheesy vinyl sticker or whatever. But it’s not. It’s actually a really nice 3d badge. It looks like a military dog tag, but plastic that you stick on the side of your Jeep. And it actually has, like a little drawing of the trail that you completed.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so the the first trail was trail number 19 1616. And that was like, seven to 10 level.

George
No, that was oh, yeah, it was 66868.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So 10 being the most difficult one being the easiest, it’s this. This is not an easy trail at like, at all. So it’s set like so that means like, most of it is at least a seven. But there are some eights or maybe even nines in there. Right?

George
Right. And it’s

Lisa RichartHernandez
like little What do you call it like a obstacle, almost like a,

George
like the trails are deceiving, because as soon as you start the trail, it’s like, Oh, this isn’t bad, you know? Yeah, there’s some big rocks, there might be a boulder that you gotta go around and you got to climb up and you definitely got to use all your tools that your Jeep has, and disconnect everything and get your axle lined up and get everything go and four wheel drive. And it doesn’t seem that bad. And then all sudden you get to a major obstacle which 16 was several really steep climbs, I mean, steep climbs in the mud, and it had just rained, so it was muddy. My tires weren’t in the best shape. So I was slipping and sliding everywhere. And it’s like a red clay slick mud. Yeah, it’s just it’s it was like being on ice put it that way. pletely

Lisa RichartHernandez
different than for example, being in Moab where they have like slick rock like rock, which is actually sticky rock. I don’t know why it should be called Sticky rock, not slick rock because that rock is smooth. But you could you know, it’s it. Your tires stick to it. Yeah. Where are the mud? Like you got ice, like ice

George
made had great tires, big beefy tires, great tread, and he got stuck in the same spot I got stuck in and we had to wind him up. We had winch myself up. And I had just, I had never used my winch because I didn’t have a winch and Moab and after Moab I said, Nope, can’t have that. So I got a winch, never used it, and finally got to use it in Winrock.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Thank God, we never would have got out if we didn’t have, we would have

George
had to back out of the trail completely.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t even that even would have been hard. I know exactly. That’s

George
why I’m saying, you know, if you’re new to jeeping, and you see a trail that says you need a winch, please don’t go on there. If you don’t have a winch, they’re telling you that for a reason. And another thing is, if they have to come and rescue you and tow you out of a trail, oh, you will be buying a winch real quick because you could have probably bought 10 winches with what they’re going to charge you.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Well, the first thing on that drill, the first thing we came across was a four by four RZ are completely completely stuck in the mud. And so we had to winch him out.

George
Right. I mean, he was stuck completely. He was not going anywhere. If we had not come by

Lisa RichartHernandez
uses the look on that girl’s face. Like she had her helmet on. She’s all covered in mud. They’re like trapped in the mud. The boyfriend like trying to like I don’t know if it was boyfriend or husband or whatever it is like, you know, he was like, oh shit, or in the middle of the woods. were trapped in the mud. The girl was like trying to keep a smile on her face. And when they saw us come along, they’re like, Ah, it’s either gonna be good or bad or like you need help, don’t you, buddy? Yeah, but we got him out.

George
So that was another spot that was that was the first spot. That was one of the first spots that we came to. So it’s this rotted out, and it’s just a straight shot, but it’s so rotted out that again, it had just rained so much water, mud and water running through there. And your Jeep it’s at such an incline that your Jeep is actually the way to get through is to ride the wall. So what that means is you’re actually rolling on the sidewalls of Your tires, you’re not rolling on the bottom of your tires. You’re rolling on your sidewall. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
like, I’ve learned I learned so many things every time we go jeeping. But if you ever look at a Jeep and you see like the tires kind of stick out, like further like a like a big jeep not like a little meno not a mall crawler not a not a plain tire Jeep, but a normal Jeep that’s made for doing this. The tires are fat, like stick out. And this is the first time I ever

George
understood why.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh my god. I mean, if they didn’t, old that guy said he had to winch through there like 10 times or something like that to get through the grand into Yeah, in another Jeep that didn’t have the puffed out tires.

George
Yeah, after the quad. So luckily, we have the big 37 inch tires that stick out way past the fenders. Because Lisa took a video of us going through that section. And the wall was right at our window. And we were probably like four inches away from my face. Yeah. And we were probably at 20 something degrees.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I could have stood on the passenger side window. Yeah. And you had to you had to put the sideview mirror, fold it in.

George
Yes. We have a video that will post that on the podcast, so you understand what we’re talking about. But it was so steep at such an angle that it was incredible. And again, I love my jeep. It’s unbelievable. And the more we do with it, the more that it amazes me what this thing will do. It just it’s like nothing bothers it. It just rolls and we got through that. And we’re like high fiving each other we got the RAZR arrived five each other for that. And then we ran across so all these trails are two ways. So you can come in one way or you can come in we’re so it

Lisa RichartHernandez
makes it different based on which side you come from really like if you’re going downhill or uphill basically,

George
right. So where we came in, we would consider that the entrance. And we would go all the way through the trail and come out the exit. Well, if somebody comes in through the exit, that’s their entrance and vice versa. So we’re going through the trail and this guy and his son come he had a white Jeep and his son had the red Jeep. And he looked at us and he’s like, I don’t know if you guys want to keep going if you want to turn around because we’ve been winching, you know, forever. And we’ve been getting stuck. And we’re looking at his jeep and he had one of those that the tires were not sticking out of the fender.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And we had just written through that wall. And

George
we told we told him I don’t know if you want to go where we just came from. He’s the guy that gave you gas. Yeah, so long story short, super nice, super nice guy. I was panicking a little because my my gas light was coming on. And you know, Nate, haven’t done it before. And he just walked me out off the cliff. And he’s like, it’s just the angle that we’re in. Yeah. Cuz like the Jeep is all right, but when far up are so far down, right. But when we finally leveled off, and we were talking with this guy may saw that he had gas cans. He’s like, Hey, do you have gas in there? And the guy was gracious enough to put some gas in mine

Lisa RichartHernandez
gave me five gallon George gave him 20 bucks, like Keep the change. I was like, Dude, you owe him more money. No,

George
change. Oh. Yeah. And so I actually looked for that guy, the next day. And I did find them and I gave him another $25. And he’s like, What do you do? And I’m like, Dude, it’s gas. You know, it’s not water, water would have been fine. But it’s gas, you know? Expensive. So, so long. Oh, and again, long story short, we found that guy the next day at another trail. And he told us that after he passed us, he had to winch so many times that he actually burned out the motor on his winch.

Lisa RichartHernandez
He said he used every quote unquote, every survival thing he had to get through the rest of that trail, which was like he had like all these like boards for getting out of mud and all kinds of stuff.

George
Well, luckily for him, he did. Yeah. And he got it done. He got the job done. But we we continued on, didn’t heed his warning. And we came to our first climb, which was super steep, Holy mackerel was steep. And about halfway up the climb, there was a step step. And what a step is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s a rock formation that looks like a step. But when we say a step in jeep terms we’re talking about it could be anywhere from a one foot climb to a five foot climb. And yes, your Jeep will get up that. And this one happened to be quite steep or quite high already while you’re climbing up a steep

Lisa RichartHernandez
so you could just go like, like, you know, put the pedal to the metal and go up. There’s no, no,

George
no, you would have slammed into this step. Yeah. So you have to slow down at the style at the step if not stop, which we did. And then Nate tried and tried and he got his jeep like halfway up the step and just could not get there was a point where like, all four tires were like off the ground. Yeah, they were off the ground and teetering and this and then falling. We just pulled the plug and got the we got the winch out, winched him up, and then I decided so on that particular one, there was two, two sides that you could say left or right, right. I decided after seeing him struggle, I said, Well, let me try the right side. And I got a little bit further. And then I hit a step myself. And I got stuck there. And we went and for me, it was awesome. It was great experience to finally use the winch and see what they can do. And you know, to think that this little electric motor, the front of your Jeep is pulling up whatever 1000s of pounds uphill, without even not even hesitation. I mean, it just pulled it up,

Lisa RichartHernandez
like Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing, like you don’t even put like, thankfully, we have Nate with those two, because he had experience in that. And I mean, anybody that’s gonna go jeeping I think going with other people and experience people was like, definitely key and not getting stuck somewhere, you know, got you out and stuff. But um, he’s like, don’t touch the gas or anything, and just let it pull you and I’m like, There’s no way that tiny little string is gonna pull that Jeep up that rock and sure as crap. I mean, for me as like the passenger. There’s definitely fun and scary parts. But for me, it’s like adventure. And I love when I get to get out of the Jeep, and I get my camera and the walkie talkies. And I’m like, Okay, let me go walk ahead and check and see what we’ve got up there. And that that, to me is really fun. So I always like to make sure I wear your hiking boots, when you go on the Jeep.

George
Yeah, and that. To me, that’s funny, because I enjoy that she enjoys that. And it’s great to have a spotter. So when when you’re doing something like this, as the driver I cannot see after a certain point, because your your your Jeep gets lifted up, because you’re trying to climb this virtually a wall. And all you see a sky. So if you don’t have a spotter telling you which way to go, you’re just basically driving blind, and that’s when you get in trouble. So at least I got out try to spot me and it just it just the Jeep tried, but it was just not going up that thing. And so we hooked up the winch and so I, I’m that guy, I rather have the biggest thing and not need it. So my winch is a 25,000 pound winch. The rope is a 25,000 pound capacity. So I’m sure that jeep was like pulling up a toothpick for that winch. And that’s exactly what it felt like. I mean, as soon as I hit the button, it we were going up that hill whether I wanted to or not.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, that was the first time I had ever seen a winch in action. And it was really actually kind of exciting to, like, see what it could do just like so you tie it, like with a strap to protect the tree to a tree. Preferably. I don’t know if you can tie it to anything else.

George
Are you the boulders, you could do all kinds of stuff. But there weren’t any big enough boulders.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And you can see some of the places where the people have been using those trees to winch up before but

George
yeah, and that’s, you know, and that’s why they sell tree savers, which I have. It’s a wider strap. Some guys just take the same winch rope and tie it around and then lock onto it. And you could see where the trees been worn out

Lisa RichartHernandez
and damaged from Yeah,

George
so use your tree straps, guys. Yeah. So we went out of that one. And we’re like, Yeah, this is awesome. And Nate hits me with. That’s the small climb. And I was like, oh my god, are you kidding me? But after that, it was like okay, let’s just do it. Whatever we got to wins out of the next one went on to the next one. Sure enough, we had two wins out of the next one. Yeah, but we got through trail 16 and checked our badge of honor and got the confirmation checkmark and it was so cool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
That one trail took us seven hours.

George
Well, it’s all day. It took us seven hours because it took us

Lisa RichartHernandez
First of all, we helped other people, we stopped and had a picnic lunch

George
and don’t forget, it’s 73,000 acres. So we had to drive from the campsite to the trail. That took almost an hour. If not more, don’t forget that

Lisa RichartHernandez
right? Because, you know, it’s not like you’re driving, you’re only driving like eight miles an hour. No. So it’s not it’s not that far. Right? You’re not going that fast. But, but it was still an all day trail. And it was great. And we could have gotten up earlier in the morning. We didn’t we got kind of like we started probably like 1030, or something like that super early in the morning.

George
Yeah, but don’t forget when we got there. At five o’clock in the afternoon, the First day. First thing we did was unload, you know, unhook the jeeps and we did a night night ride. Yeah, that’s true. But it wasn’t one of the difficult No, no, but it was cool to get out on the trails. And so the park again, is 73,000 acres, 300 miles of trails. Not all the trails are, you know, like extreme. There’s trail trails that take you to the trails.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. I mean, there’s a bunch of like, I mean, waterfalls, and we drove through creeks. And I call it the IV forest. Like, just gorgeous mountain view. I mean, it was, it was absolutely beautiful. Yeah.

George
And the whole park is on a mountain. So there was some sections of it where we were

Lisa RichartHernandez
at Rocky Mountains, right. Yeah, kinda. Yeah. So pretty.

George
So there was certain trails that were kind of on the top of the mountain. And when you look down the side, it’s like, oh, okay, that’s like, straight down. And, but it was just, it was beautiful. And there was some overlooks that were just the scenery was unbelievable. Yeah, yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think part of what I love about jeeping now that we’ve done it, which I didn’t think I was going to, like jeeping. At first is the nature being in nature, but like, also doing something like new and kind of thrilling. I guess I might be an adrenaline junkie or something. But I love when we get to those challenging places and get out, like I said, and take pictures. But I also enjoy, you know, we packed a lunch and on the back of our jeep, we’ve got like a little tray table, a table that pulls out and, you know, it just like, made sandwiches, and there were some other people that stopped. We were all talking about the different trails. And you know, just like being outside that was really cool, too. So there’s like, Yeah, I mean, in that, right, where we stopped, there’s like a stream. You know, with water in the kids were like, water, and

George
it’s beautiful. You’re in the mountains, there’s running water, there’s waterfalls is just incredible. And I will also say, again, it’s kind of like a community. So everybody looks out for each other every time you pass somebody, you kind of give them the Are you okay? And if anybody has stopped, everybody stops and ask them if they’re okay, if they need help. So whenever you know, even if you stop for lunch, people stop and we’re like, no sandwich. So that’s really cool. I love that aspect of it. And same thing, if you get to the campground and you go over and you talk to your neighbor about his Jeep, you better put aside two hours because he’s gonna tell you every little thing on Georgie, that guy, that guy. Everybody else that owns a deep Yep.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So I mean, this place is huge. They also have the full service campground. They also have a shooting range, a mountain bike park, a general store that has destination Yamaha, which does the side by side rentals. So like if you if this is something that you think that you would want to try. You can rent those side by sides. There are the RS or whatever, they have two theaters and four seater ones there and they rent for two seaters or $300 a day. The four seaters are 375 a day. Yes. And it’s a lot of families like what the kids meant. It’s a great place for tweens, you know, yeah. And

George
that’s a great way to do it. If you want to try it. It is a little, it’s crazy. The way they do it, I totally understand that. It’s $300 a day. But there’s 100 and something dollar fee for cleaning. And then there’s $1,000 deposit that you have to put down for damage. And we’ve done that in the past and that $1,000 always takes like five days to get back in your account.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So you have to be you have to do have to be aware of that. Like especially when we when we went to what was the other place we used to go to? We went with the four wheelers in the RCR Yeah, I can’t remember right. dirt bikes, the kids love renting those things. Durham town and they always wanted to go on the four wheelers. There really wasn’t that many four wheelers or anything.

George
Durham town was more of a dirt bike place. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
where this place had more of the like Razr drivable?

George
Yeah, when rock is more. Four wheels. There was a lot there were a lot of dirt bikes, but it’s mostly it’s like the RAZR title to run by some rock climbing place for jeeps and rz. Ours and those

Lisa RichartHernandez
such, yeah, those those side by side know they can go faster than a jeep and they can go through almost anything. So

George
whatever we had to rescue is not

Lisa RichartHernandez
true. That’s true, but I don’t know.

George
Oh, and the other thing that they had that I thought was really cool was right next to the general store. They have a little miniature rock climbing cores for remote control cars. Oh, yeah. That was cool. Love to see that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, you do need to get a daily permit to ride your Jeeps in there is $27 for one day, a four day pass was $65 on an annual pass was $109. So if you had a Jeep, and we live up close, you know, camping was not very expensive at all. They had all kinds of accommodations. They had some, like I was looking at up and because I thought, Oh, this would be a great place to come back and bring all the kids but they don’t all fit in the camper. And a four bedroom house that slept 18 was only 660 for the night. $660 a night. Which I think like 16 people. Yeah, sleep said sleep. If you want

George
four couples, a couples 16 people’s a couples. Well,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah. If you don’t want nobody, right, let’s just say four bedrooms divided by four is still known. It’s still still Yeah,

George
no, that’s That’s great. That’s a bargain.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And I you know, this isn’t a place I would want to go for like a whole week. I would just want to go for like a long weekend. I was exhausted after day two of G being exhausted.

George
Yeah, it, it wears you out? You’re You’re rocking and rolling the whole you

Lisa RichartHernandez
have a bad back? No, no, not for you. You know, and George enjoys doing all that driving and stuff. But sometimes they’ll even have like, his arms or hands will be sore from like holding the steering wheel, or we’re doing all these things. And

George
I on purpose, talk to myself while I’m driving because I’ll catch myself like, death grip on the wheel. And I’m like, just relax your grip. Because otherwise you’re gonna be dying tonight. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And another pro tip for the females. Sports Bra. Oh, my God, with all the bumps and crazy. It’ll be you’ll be exhausted by the end of the day. But yeah. So let’s talk about

George
Oh, one thing I do want to mention, which I thought was really cool. So Jeep has already developed an electric jeep. And there I’m not sure when it’s supposed to come out. I’ve already seen it. It looks really cool. And Winrock has a Jeep charging station, which is solar. And it was I thought it was really cool. A big Jeep logo on the side. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
it’s like this big solar panel thing. And then you just I guess can plug your deep in there. Yeah, right. Right at the gas station. That’s pretty cool. Maybe that’ll be the way of the future. Who knows? Who knows. So let’s talk about the last. So the next day we did the last two Jeep badge of honor trails.

George
Yes. And I was fortunately, those were

Lisa RichartHernandez
pretty easy. I mean, compared to the day before. Compare it was like a sixth or seventh level. Yeah, yeah, there were. It was still challenging, but nowhere near would I don’t think we had to winch in either one of them.

George
We did and one of them. I can’t remember exactly where because we did so many trails. But on on two of the three badge of honor trails, we had to winch out. Not completely but certain obstacles. And unfortunately, both those trails were on the complete opposite of side of the park. So we drove out to one and then we had to drive clear across the park to go to the other one. And, but we knocked them both out. And we were super proud. We did all three badge of honor. Jeep trails, and it was so cool. So just awesome. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was like 545 in the afternoon. And we had already completed all three Beechjet Jeep badge of honor trails now and our trip. And George says to me, you know, I think we should start heading back. We’ve had a great run. We’ve got all our badges. We’ve had no injuries, no accidents. No, nothing wrong.

George
Well, because before that, Nate had said, Hey, trail 41 B is the toughest trail in this whole place. It’s rated 910 which is the most completely most difficult. And I said today listen, I would love to do it. Maybe another time. Let’s just end on a high note. Let’s just go back to the campsite. And he was like, okay, that’s fine. No worries, we’ll do it. And that’s when I jumped in the jeep. And that’s when I was telling Lisa, that story. Well, we’re riding back. And sure enough, I see the sign for 41 B. So I stopped the jeep and I walked back to Nate’s Jeep, and I said, let’s walk down a little bit on the trail and check it out. I can’t go past it, and not at least look at it. So Nate did not get out. And we walked down the trail. And we’re like, Okay, this, this isn’t any harder than anything we’ve done so far really did not walk very far down the trail. When you hear the story, we clearly did not walk down far enough. So we walked back up. And I said to Lisa, it’s not that bad. 16 was harder than this one. This, you know, they, whatever, let’s knock this out. So we got in the jeep. And I was leading that day. So I go there. And Nate had never done this one either. So it was kind of exciting for both of us, because I obviously had never done it, he’d never done it. And we go down this trail, and we go down where I had walked and made the right turn where Nate and I had walked. And had we walked another 50 fee, we would have seen the extreme drop that was coming up. And when I say extreme, it was a holy shit. What is this coming at us? So we were at the point of no return?

Lisa RichartHernandez
We there’s no nothing we could do. Once we were there. We couldn’t go back. No, we kind

George
of go over this little ledge. And at that point, you can’t there’s no way you’re gonna back up. So we say okay, let’s just let’s just do it. Now. This is a rotted out getting a stomachache just a rotted out like super deep.

Lisa RichartHernandez
The ruts didn’t seem like they were deeper than between the two of our tires like that, we would just be turtled on the middle of the rut, but it’s not in there was depths in there and it was crooked and straight down.

George
If you understand what Lisa just said, kudos to you. But what I’m trying to explain is that the the trail was so deep, that the you’re kind of I’m not describing what I’m trying to describe, like you’re in a channel. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
well, much like the walls, right? The trail where as high as higher than the deep doors.

George
There you go. So once you open the door there, that’s what I was just about to say once you commit to this trail, it’s not like you can even open the doors and climb out. So we’re, we’re committed now. So we start going down this, this crazy thing. And remember I said before, on trail 16. When we were coming up, we hit a step. While we were going up, now we’re going down and we hit a step. And it was it had to been all five feet that the front end dropped down. And luckily, we’ve done it before. And we know to go nice and slow. And I went nice and slow on that one. And we got through it. And I was like okay, we just got to go slow. Well, the next step was only the left tire, the right tire stayed up. So your left tire dropped, which pushed us to the left, while our right tire was way above us. And then your right tire drop, and your left tire stayed up.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Meanwhile, I’m holding on to the old ship are screaming my head off, thinking we’re gonna die.

George
And that’s where it happened. So my right tire came down the step when my left tire went up the next step, and it kind of like twisted us and slammed us into the side of the wall that I just described. That’s bigger than the lamb

Lisa RichartHernandez
to the passenger side wall. Right next to me. It sounded like the whole I thought for sure. The whole side of the Jeep was crashed. I thought the windows were broken.

George
It sounded like we were in a wreck. And I was like, Oh my God, and of course it hit the the the beam between the two doors. And I almost say that I wish it would have shattered the window instead of hitting that. And I’ll tell you why later. So we get past that. We got to the bottom of the trail now we’re in like this valley at the bottom of this valley that is stooped super steep, and there’s only three ways out. So I wait for Nate, and I’m serving my jeep and I didn’t see anything at first except my bumper had completely fallen off. So I grabbed that put it in the back of the Jeep. And Nate comes down and his bumper is completely crushed. You Same exact spot. He did the same exact thing. But his bumper took the damage that my side panel took. So now we’re sitting in this valley and we have no clue how the hell we’re gonna get out. Because these are now the three steepest climbs we’ve ever seen. And,

Lisa RichartHernandez
and nobody’s coming for us. Now. It’s like 630, the sun is about to start going down, like we could be trapped in there in the dark.

George
And you could tell by the trail, nobody had been there. Nobody had been there in a long time. Because the mud was fresh. There were no trees, no, nothing, no treads, you could tell where the trail is, but nobody had been there. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
I honestly, like, that was probably the most scared I’ve ever been, like, in a long time. And I knew like we weren’t going to die or anything like that. But I was still just like, What in the hell are we going to do? I mean, all these scenarios are running through my head. Yeah. And it was like, oh my

George
god, me. It wasn’t scared. It was more of the fuck, I don’t want to get rescued. Right. I don’t want to get rescued. I got to figure this out. So Lisa started walking one trail, I started walking another trail. Nate’s trying to fix his fender and just like I think he started walking, learn.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We say walking the trail. It was the climbing on your head. Like remember, we talked about the sand dunes in Michigan? We were climbing on our like, you had to hold your hands on the mountain to get

George
up. It was that steep? They don’t remember this is not the Michigan Well, it was it was just the last one. It was super so steep. So I ended up walking all three to trails which I was exhausted, exhausted by the time I got back. But I found one trail that I thought, okay, we can do this.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Okay, this is kudos to Georgia because I walked up that same trail and I was like, There’s no way there’s no way. We’re not gonna make it past here. We’re gonna have to go back up the bumpy, bumpy, bumpy, like canal.

George
There was no way in hell, we were going back, not go back. And then we will damage the other side.

Lisa RichartHernandez
No way that was happening.

George
So what would happen was that trail that Lisa climbed up when I climbed that I, she stopped, like, right at the top, I continued almost all the way to the end another half a mile. Yeah, almost to the exit. And what I noticed was that when you get to the very top, some people had gone off the trail and kind of started a new trail. But you could just barely tell because again, nobody had been there forever. So I said, Oh, let me walk on this. And when I walked through it, I saw that it took us right to, you know, 100 yards from the exit. And I was like, Okay, from there, we can make it. We just got to get to this point. So I walked down.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I mean, we’re talking it was so far away. Nate and I were down in the valley in Georgia been gone for so long. I was getting nervous that maybe George fell off a cliff. So we’re yelling jaw, jaw. No response. I didn’t hear that. That’s how far away he was from us to try to find a way out. Like, we were in the valley yelling.

George
Yeah, there was no noise. But I couldn’t hear oh, I didn’t hear them at all.

Lisa RichartHernandez
No. It’s like after I’ve been yelling for you for like five minutes. And finally, Nate started yelling. I think he was like, it’s fine. Like trying to be cool. Like, it’s good. And I’m like, It’s really weird that he hasn’t answered us in so long. And he’s like, the Nate starts yelling for you do? And one thing I have to say there’s probably like, like the quote for the weekend, I’m looking at me and I’m like, are we getting it out of here? And he said, we’re in the most capable vehicles in the world. If anybody’s going to get out of here, it’s going to be us adverse, not sure exactly how it’s going to be. And I was like, Okay, well, that’s a shirt reassuring. But

George
so we finally decide, okay, we’re gonna give this one a try. Because worst case, we know we can went out of there to the spot that I wanted to go off the trail. So we got in the Jeep, and my legs were so tired that they were literally shaking when I’m trying to do the clutch and all

Lisa RichartHernandez
that charges the six speed.

George
Crazy. So to get to the base of where we have to climb. I think that was more sketchy than anything else. Because remember the Jeep tilted so much. I was waiting for it to go on. And so I had

Lisa RichartHernandez
to get out. Well, I think partially because Georgia wanted me to spot for him. Partially because he was so tired of me screaming and freaking out that I was making him even more nervous. It was like just get out. Just get out. I’m like, oh walk up. I’ll get the MIDI out.

George
Well, I gave her the old I don’t want anything happens. Right? You got hurt, right? In other words, get out. Yeah, yeah. So it says, Okay, you got the lead, you go first I’m like, great. But I’ll tell you what, again, these Jeeps are frickin amazing. I dropped it to low four wheel drive low, put it in third gear, I think. And two said, okay, no matter what, just stay on the gas. Now the only there was a couple of hairy things was one was the climb itself. But once you got about halfway up the climb, you had to make this sharp, right and go between two trees that were barely the width of the Jeep. I mean, there was like an inch on either side, right. And I was like, I was worried that when I made that up, right, when I made that turn that the Jeep was going to slide down the hill, and I was gonna get pinned on that tree. But nope, made that right turn. And then once I cleared those trees, I was like, Okay, there’s nothing stopping me. Now I’m just punching it and letting this thing do its

Lisa RichartHernandez
job, then you had to go up and take a sharp left and go up to stop.

George
I know, but that’s what I’m saying it but once I got past the trees, I knew I was in the clear. There was there was in my mind, there was nothing stopping me. And we just went and punched it. And then I got up to so here’s how steep it was. When when I got out of there, and I got up far enough that okay, now I can stop and help Nate. I put my emergency brake on. And I said this isn’t going to be enough. So I actually backed my jeep onto a tree. Because it was so steep that if my brakes gave out or if anything happened, that jeep was rolling all the way back down to the bottom. And I wasn’t going to have that. So I literally backed it into a tree and let the tree hold the Jeep up while I walked down and helped me and Nate got up to yeah, he just nailed it did the same thing. And we were both just so pumped up after that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Once we got out of there. And like it was like the adrenaline of the fear of going in. And then it was like the adrenaline of getting out. Which was like, I mean, literally, I was like, Oh, my God. Yeah, like, so excited what it was like when they got out. And then we were like on the regular trailer. We still had like, I don’t know, probably like an hour of the boring like, just level one. Just even get back to camp. I was like, this seems like nothing now.

George
But we didn’t do a level. Remember we did trail number 22. It was either 22 or 27. And the way it went? Yeah. Which any? If we would have done that first, we would have been like wow, that was a cool trail. Oh my god, there was so much you know, going on. We went through all these rock formations and climbs and this and that. But after doing that, we’re like, there’s a like a highway. Let’s go roll. Yeah, that’s

Lisa RichartHernandez
right. Because we literally drove there was like a whole creek, like with rocks and water.

George
Right? And big. There was a couple big climbs. But you know, after

Lisa RichartHernandez
if we didn’t have to take the winch out, it didn’t really seem like much, whatever. Barely took it out four wheel drive. Oh, that was so fun. So I if you’re like a Jeep enthusiast, and you really want to learn what your Jeep can do, there’s a really cool places to figure it out.

George
Yes. And a couple tips that we have made mistakes in the past. If if you’re new to the game, go out with somebody who knows what they’re doing. Don’t go on the trails by yourself, especially like a park like that. There’s always going to be people around your your, your I don’t want to say you’re okay to go out by yourself. But you’re better off than what we did in the middle of the desert. Nobody around nobody to be seen no signal, no, nothing that was really stupid on our part. So if you’re new to the game, go out with somebody make sure you know your equipment, make sure that you follow the rules. If they tell you that you need 40 inch tires, and you don’t have 40 inch tires, you may want to turn around before you get stuck.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. Oh, and there’s okay. So there’s a trail map app, which they give you you can buy a paper paper map also, but it went way, way too confusing to try to read that thing and figure out where you’re at. It was hard enough with the electronic with the electronic map. Yeah, so go on there you go on your their website and for 10 bucks, you download their trail map, it works you know, GPS works anywhere, even if you don’t have phone service. So just download all that stuff when you have Wi Fi and then use that. Now I know why those people have like iPads on their dashboard. Because that big map would have would have been nice to see it a little bit bigger or is kind of small on your phone.

George
That’s our next purchase. Don’t tell Lisa Oh geez.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It’s not when you anyways, this created a monster with this one with the jeeping Oh, yeah, but so definitely get that app I also think like, make sure you pack plenty of water. Make sure you were hiking shoes and appropriate shoes. Bring your deep woods off bug spray pack to launch. Pack more food than you pack more than you ever think that you really could eat. Because, like I said, the first show that we did, I didn’t expect that it was going to take us seven hours to do it. You know, we had things like beef jerky, and you know, we we just bought bread and turkey and ham and cheese and me, Cymbalta, which is there and everything but we bought a bunch of waters. I also was what I did, the night ahead of time is I froze the waters. So put those in the coolers and then we had like cold icy water by the end. That was a good tip. I brought baby wipes. Don’t forget a little trash bag. Because there’s no portal that’s out there. Yeah, you’re in nature. So for seven or eight hours, keep that in mind. What else? Make sure you have all of your equipment,

George
all of your equipment is good. Make sure your tires are good.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Make sure you’ve got gas. Yes full tank. We did end up with towed the Jeep home and George knows what 10 hour drive home from from there. And he was like, I don’t know, the the Jeep seemed like it was off when we were towing it.

George
It was wobbling way more than it normally did. Yeah. So sure

Lisa RichartHernandez
enough, woke up the next morning flat Jeep tire. But it made it all the way back to Hilton Head and we don’t end up getting four new Jeep tires.

George
Yeah. $2,000 later, ouch. That’s how big our tires are. So just make sure you have all the equipment you need, and then enjoy the hell

Lisa RichartHernandez
out of and if you’re going to one of those muddy places, I highly recommend not taking off your doors and your tarp and all of that stuff. Because that red mud clay is it it’s like it never goes away. I mean, it’s like, yeah, I

George
still have mud from the previous trip that we did that I haven’t been able to you went through like one little puddle, one little puddle and it just covered and even talking about purpose. But my jeep is my everyday driver. There’s some guys that have you know, a Jeep that’s just for that. And they don’t care about that. That’s fine. But if it’s your everyday driver, yeah. When you see a puddle, if you want to have fun and you want to blast through it, close your windows and make sure your tops up. It’s like going through a carwash. It’s a lot of fun to see. But you don’t want it in the car with you.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And so that, that, that that was it’s a lot of work to clean all that up. They do have these pressure washers that you can put the tokens in there. They sell the tokens at the at the shop and yeah, that worked great, you know, at least got the big heavy heavy mud off to get it home. Anyways.

George
And just enjoy yourself. Yeah, it was great. The campsite was really nice. Very, very roomy.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, we had a huge spot. Yeah. I mean, I don’t even know if we ended up making a bonfire because we were really just like worn out by the end of the night. But I cook some great meals. Yes, you did. I mean, we had filet mignon and baked potatoes and garlic bread. And I know we’re rough eyelid. I enjoy actually like clicking so it was exciting for me that there wasn’t like, was there even restaurant around there might have been in a town or

George
I think there was a little restaurant a couple miles away. But you know, that’s the kind of place that you don’t go to go to a restaurant. No,

Lisa RichartHernandez
you go there to enjoy the outdoors, muddy clothes, and you cook out. Really, really, really fun and just loved it. So if any of our friends out there want to go jeeping with us ever, we would love to go back to windrock or any other places that might suggest we’re gonna start looking for some more Beach, Jeep beach Jeep badge of honor trails to check out and if you own a Jeep and you haven’t done that you should check them out yourself and see if you’re interested in doing that. We’re members of Lowcountry Wranglers, which I know our jeep club has has done some things like that in the past. And now I’m even more motivated to I know we gotta go were involved in that stuff just because it’s, it’s just so much fun.

George
It was so much fun. I really can’t wait to go back to that place and explore new places and get as many badges as I can now now, like we were just sitting where the heck have we been? Tennessee where were we in Tennessee. When this weekend for the music festival was in North North Carolina. And I was looking that’s how much we’ve been traveling lately, which is nice. Thank you. Finally, we were in North Carolina and I was on my jeep app looking to see if there was any trails nearby that maybe we could go knock one out real

Lisa RichartHernandez
quick, but that was nothing created a month. Turn.

George
Yes. If you buy a jeep, get ready because it is so much fun.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah, don’t just make it a mall crawler. That means that means a fancy Jeep that you don’t actually take on the trails.

George
That’s the Jeep that you see that has 6 million lights on it. That’s what you have. Yeah, but I take mine off trail. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my Oh, so mine has an official Band Aid and I’ll put the picture on our podcast. But when we did that, the number the level 10 Level 10 trail when we got slammed into the wall, it dented the

Lisa RichartHernandez
passenger

George
passenger door jamb. So I’m gonna get that fixed at some point. It’s not right now. So I found a humongous bandaid on Amazon that’s made for cars. So and it says ouch on it. So I stuck that on there. And I wrote on there Winrock kind of see, you know, the date and trailed 41 B. Everybody thinks it’s hysterical. And I’m like, well, that’s where it happened. So I might as well give it credit. Yeah. And but I think it’s hysterical.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was a great time and a good podcast. So if you have any questions, definitely reach out to us on our podcast at our view. podcast.com It’s RV PDRVI Ew. podcast.com The letter RV?

George
Yes. We are dead serious. If you want to meet up somewhere and go jeeping we are down. And if you know somewhere that has great trails and you want to take us we’re also down. So that was a lot.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So where are we going to be next? We’re going to be going to Well, tailgating, tailgating starts this weekend, bourbon and beyonds coming up and we’ve got bourbon and bourbon and beyond in Louisville, Kentucky.

George
We just went to night in the country and try on North Carolina. That’ll be our next podcast. So listen up for that one. We had a blast.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. Still recovering from night in the country. That was a blast. And then bourbon and beyond. And in September and October is fantasy fest. Monkey was Yep.

George
And then I got to see him. Start planning for my son’s 21st birthday. He wants to go to Vegas. Boy, liver. You better be ready.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, my check liver light is on already. So be doing some drinking a lot of water and detoxing, getting back on the strict diet.

George
Yes, sir. Well, I hope you enjoyed listening to us. And this time, I got to do most of the talking because this was about Zhi ping, and that’s my jam. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. keep tuning in and drop us a line. Have a

Lisa RichartHernandez
great one. Thanks. Bye bye.

intro
Thanks for listening to another episode of RView. Don’t forget to drop us a line at RView.podcast.com That’s the letter R view podcast.com And like, subscribe and follow us so you don’t miss out on our next adventure.