Williamsburg Kentucky might not be the first place that comes to mind for wheeling or Jeep events unless you happen to live in that part of the country. After attending this year’s Jeep Jamboree my eyes were opened up to what the south has to offer for wheeling!

The sixth stop on our round the country, whirl wind tour was much like the others in the previous month and a half on this trip…rainy! The routine seemed to be pretty consistent, we roll into town, three days of flooding follows, we pack up and the sun is almost guaranteed to shine as we pull out of town on Sunday morning. At this point we were pretty confident that we could either start a pool to make us some gas money or just bet people at the event that we could and would predict the weather even if it went against what the local forecasters were predicting.

The rain stayed constant from the time we pulled into town to the time we hit the trail on Friday morning, we decided to run “The Worser Trail”….. That wasn’t a grammatical error, they really named it that. It was named after those scouting the trail were told by the land owner that “the further you go the worser it gets” so the name stuck. Since the rain had been so hard the road that the trail started on was literally washed away, the trail started off with a creek crossing that made for a great way to get everyone excited and ready to wheel. As the day progressed the trail was muddy and had some great rock obstacles, cross axle challenges and ravines that had to be negotiated to climb with some boulders, roots and mud to add to the challenge and keep things exciting and interesting. By the end of the day the conditions slowed us down enough that we only did half of the trail before we had to head back to the community center for the dinner. No one in our group had felt that they hadn’t had a day full of wheeling and gotten exactly what they had shown up to do.

We were the lucky ones; there were two other groups that had tougher conditions to deal with. The folks on “Commando” were delayed by the conditions and didn’t get off the trail and back for dinner until almost 9:00 pm and they were luckier than the folks on “Cliff Hanger”.

These poor people thought they were just going out for a day of wheeling until they were on their back after lunch only to find that their only way out has literally been washed away. Cliff Hanger is a trail that you go halfway and stop for lunch and the only way out is back the way you came in. After a couple Jeeps tried to plow through the muck and became stuck the great trail guides on this trip sprung into action and began the winching process. The mud holes became so deep from the continuing rains that sink holes developed and at one point they actually had to cut down trees to fill the void and build a crossing to get the folks out. After several other guides gave up the chance to eat dinner and headed out to assist in the rescue and burning up three winches in the process the last Jeep was off the trail and headed back to town around 3:00 am. That my friends has to be some sort of record and a true testament to the Jeep Jamborees guides character and willingness to help one another out, in addition to their efforts the participants were all actively involved in the rescue and a big hats off to their patience and efforts.

Saturday we did a trail known as “Thunder Road”, not much more than a half a mile long the trail is right in the middle of a creek bed and with the rains and flooding we had it made the already difficult trail that much harder and the group basically had to wheel a big part of it in brail fashion, banging off one rock after another to feel their way up the creek so to speak. The whole day was spent going up the creek and yes, without a paddle to the final climactic obstacle, a 3 foot water fall that only one Jeep made it up unassisted even though it took multiple spotters and several attempts.

As always any information on this or any of Jeep Jamboree USA’s events across the country can be found on their website at http://www.jeepjamboreeusa.com/.