July 9, 2003::
On the 4th of July, Patti and I went into the hills of Moreno Valley to look for a nice spot to watch the fireworks. After receiving a tip from a nice guy with a dog, we found some hills that overlooked Morrison Park where the fireworks would be launched from. It turned out to be a great spot to watch the fireworks. Five days later, Patti came out to MoVal for the day and I wanted to go back with her digital camera and take some pics of the Jeep in the hills. After we did that, we decided to get lost and just wander...and wander we did. A short distance away, we found a network of other hills that looked like a good time to wheel and we wanted some easy offroading for a little fun.

We made our way to the hills and I saw a really fun and really long climb to start it off. It didn't look very difficult or very steep at first glance, but looks were deceiving. It ended up being tough at certain points and nearly stalled me twice because you couldn't take a straight line and had to make some very fast turns to avoid damage. And if you were going to fast when you hit the top, you would drive right off the side so speed had to be cautioned. It was fun and got us both wanting more.

On the other side of the hill, we eventually came upon some rock obstacles on a downward slope. The trail wound down and around the hill and next to a rock about seven feet tall with ruts and broken rock throughout. We tried the first few feet, but I quickly realized that I wasn't able to see the ground as well as I wanted to (because of the down angle) so I asked Patti to get out and spot. It was her first time spotting and had no clue what I wanted her to do. I gave her guidelines about how to guide me and what the Jeep should be doing to avoid damage. Her first instruction: "Okay. Go." was priceless! She was cute about it and seemed to be having fun! After a few more tips from me and a little movement on her part, I maneuvered The Dark Prince in towards the rock and avoided damage from a rock below and in front of me. Nasty damage to the underside of the rig was avoided. Thanks Patti! But at one point, Patti directed my left front and right rear tires onto a path that left my other two tires hanging in the air...at least the rocking effect was calming!

Once we completed that obstacle I got out of the Jeep and walked a little farther up ahead to see what awaited us. There were two paths and neither path was clearly visible from where we were so started walking and saw that one of them looked much less dangerous than the other. I would have loved to have taken the other path, but with my crappy springs and sway bars still connected, I didn't want to risk the carnage. Immediately after the nice and fun path I was able to see, came the steep drops and sharp rocks...again. Patti started laughing at my luck and I was just ready to take it all on. I was really having fun! So we went at it and the Jeep handled it perfectly. I found a great line and didn't scratch anything. There were a couple moments where my tires slipped on the smooth rock, but that just added to the fun. (The red arrow is pointing to a nasty rock coming up in the middle of the trail that would have torn my skidplates and muffler to hell!)

It was a great time and really got me wanting to go do some more serious offroading again. I'm hoping that The Prince will be 2.5" taller by the end of August, but I'm not sure if that will be possible. Maybe SuperLift will have a clearance sale! Yeah right. All in all, it was a fun day for me and Patti and she had a great time which was cool. Here are a couple more pics of the stuff.