FJ's lined up for the start of the expedition.
I was finally outdoors again!
This past weekend was pretty epic, Joe and I attended "FJ Florida Expedition" with the FJC Face Book group. It was a ton of fun.
We started off on Thursday night by getting together and getting all our gear organized. Then Friday after work we left to citrus to meet up with Scott, Caesar and a couple of the other FJ guys. The trip up was rather uneventful, as always FJira got some interesting looks from drivers both on the road and at the gas station.
As we got near Citrus the rain started to fall, it had apparently been raining all day. The weather let up for enough time for me to set up a tarp off a tree and the roof rack on FJira, then I setup my hammock as the ground was just too wet to set up my tent. I was surprised how comfortable sleeping under my make shift tarp shelter was that I ended up using it for the rest of the trip.
Night shot of tarp/hammock setup.
The great thing is that I used a run of the mill tarp from Wal-Mart that I got for around 8 dollars. Now I can experiment with it for a little longer before I decide on my next steps.
That next morning (Saturday) we headed out to meet up with a larger crew that lived closer to the area. We ended up with somewhere around 19-20 trucks. Most of them were FJ Cruisers but there was a sexy 100 series Land Cruiser, a Land Rover Discovery 2, a 3rd gen 4runner and a Jeep Wrangler.
Some diff catching mud pockets.
Croom where we had camped the night before and where we would spend the first half of the day was relatively easy. The majority of the trails were fire roads and while some of them were muddy FJira had no trouble getting through. While in Croom we came oppugn some interesting obstacles, but nothing that couldn't be done. Joe decided to drop into a big ravine where the Jeep failed and was one-upped by a totally stock FJ with street tires. Granted there was a madman behind the wheel, but none the less the stock truck made it.
FJira made it look easy, with a healthy dosage of right peddle the obstacle was overcome. Once out of Croom we headed into Citrus, which presented fairly flat terrain and some wet areas.
The most important feature of Citrus though was our campsite. There were ample trees, fire rings and picnic tables all around. We had no trouble setting up shop. I found two trees that were a suitable distance from each other and I set up my tarp and hammock up. I tried a slight variation on the tarp and was able to make the 'Room' a little larger by staking the tarp further away. I set up my hammock to be fairly level and I placed my Thermarest mat up in my hammock. I have slept this way pretty much all the time and it is very comfortable.
After we set up camp, we went out for one more trail run to an area called 'Red Rock' it was no more than 5 miles away from our campsite so we expected to be back within a couple of hours... I have been told that in the dry this area is challenging, we were going in the wet.
Once we arrived at Red Rock we got straight to it, there is a very interesting formation at the entrance which seems like just waves that have formed in the sand for about 100 yards. They are perfectly spaced sin waves. The entrance to the main pit area took us up and around a fun drop in, after that there was a off camber rutted climb which took us right into another set of climbs. After that there is a tight right off camber turn where you reach a tipping point(remember this part).
As we crested this last climb and reached the tight right hand turn, Joe was in the midst of telling me how this right turn we were on would lead to a tippy turn were we would need to be careful not to roll the truck. As he was saying this last part I hear a screaming engine and nothing but unadulterated fear in our spotters voice as he yelled "NO NO NO" and then BANG. One of the newer drivers had gunned it up the hill after us neglecting to wait for the spotter to give him the go ahead so he rear ended us at about 10 miles an hour. Luckily FJira took the hit like a champ and the suspension did its job. I only mildly shat myself, we continued down the hill with the help of our spotter and inspected FJira. After some detective work, we were able to find the damage, a tiny nick on one of the shackle mounts and the bumper slid forward on its mounts.
It took about another hour to get everyone one back out of this area and we ended up heading back to camp, a slight detour for firewood later and we were at camp. The worst thing about Florida camping is that everything is always constantly wet, the average humidity for any day in Florida is somewhere in the 99999% range. So the firewood that we purchased was all soggy, so that made for a very smoke and cold fire. The fire was only good after about 2 hours of burning and drying out all of the wood that we bought.
Dinner was fairly simple, but as always I managed to make baked sweet potatoes that were rock hard and chicken that was medium rare. The good news was that the green beans were over cooked so it all kind of evened out. After my ordeal with cooking food I had more than a couple of drinks and after chatting with our friends ended up sleeping in my hammock.
Sleep came easy and the only thing that I wished I had was a warmer hat, since my summer cap was just barely enough to keep my head warm. The sleeping bag/sleeping pad combo worked out excellently and the tarp roof was more than adequate at keeping me dry and warm. This may be my go to sleeping setup in the future.
The next morning I awoke to 30 degree weather which was a pleasant surprise. I lit a quick small fire to warm up and made some breakfast burritos with left over chicken, eggs and refried beans. After breaking camp we said good bye to some of our friends that had to leave early and about 10 of us headed out to Ocala.
Sand road in Ocala.
Ocala was again more flat land to traverse. The highlight was a sandy stretch of road that went on for many miles.
After Ocala we headed back home and to the daily grind of work and responsibilities.