JK-Experience East Coast 2015 – A Must Love Mud Experience!
Back in 2009 Mel Wade of Off Road Evolution started a new jeep adventure called the JK-Experience because the other high profile events frowned on the new Jeep Wrangler JK models participating in their events. He wanted an event that showcased the capabilities of the new Jeep JK and JKU models while providing participants something more than an off-road event he wanted to provide an “experience!” Since that time, JK-Experience had been an annual week-long event, beginning Labor Day weekend, that most JK owners dream of participating in someday. The premise of the event is that there are 10 sponsors and 8-10 participants who must meet stringent requirements (i.e., sport cage, minimum 37″ tires, etc.) and submit an application in the spring–crossing their fingers they get selected for the trip of a lifetime. You are notified approximately 4 weeks before the event as to the starting and ending location. Once there every day is a surprise as to where you will end up. The only thing that is not a surprise is that there is going to be hard core wheeling and some spectacular site seeing along the way. For 2015, JK-Experience took it to a new level, adding Nitto and Discount Tire as their main sponsors, with 3 events throughout the year. We were lucky enough to be able to participate in the first ever East Coast JK-Experience.
Day 1 of the JK Experience took us to a private OHV Park in Alabama called Hale Mountain OHV Park. It was the brain child of Glen Hopkins who passed away in 2011 but his family wanted to cherish his memory by keeping the park open to the off-road community. Hale Mountain was the perfect way for us to cut our teeth with east coast wheeling and the mud that makes it so famous. We wheeled all day in the series of trails filled with enough ruts, rocks, waterfalls and drop offs to challenges and surprised us.
Eric from Northridge4x4 and Eric from Colorado giving the extra credit waterfall a try while the rest of us had our JKX sponsored lunch.
This is my kind of parking lot!
Some of the slippery fun that would become the theme for the first East Coast JK-Experience!
At the end of the day, and keeping in JKX fashion, Mel surprised the group by announcing that the day was not over and be prepared for a road trip. After about an hour on the road, we realized we were in Lynchburg, Tennessee home of Jack Daniels! After a tour of the entire distillery, we finished the day at The Barrel House BBQ, which I highly recommend if you go through Lynchburg and want to experience authentic BBQ in a friendly surrounding.
After the tour Mel set us out on our own to explore the historic town or do what we wished, as long as we had our Jeeps cleaned up and inspected, ready to go the next morning for a “road day.”
For more of the Day 1 action click the link below presented by Northridge4x4
JK-Experience East Coast 2015 Day 1
After driving through some beautiful Tennesse country side for few hours, we were surprised with a stop at the Power Nation studio, home of Xtreme Off Road where Mel had arranged for the the show’s host, Ian, and his crew to take us on a tour of the Power Nation set followed by a good ol’ southern BBQ lunch. Ian took the time to walk us through the process used on the show as well as showing us some of the builds past and present. The guys from the Power Nation TV actually came in on a Sunday to accommodate us. I have to say the hospitality and charm of the South was impressive.
Day 3 of the JK Experience East Coast event took us to WindRock OHV Park a 72,000 acre OHV Park with over 300+ trails located just outside of Oliver Springs, Tennessee. This was a beautiful park with RV and camp sites, and a large group of cabins, where we were to make our home for the next 2 nights. That night we experienced thunder and lightening and a LOT of rain and wind only hours before we were to hit the trails. We had a feeling there would be plenty of mud!
Mel plotting out our day!
Mel enlisted the help of his friend and Pro Rock Crawler, Chris Durham for the remainder of the trip
Yan and Eric came down from Quebec, Canada and they really knew how to handle the muddy terrain
We heard the call to pull our winch lines and Kevin from Indiana shows why
Some days you hit the trails hard and sometimes the trails hit back harder. As you can see from this pic while I was re-positioning my ram mount that was jarred loose, we also, earlier that day made made an offering to the off-road god’s by way of a front bumper, which made contact with a tree at 30+ mph while powering up a very steep, very rutted out hill filled with clay like mud. Fortunately, the day before while driving home from Lynchburg our air bag light starting chiming every time we turned the steering wheel–likely due to our clocking spring going out. This may have prevented our air bags from deploying–we hit so hard we thought for sure they would have. Fortunately everything else was OK, the winch worked, the frame had no damage–the bumper did it’s job.
The casualties were beginning to pile up with tacoed wheels and broken driveshafts.
For those one the east coast you have to give Windrock OHV Park a try. It’s definitely a series of tough, but beautiful trails & scenery. The water crossings and obstacles that would normally be tough, became very difficult requiring us to use our winches all day long.
Here is a before and after shot of David and Chris who took the challenge to lighten their load and strip down their JK before heading out to what was sure to be a very muddy trail.
Day 4 of the JK Experience was another travel day with a couple of surprises. The first surprise was pretty special for us because Blonda and I are car enthusiasts and have wanted to venture to the Tail of the Dragon in North Carolina for some time. It was probably quite a sight to see a group of built JK’s on a road most popular with motorcycles and sports cars. We stopped off at the Deals Gap, North Carolina where we had a chance to check out the Tree of Shame and watch as bikers were preparing to tackle the Dragon.
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Continuing on through the Smoky Mountains we ultimately ended up in Asheville, North Carolina where all the JK-Experience participants received a private tour of the Biltmore Estate.
While we were pretty spent after the long day of driving and touring the estate, we still had to get the jeep washed and prepped for an early morning photo shoot at the Biltmore Estate before heading out wheeling. Preparing for another day of the JK Experience means preparing for whatever is in store for us and making sure the rig is ready.
Day 5 started pretty early so we could be at the Biltmore Estate before it opened for a pretty awesome parking spot.
Our destination that day was the Flats Off Road Park which was a bit less than an hour drive from the Biltmore Estate. The Offroad park was well known to a few in the group like Kelly Carter, owner of Low Range 4×4, and Ali Mansour JP Magazine editor and fellow JKX participant.
I have to admit it was pretty intimidating to see the Rock Bouncers greeting us that would be leading the morning trail runs. I was wondering what kind of trails would we being running and did we bring extra underwear!
The trails at the Flats were pretty technical with a lot of trees, slippery hill climbs, and in some area’s boulders and slick rocks. It was a great day for wheeling as the rain held off and the trails dried out enough to provide a little bit of traction. Probably the most difficult part of the day for us was a creek bed trek which claimed rear passenger fenders on 3 rigs, a door dent, and a ripped tire while trying to sneak past a VW size boulder. We do a lot of wheeling in dry creek beds so we thought we’d were well prepared but as was the case time and time again the x-factor was the slippery mud. When combined with boulders and rocks the mud literally changes your direction, prevents you from holding your line, and forces you to use momentum to get over things. A far cry from crawling it.
For those of you JP Magazine fans you’ll recognize the rig that led us for the afternoon if not, check out the July 2015 edition page 76 for Bryon Stabler’s Stretch 2Dr JK. Byron was kind enough to team with Kelly & Jeff from Low Range 4×4 to lead what was to be a moderate run turned difficult. But again mud was the x-factor and the further from the trail leader you are the more difficult the terrain becomes!
Day 6 During the the drivers meeting the next morning we learned that we would be putting on some road miles, roughly driving 2 hrs before wheeling at Gulches Off Road Park in South Carolina where we would wheel in the morning followed by a BBQ lunch provided by one of the sponsors. Then our rigs needed to be able to drive another few hundred miles. Where we were going, we didn’t know, just that we’d likely not be getting to bed until after midnight.
Gulches has some nice tight notches, steep drops and boulders with you guessed it MUD! Right from the start we where we wheeled for a few hours sustaining only one break this time a DS strap.
After hosing our undercarriages down and enjoying a great BBQ lunch. We hit the road for another 4 more hours were we ended up in beautiful Savannah, Georgia. Mel informed us that we would be staying at the very cool and historic River Street Inn but first there was a dinner. We still had one more day on our trip, but they decided to have the survivors dinner, hosted by Discount Tire, one day early. After a great dinner and drinks we were surprised yet again with a hosted ghost tour of the city. Another epic day on the JK Experience!
We really enjoyed Savannah, and is one of the places on the trip we plan on going back to and spend some time, so beautiful!
Day 7 started out with a short drive to Wormsloe location for the filming of the scene in the Forest Gump movie where the Forest is being chased and Jenny says “run Forest run!” after a few pics we split into small groups and all made our way to Daytona Beach, Florida to check into Jeep Beach.
Jeep Beach is one of the premier jeep events on the east coast and something we’ve had on our life list for some time now. Held at the Daytona International Speedway this event is more about interacting with other jeep owners and being seen than it is about actual wheeling but it’s something every jeep owner should experience at least once. After checking in we all drove to the famed Daytona Beach where we drove on the beach now how cool is that! One thing we discovered was people are pretty friendly and the atmosphere was more like a cruise night or car show and people really took pride in their rigs.
Having just finished the gulches OHV Park the day before our rigs were the oddballs as we rolled onto Daytona Beach with full doors and tops plastered with mud! Having lived all our life on the west coast both Brenda and I we’re pretty excited to dip our toes in the Atlantic Ocean as our adventure took us from coast to coast!
Everyone knows the sponsors who helped make possible this event but what some people may not know is there unpaid volunteers who come out on their own dime and vacation time to help out with everything from spotting to trail guides to repair crew.
Thank you to the following JKX crew from left to right; Jeff, Kelly, Teresa, Mel, Dave & Russ!
