3-28-15 VAXC Wheel Away Winter- Flagpole Run

I'm a good ways overdue in penning this post. I was not originally planning on going, as I've run a good chunk of Flagpole previously, but an unexpected series of adjustments to my wife's schedule meant that my son, my dog, and I were going to spend another 30 hr shift alone at home intermittently napping and binging on Netflix. I had previously wanted to do some work on my truck. So at the last minute, I decided to load him and my dog up and go and visit the crew from VAXC at their campground. I had not yet made up my mind as to whether we would do some mild wheeling or not. (We did).

There are actually some paved roads near us that are worse than the trail following all the freezes and thaws that have littered the streets with potholes. So I knew the little guy was tough enough to handle a bit of light jostling.

Below are some pics and commentary from the day:

So Maddy is a lover...and a licker. On these rides, she normally has the back row entirely to herself. Although I generally trust her around my son, I always watch the two of them together. And what I know of her, she would love to lick him incessantly...kinda like she's attempting to do here to me as I took the photo. With him in the back, I had to jury rig a means of securing her in the shotgun position. This was mostly successful, except she insisted on positioning some part of her body over top of the winch controls pretty much the entire day. She also knocked the HAM radio remote head loose on more than one occasion. 

 Some of the trucks that were out that day.

 Carrie's yellow bus made the trip.

 I was not the only pickup. I didn't really get to talk to these guys in the Ford though. When we broke for the mid-day point, they split off with another group.

 Pretty nice setup all t he same.

 I aired down at their base camp. The rest of the crew did so trailside.

 Our leader for the day, Donny.

 This guy likes to match his outfits to his truck. At least that is the snap judgment I will offer at this time.

 He pretty much looked like this most of the day.

 It was about a 3 hr drive down to the trail head without a peep. He got out with me to air down the tires. I carried him in the Baby Bjorn at that point and bundled him up in my jackets. Then we did a diaper change and I warmed up a bottle which he was not particularly interested in. So I put the cap on it and saved it for a reheat later that morning. The nice thing I enjoy about the truck setup now with the solar panel and the dual battery setup is that I can run household appliances even when away from home and without the convenience of mommy.

Truck cab selfie.

 Josh didn't bring his dog; so Maddy and Bella have still yet to meet. He didn't bring his girl or kid either. But our trucks hung out all day. We also prattled on and on over the radio for the entire morning like long lost school girl friends. I try to make it out to these rides so that Josh has someone to talk to :)

Actually he's a really good guy to wheel with and it was a major deciding factor in scrambling my family down at the last minute to make the ride.

 Needed Steve's selfie stick. It sounds dirty and derogatory.

 I think this is either called Big Meadows or Great Meadows. There are a couple of 'meadows' there. I've previously been to this spot and had a photo of Veronica solo.

 There is a larger lineup shot that I should probably steal from someone else's page.
VAXC actually did a good job of staging this such that 3 groups of about 30 trucks were all able to traverse this area without getting all bogged up on top of one another. Yet everyone was able to convene at this spot for the midday round up.

 These were taken up at the actual Flagpole knob.

 Nature.

 And then I put my truck in front of the Nature.

 A couple of attempts at getting everyone looking the same direction.
Can't really tell here, but we had matching outfits. I'm big into wearing my blaze orange out on the trails these days. Then I had my gray ski pants on in case we encountered snow at higher elevations. J had orange pants and a grey top that matched my pants. So we were top and bottom opposites but in the same colors.

 There was a group that was staying to camp again and then a couple of other day-trippers. I ran into the day-trippers at the Sheetz as  you leave town.

 I parked a bit away from folks so as not to block access to the free air at this location. This was the one point in the day that the little guy got fussy. On the trail he went from not wanting any milk to suddenly downing a full 8 oz serving (which is a lot for him). Well no more than 2 or so hours later, he was ready to do it again. And he was very expressive about this intent. This time around, I didn't re-deploy the full bottle warmer setup. I went and got 4 oz of hot water and mixed with 4 oz of bottled water and then the formula went in. Resulted in 8 oz of mommy temp formula. 15 minutes later, the boy was content and we made the 3 hours back home without a peep.

This was us- all smiles- when we got home and did another diaper change.