Jeepin' with Shawn at Vantage

I got to do 2 of my favorite things today - Jeepin' and takin' a few snapshots. For me it was a great day, but for Shawn, as we shall see, it was not so good.

Let's start at the begining:

Shawn in my driveway with his Jeep ready to go. When Mrs. Hutchman appeared, we were on our way.



We headed out into the sagebrush of Eastern Wa.




Parked our Jeeps for a Kodak moment:

Mine -



Both of 'em -




Shawn between 'em -




Some critters we saw -



Boy those elk are tough to get close to and even tougher to photograph!

Some horses, supposed to be wild, but we got a lot closer later on and they did not seem to mind. Kinda makes you think they may not be so wild.




And then the day started to go downhill for Shawn.



Yep, he got good and stuck. This by itself is bad enough, because guess who got to pull him out? ME! I never let him forget!



But wait, there's more! He was so deep, I could not budge him. Simple enough, he just winched himself out. This is where things went from bad to worse. Using the winch and a lot of wheel spin, he managed to work his way out and produced a symphony of bad mechanical noise!

Here is the result of lots of wheel spin and sudden traction.



That is the u-joint (or knuckle) on the end of the front axle. As you can see, there are some major parts missing. Needless to say, we had to be very careful leaving the area, as Shawn now was now driving a 2 wheel drive Jeep!

One last pic as we were leaving the area.




What great day. Pictures and Jeepin'. It don't get any better than that.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Hutch