Trucks Gone Wild!

Where do we start?  Someone in the campground told us about a truck mud rally down the road, and we checked into it.  It seems the Iron Horse Mud Ranch, about 5 miles south of our campground, hosts an annual truck mud rally, and locals think it's the biggest event of the year.  This year, the rally is also being filmed for TV on the show called, "Trucks Gone Wild."

Well, we had to go.

We got up this morning, mounted our bikes, and pedaled 5 miles down the road until we saw the sign:

Then we got in a LONG line to pay the entrance fee:

 Once inside, the sponsors and vendors had their tents and trailers.  There were lots of event t-shirts for sale, but none appealed to us (well, one of those pink fluorescent things that let everything hang out appealed to David, but he wanted it occupied and Kathy wouldn't let him get one occupied.

We kid you not:  EVERYONE who goes to this rally attends in the biggest, baddest trucks they can find - even some homemade things that are hard to describe.  Like this:

And this:

Our campground neighbors tipped us off that the two best events are the "Freestyle," which started at noon, and the "Big Hole" event, which started at 2pm.  So we decided to go catch those events.

Here's a photo of one of the most exciting entrants in the Freestyle event, just after he tipped his truck over.  The crowd went wild.  No one was hurt in the making of this excitement.

Then some of the other Freestyle entrants realized there was a huge mud puddle right in front of where we were standing.  They started driving right through it and splashing mud on all of us.  Everyone got smeared with mud the first time.  But, after that, we were all onto the scam.  However, the fan stampede was a dangerous thing.  Here's a photo of one entrant getting his mud splash going in our direction:

This Freestyle event was pretty awesome.  Most of the entrants went over sand jumps that caused their trucks to fly and bounce around.  Here's one pretty dramatic jump:

After the Freestyle, we went over and got lunch - a BBQ pork sandwich and fries, of course.  Then we headed over to the "Big Hole" event.  In this event, all of the mud trucks have to try to get across a wide and DEEP mudhole.  Suffice it to say that none of the contestants was able to do it.  Each one had to be towed out of the hole, and the contest organizers anticipated that by having a huge rope and backhoe ready to pull each one out.

Our favorite entrant was this little jeep.  He couldn't get very far because he wasn't very big (you need MONSTER tires).  But he made up for size with his panache.  This is the "BEFORE" shot:

This is the "AFTER" shot:

We swear to you that NO ONE came to the truck rally in anything but trucks.  No cars.  We were absolutely the only ones to come on bicycles.  One guy even took our photo!

We can't resist a special feature on this blog entry.

HOW TO BE A REDNECK:

We learned a lot about how to be a redneck at this truck rally.  Here are the TOP TEN things you need to do to be a GENUINE REDNECK.

1. Drive a honking truck.

2. Speak only in monosyllables and only in sentences of three words or less.

3. Get your neck red.

4. Eat fried chicken and throw the bones out of your truck as you drive down the road.

5. Wear your jeans so low that your beer belly hangs out front and your butt crack hangs out back.  (This is especially required of women.)

6. Women only:  Be sure to wear a bikini top, cutoff shorts and cowboy boots.

7. Women, you score extra points if you're over 250 pounds and wear that outfit.

8. Teeth are optional.

9. Bring a blow-up sex doll to the mud truck rally, and, if you're a woman, make passionate love to it.

10. If you're a guy, bring along a toolbelt that holds a six-pack of beer.