The 7 Hour Adventure.

In the last 2 days, the Francis Marion has had almost 20" of water dumped on it. For us, that's an amazing amount of water. I love the woods in the rain, so naturally, I had to go check it out.

There were flooded roads all over the place. Lucky for me, flood waters around here don't flow much.

The first stop was a landing on the Quinby Creek. It's one of the main creeks that drain the forest. I figured it would be a good place to see how deep it was. This is about a half mile from the landing. I chickened out, I should have brought the Jet Boat.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/6bU5E2nOMPo

As I made my way through the forest, flooded roads were the norm.

Most of it was fairly shallow. The red in the water is tannin from the leaves, the darker the red, the deeper the water.

This is another landing on the Quinby Creek, a little farther down stream. The bridge is usually 6' above the water, not 6". This water was moving fast. Am amazing amount of water was flowing out of the forest.

Several of the paved roads were closed by the PD.

Working around the closures, off road, could be a challenge. Fun though.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q4giBYCzevU

All in, another good day.

Till next time, go see something.

that looked super sketchy

Probably sketchier than I should have tried. The only plus is there was no flow, so washing away wasn't a problem. Drowning the engine would have sucked mightily.

Sounds to me like a good excuse for a snorkel.

Thats a bunch of water.

Reading this thread makes me really angry than Germany doesn't have the same national parks and openness that the USA does. I have a KLR 650 and only paved roads.

In reply to fritzsch:

The Francis Marion National Forest is about 20 miles from me. It's 258,864 acres and has 100s of miles of gravel and dirt roads. I've covered the majority of them.

Sumpter National Forest is also in South Carolina. It's another 370,442 acres and more roads to explore. It's a couple of hours drive from me. I had a camping trip planned for next weekend but life got in the way. I'll try again next month.

Toyman01 wrote: Once again, I've been slack about posting updates. I've been out a couple of times in the last few months so it's time to catch this thread up some. Since the last post, the Samurai has gotten shorter. By a lot. Gone are the 33s and the SPOA. It's lost about 5" in lift and several inches in ground clearance. It will now cruise at 65 mph and still do all the off roading I need it to. On with the show. Several weeks ago I took the Samurai out to see how the smaller tires worked. No great destination, just a cruise in the woods. My 15yo son went with me and we explored a few roads I hadn't been down yet. At the end of one of the roads was the Santee River. And a pile of bones. My guess is wild hog. These woods are full of them. This one must have been a big one. The vertebrae were huge as were the leg bones. We saw a lot of dirt road as well. The little beast sure does stay a lot cleaner with the tires under the fenders. Some more of the Santee. This time high on a bluff rather than down in the swamp. Often we will be running down a road and come across small ponds. There must be 1000s of them in this forest. We came across a narrow, little used trail to explore. There we came across several trees that had been marked and someone had taken the trouble to weed eat around them. 20' up in the trees were these. I have no clue what they are. The trees are covered in sap, but still alive. Someone took the trouble the cut them like this and trimmed the brush from around the base of them. My only guess is some kind of bird house. Now that I'm familiar with the markings and know what they mean, I've seen 100s of these trees throughout the forest. On Google Earth, I had located a pond I wanted to visit. We attempted to get there, but the road had just been plowed as a fire break. The Samurai could travel it, but only at 3-5mph. It would have taken close to an hour. Too long. The last stop for the day was Battery Warren. My son hadn't been there before and wanted to see it so we made the hike. It also sits on a high bluff overlooking the river. I'll probably post up the next trip tomorrow. Until next time, go see something.

Those are probably Red Cockaded Woodpecker nests.

Another day in the woods. I was out the door by 8:00 am and home by 2:00 pm. I had one destination that turned out to be nothing, so I spent the rest of my time just riding.

First stop was a sign and a bridge over the ditch. I'm not 100% certain, but I think this is a temperature and rain gauge. Winter has finally arrived in the South. We actually had a hint of frost on the ground this morning.

It was a ways back from the road. Funny how small the Samurai seems sometimes. I know it's tiny, but most of the time, I don't notice it. It looks a lot like a child's toy.

My next stop was at Pitch Landing again. The floods we had last month are finally starting to recede. The dark line on the trees is about 8' above current levels and the water is still 3'-4' above normal. I can usually drive around the tree in front of the Samurai.

There are still a few closed roads due to washouts from the rains. The Forest Service guys are working to get them repaired, but there were a lot of them to fix.

This on wasn't too bad, but there are places where the only thing left of the road is the bridge.

It was another pretty one.

That's all for today.

Till next time, go see something.

Back to this again after 8 months of too many project and not enough time.

This time it was a Jet Boat trip with my eldest son. We put in at the Hwy 52 bridge on the Santee River and went looking for the last rock ledge on the Santee, before it dumps into the Atlantic, 50 miles downstream. Round trip was about 30 miles and including stops we were out for about 3 hours.

The line of white is flowers. Their fragrance was wonderful.

About 5 miles up stream, we found the ledge we were looking for. The last time we made this trip, there was 3' of water flowing across the rock, this time there was about 6".

It doesn't look like much, but for a coastal guy, it's kind of cool. I didn't know there was any rock down here. Usually we have to run 100 miles inland to find rock. All we ever see is mud and marsh. The river drops about 2 feet over 100 feet.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/p6hRW3wD_BY

I eased up to the bottom of it and didn't touch bottom, so I throttle up, climbed to the top and we kept going.

I didn't shoot any video going up, just going down. https://www.youtube.com/embed/LVFBhCKbRt4

The little white square on the red line in the first picture is where the ledge is. We ran another 8-10 miles up stream crossing two more sets of shoals. It was very cool.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/tUs2Utv96Wk

It was a great morning. I need to get my priorities back strait and spend some more time in the woods.

Finally a day in the woods driving the Jeep, rather than working on the Jeep.

This time it was all four kids and one of the grandkids. My eldest son drove his Explorer.

We didn't have a set destination, just a need to get out of town and away from the hustle and bustle of home.

Lots of seldom traveled roads.

Who said there wasn't any rock in the Lowcountry. This is on the edge of Gallard lake, where we stopped for lunch. It's a oxbow lake on the Santee River.

This is out at Wee Tee Wildlife Management Area on the other side of the Santee from the national forest.

We have had very little rain over the last couple of months. Water levels are way down. It exposes parts of the trees you usually don't see.

Log jamb.

I should be underwater standing here.

All in, another great day in the forest.

It's been too long since this was updated.

Today's adventure was mostly on road. 10 people, one bus, 340 miles, one state park.

I needed/wanted to put some miles on the new bus, so we took a road trip to South Carolina's Sesquicentennial State Park. We did some back roads, some interstate, some city. Did some hiking, and playing on the splash pad. It was a great day.

The Chariot. This thing is perfect for a family outing. All the kids and grandkids in one place. It was a fun trip.

This is a very pretty park with a large lake and lots of hiking trails.

A splash pad for the kids to get wet.

A KFC picnic.

The Toy Family.

That thing is awesome

Cant believe i missed this till now.

You have me looking at little Suzukies now. :/

Today was another bus trip. 13 people and 260 miles, to the South Carolina State Museum. It was a fun day. The heat index was 115*, so it was a good day to be inside.

The largest object they have on display is the building itself. It was built in the 1893 as a textile mill making cotton duck fabric. It was the world's first fully electric mill built. It has 210000 sq-ft, making it one of the largest museums in the southeast.

A section of the museum is naturally dedicated to the textile industry. This is a pretty cool exhibit. There were only two machines in this room.

Naturally I had to take some automotive pictures.

I am sorry to report that of all the available cars to mount on the wall, they picked a Chevette.

The kids got to uncover some fossils.

All in a great trip. Things like this are the only reason this bus is still in existence.

Till next time, get off your butt and go see something.

Yesterday I said to hell with the world and disappeared for a few hours. No destination, just a drive through the national forest. It was 65 degrees when I left the house. Beautiful weather. We have had a ton of rain this year so everything is green and lush.

You are truly blessed to have this in your backyard. A more beautiful stress reliever I can't imagine.

I spent yesterday working on the Cherokee so I took it for a extended test run today. 

Lots of long dirt roads. 

Some of them less traveled than others. 

I managed to get a little mud on the tires, but not too bad. 

I also stopped a the Biggin Church Ruins. It's been burned by the British, and several forest fires. I guess they finely stopped trying. 

Most of the old cemeterys around here have a Confederate soldiers buried in them. I think the Sons of Confederate Veterans puts the flags on the graves. 

That's it for today. Until next time, get outside and go see something. 

I'm kind of partial to snowy weather. Since it snowed yesterday I naturally went out to play in it today. I've never really had a chance to do a lot of snow wheeling so this was a first for me. There wasn't a destination, just a drive through the woods. 

Looks like fun we got exactly no snow here in Macon. I almost drove to our friends house south of Savannah just to see snow on the coast, but, you know...work.  

What tires are you running on the XJ?

BFG All Terrain TA. They have been an outstanding all around tire and better on ice and snow than I thought they would be.

BFG/TA All Terrains $$$$ well spent

Well, I got stuck in that damn race car rut again. I've been ignoring the rest of the world for too long. It's time to get off that car kick again for a while. 

Yesterday morning (Sunday), I put the XJ in the air and rotated the tires, changed the oil and gave it a general once over. I loaded a few bare essentials in the back, grabbed my go bag and hit the trails. 

There was no set destination, just a slow wander through the Francis Marion National Forest. I stopped by the Taco Bell in Moncks Corner, SC and grabbed a couple of quesadillas and headed out into the woods. 

The first stop was about 30 minutes out of town at the Huger Recreational Area for lunch. The Quinby Creek runs by there and it's a good stopping point before diving deep into the woods. I shared the parking area with a young lady, her dog, and her pig? Yep, her pig. She spent the time I was there brushing her dog and petting her pig. That's a first for me. 

From there I just wandered. I stopped by a couple of places I remembered from previous trips. One of them is one of my favorite places in the forest. 

This is the Santee River. There are only a few places in the forest you can get all the way down to the banks of it. This is the least populated because the road down to it is so bad. Depending on the rainfall the holes in the road can be pretty deep. This time it wasn't too bad. The natives were even nice enough to leave me some trash to pick up. I really need to come back with a tent this fall. 

The road in wasn't as bad as it usually is. Sorry for the poor aiming job on the camera. 

Post break before I accidently delete this again. More to come in a few. 

The forest service opens and closes roads on a whim. Too much traffic, closed. Dumb ass rednecks tearing things up and slinging mud everywhere, closed. Dumping trash, closed. Too cold, hot, wet, dry, also closed. They will allow foot traffic, but they drop posts or a gate and mark them no vehicle traffic. It's worth $10k to ignore their signs, so I don't. 

Every once in a while the posts and signs come back down. It doesn't happen often but it sure makes me happy when it does. 

This road has been closed for as long as I've been riding the forest roads. It hadn't been open long so I took advantage of it while I could. I always try to tread softly and not make a mess of the roads, I wish others would do the same so these roads would stay open.

For some reason I didn't save the videos from this part of the trip and the camera deleted them today. 

Moving on. 

The entire forest has seen plenty of rain this summer. It is as green and lush as you will ever see it. 

The old Jeep still does pretty good out here. She's sitting at 261k miles and doesn't look a mile over 200k.

I broke down and ordered a set of bumpers for it. It's time to mount a winch and get the spare off the roof and on a swing away carrier on the back. The Samurai is going on the auction block and that money is going into the XJ. The build thread will be cranking back up soon. 

Another short video with some of the highlights. And I apparently screwed up the video somehow so the first minute or so is just a black screen. 

Till next time. 

Thanks for sharing.  Need to do this.

In reply to solfly :

I need to do more of it. Spending too much time in the shop working on projects is making me hate the shop. I'm going to try to set aside at least one day a month to get out of the house and shop and go.