Once a year the “Lug Nut Crew” gets together for a springtime camping and adventure trip. So far, we’ve used the Ozark Mountains for our playground. Who doesn’t love the Ozark National Forest for adventures? We didn’t have the whole group this year, but we still had a blast hanging out and camping. Like all adventures in the Ozark National Forest, you have to stop and pay that “Ozark Gas Tax.”
Back on Polar Bear Run ’23 Chief, Send-It, and I managed to scout out a dispersed site that our buddy Chris 2.0 sent over. More than enough room for everyone to camp, plenty of extra room to park all the rigs, a great little firepit, and access to the Mulberry River. We knew that this would be “the spot” for the 2023 group outing.
When the weekend arrived we broke for the mountains and setup camp. Arrival days varied but there was more than enough room for everyone. Thankfully, our guy “Sgt. Send-It” had a great collection of firewood to bring to this adventure! Weather overall was perfect for the day and the camp fire at night is always the best gathering place!
So, last year’s trip ended up taking way longer than we anticipated. I mean, I’m not one to 100% trust the GPS mapping apps, or maybe it’s the GPS antenna in my phone. Either way, there was one wrong turn and stuff got crazy in Ozark ’22 adventure. What was planned to be a 5 hour adventure trip turned into an 11 hour adventure! I mean we still had fun, but the crew gave me all kinds of heck for finding a cool waterfall… sometimes you just can’t win!
WATERFALL PIC
This year we ran a trail that I’d mapped out for Polar Bear Run ’23 and a trail that Chief had drawn out. Both were great times, except that somewhere out there I lost my new GoPro. Up side is that the camera would be found two days later on another adventure, thanks to Puddles-McGillacudy!
The trail I mapped out was dubbed “The Land Before Time Run”, thanks to “Send-It” and I think that’s an aptly stated title. This adventure was a completely different trail in the spring and half of the time I didn’t remember where we where. However, the Gaia and OnX maps stayed true and we had a great time. I still somehow managed to pull off the first trail fix! Nothing too bad, but I popped off my passenger side, rear sway bar link. 10 minute fix and we we’re rolling again.
As always it was a great trip and time went by too fast. The rain didn’t dampen our spirits. The laughter was good for the soul. The friendships were deepened. The stories grew into taller tales than they should have, but that was probably due to the camp fire sodas. The “Lug Nut Crew” put another great adventure into the books!
This trip also represented a new challenge for me, personally, in that I wanted to try to record the adventure with multiple cameras setup on various rigs. Take all that footage and try my best to edit it into a cool story. I’ve started to try more and more to get into video editing to record offroad adventures. I find that everyone really enjoys having the memories recorded in video. Good for laughs and for revisiting adventures when you hit those dry spells and can’t get outside for whatever reason.
So here are my first intentional stab at recording, editing, and sharing trail footage and shout out to the crew: