A Day Off the Beaten Path

A Day Off the Beaten Path.

My day started by waking up at 6 in the morning to get ready to leave. We had to prepare our lunch and get my car prepped to go to SMORR (Southern Missouri Off Road Ranch). After everything on our check list was accounted for we were on our way. After what seemed the longest 40 minutes of my life we arrived at the ranch. Once we arrived and checked in we proceeded to get my jeep ready for the exciting day ahead. We unclipped my front suspension, deflated the tires and did a check on my 4 wheel drive then we headed out. The ranch is a 950 acre piece of land with over 50 different trails ranging from easy to extreme. And when the say they really mean it they go of a class system kind of like white water rapids like 1 is very easy to 5 which is nearly impossible. My jeep could only manage 1 and 2 but I could do some 3. The scenery at the ranch was amazing all of the surrounding forest was untouched there were flowing creeks that you could ford and tons of wild life. On one trail that we had gone on it would wind through a bunch of trees then it lead down into a flowing creek that you would move back and forth though. On another trail we went on there was heard of deer with at least 30 deer was just in the middle of the trail oblivious to the fact that I need to get through them. It took a lot my persuasion to get them to move than I anticipated but we had finally gotten through them. We then stopped at the top of a large hill to have lunch when all of a sudden we hear the roar of an engine and one of the biggest and coolest jeeps comes over the other side of the hill (which was an almost vertical wall) and it did it with such ease and grace. We stopped and talked to the guy driving the off road beast and he was from Rogersville and he said he comes up every weekend to drive around he also said after 5 years of doing it he has never once gotten bored of it. In fact he said he was considering moving closer to the ranch because he was so into it. After what only seemed like an hour we started to head back in because it was getting dark and we didn’t want to get locked into the ranch. (After 6 o’clock they lock the ranch gates.) When we got back the front gate we had checked our phones and it was 4 o’clock. We had been driving around for 8 hours. And let me tell you that it was the most fun I have had in a very long time. I now know that I have a lot of work to do on my vehicle but it’s going to be completely worth it. I plan on making off roading my new weekend hobby.