Well, we survived.
TL;DR - we planned to do 2 full days on the trails and then maybe hit some of the sites at Byrd's Adventure Park. Overnight storms & vehicle trouble resulted in one FULL day on the trails (22 miles) and being trapped in a campground behind a low water bridge. And then Byrd's closed their trails due to down trees & high water. Nobody died. Scenery was amazing, would absolutely hit this area again, there are miles Forest Service roads & fire trails so you could spend a long time here and never hit the same trail twice.
7 vehicles, 8 people. I brought my 15 yr old with. He's been wanting to camp, but nobody in our house wants to in any way shape or form, so this was his big chance.
2014 JK Rubicon
2022 JLU Rubicon
2021 Gladiator Rubicon
2002 TJ*
1997 TJ - mine
A pair of Sami's of unknown origin
* the 02 TJ is the one we bought a month or so ago with the blown transmission. The plan was to rebuild it and flip it, but instead XJ buddy liked it more so he sold his instead.
The plan was to drop the tow rigs at Byrd's Adventure park outside Ozark and then caravan to the hotel in Russellville. We took AR215 to AR103 which was a ridiculously beautiful drive. I would've been content to do 3 days of that drive alone. I picked up some soft top doors right before the trip so I was able to easily go doors off for that leg of the trip. Twisties in the woods with the doors off is my happy place. About 20 minutes into that leg they had to stop traffic for a road crew driving new pilings due to all the rain eroding the road support. The 02 TJ announces that he's about to run out of gas, so he "borrows" a gallon from the road crew.
From the hotel the next morning we expected to get an early start, but due to big weather due west of us we decided to wait it out. Turns out there was a tornado in Van Buren, and that storm was tracking directly at our drop in point north of Dover, AR. Where, exactly? I have no idea. Thankfully the guy leading our caravan had a Gaia map or some such. We just went where he told us. We missed the worst of
that storm. About 20 minutes into the actual trail, the 02 snaps his track bar bolt. Don't worry, having snapped the track bar on his old TJ, he brought a backup. Which he left in the tow rig 2 hrs away. Never fear, one of the bolts on his swing away tire carrier was "close enough" to make a mid-storm trail repair. Impressive, actually. A few hours later that bolt broke, and we continued to play the game of "what bolt is under-utilized in it's current role but can also fit in the track bar hole?" with a surprising amount of success.
Based on the YouTubes I saw for this trail, I expected mostly wide forest service roads and very little actual wheeling. What we got was about 90% narrow rocky trail riding. We did have several river crossings which I expected to be impassible, but only one such crossing actually gave us trouble. The water was very clear, apparently the runoff from the storm hadn't made it downstream yet. We stopped for a swim in a few spots. On the "technical" side, we really only ran into one obstacle that gave us trouble. Even the rubi's had to take several runs at the climb and one of them had to winch. But not my 3.55 open diff TJ, she went right up on the first try, no spinning, just winning. So that was a nice flex on the high dollar rigs. Again, I have no idea how we stayed on the trail. There were times when there was barely path with lots of overgrowth made it felt like we were forging through the jungle. At one point we were on a LONG ascent through some pretty "unmolested" terrain, but eventually we came out at some vista at around 2200', which is the tallest thing around by at least 400'. Had some great views from up there. And then a bunch of rugged switchbacks on the way down. Really cool stuff. This part of Arkansas is severely underrated.
We made it to our campsite around 8pm, which was a Forest Service campground right next to
Haw Creek waterfall. I set my tent up less than 50 yds from the falls. It was great. Until around 2am when the thunder rolled in. Having zero cell service and not even able to tune in the weather channels on my radio, we were completely blind as to what was coming. 4 rounds of severe thunderstorms later, we awoke to Niagra Falls, tents underwater (I had managed to find high ground so we stayed dry), and a low-water bridge that was now 3 feet deep with an absolutely rushing current. Thanks to the magic of satellites I was able to get a weather report from my wife, who told us that there was another major storm coming through that night. So it was either cross before that round, or be stuck for multiple days. Once the rain let up we waited about 6 hours, watching the water recede, and eventually we all made it across. We've crossed deeper water, but that current was strong. We didn't get a picture of it, but there were some risers on the edges of the bridge when we initially crossed. For reasons, we were able to see it again after the water level dropped much further, and those blocks were gone. So the current was quite legit.
Before:
After:
"Before":
After:
So day 2 was pretty much blown at the campsite, but if you're stuck staring at a waterfall and you have dry clothes and food, how bad is it, really? At this point we had 2 rigs with trouble and an adventure park with trees down everywhere, we just ate dinner and called it. Still had a great time. Now had it poured rain while we were riding, that might've been less fun.
Had we been at the cabin at Byrds the night before, this parking spot would've been underwater. While we were busy having no service, they were frantically leaving us VM's telling us we needed to move our cars. The cabin was about 15 min from the park, so they didn't know if we were there or not.
Father and son memories!
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. Many moons ago I built trucks for deep water and mud , but that was long ago . Now I prefer a nice ride through the woods .
