Jeff 98XJ WI
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Butternut, WI
Well, I was going to make a little trip report and tag it onto the previously posted trip invite, but that thread seems to have disappeared, so here is the report with pictures.
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8IbtGzVo3bMR0
Trip went well. The new Dutchman rear axle shafts and rebuilt ARB/Diff worked flawlessly. I towed a little pop up camper along and my parents followed along in their truck camper. We stayed at a little NF Campground east of Rapid River MI Thursday night and then made it to Petoskey SP in Lower MI Friday night. Lake MI was plenty warm for swimming and the wind made for some cool waves to play in. Saturday, we poked our way south to Silver Lake SP doing a little cherry picking on the way. Upon setting up, I headed to town to get a flag, OHV sticker and Dune Ready Voucher. As I was gathering these items, a girl stopped me and begged me to go into the Dunes with her to winch her husband out of a hole in which he was stuck. I wasn't quite legal yet, so I told her to look elswhere and come back later if she came up empty. Well, just as I sat down to dinner in the dark, she came back begging some more, and said she had permission to go back into the park with me going in the back way. So, I jumped in my Jeep and followed her through the dunes in the dark with lightening dancing around us.
Turns out her husband had a stock yellow xj burried in a hole. I doubled back my line and sucked him out in short order. Sunday I met a fellow LCJ club member in the park and he showed me around. It's not that big of a place, but there is an excellent sandy beach on Lake Michigan and a series of about 6 tall dunes that can be traversed. The direction of travel is marked one way for saftey and it was quite fun to blast up the dunes. There is also a swath of undulating smaller dunes and trees between the beach and the dunes that can provide some fun. I really enjoyed seeing all the different type of rigs running around. I especially liked the V-8 Dune buggies and even got to see one doing a wheelie across the face of a dune. That must have been a wild ride! It was very hot, so we alternated tooling around the dunes with swimming in Lake Michigan. My front suspension was a little soft for this type of running and I noticed some bad sounding clunking while bouncing full throttle up the dunes. I couldn't find anything wrong and I think the stock tranny mount was allowing the whole rear of the tranny/t-case to move around a little much knocking the case into the floor boards and the rear CV into that little bracket that holds the rear O2 sensor wiring on my '98 (remember, I'm running a flat crossmember [which raised the tranny/t-case a litte] and a long arm 3 link front suspension.) Sand is soft, but when hitting the undulations with the Jeep, I bottomed out quite easily even catching air once! Monday we ran up the middle of the peninsula and camped on the north end of the Mackinac bridge (which is longer than the Golden Gate bridge.) Tuesday we returned to our home in Northern WI stopping at a neat historic state park in MI where there is an abandoned iron making town from the late 1800's. Enjoy the pics, Jeff
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8IbtGzVo3bMR0
Trip went well. The new Dutchman rear axle shafts and rebuilt ARB/Diff worked flawlessly. I towed a little pop up camper along and my parents followed along in their truck camper. We stayed at a little NF Campground east of Rapid River MI Thursday night and then made it to Petoskey SP in Lower MI Friday night. Lake MI was plenty warm for swimming and the wind made for some cool waves to play in. Saturday, we poked our way south to Silver Lake SP doing a little cherry picking on the way. Upon setting up, I headed to town to get a flag, OHV sticker and Dune Ready Voucher. As I was gathering these items, a girl stopped me and begged me to go into the Dunes with her to winch her husband out of a hole in which he was stuck. I wasn't quite legal yet, so I told her to look elswhere and come back later if she came up empty. Well, just as I sat down to dinner in the dark, she came back begging some more, and said she had permission to go back into the park with me going in the back way. So, I jumped in my Jeep and followed her through the dunes in the dark with lightening dancing around us.
Turns out her husband had a stock yellow xj burried in a hole. I doubled back my line and sucked him out in short order. Sunday I met a fellow LCJ club member in the park and he showed me around. It's not that big of a place, but there is an excellent sandy beach on Lake Michigan and a series of about 6 tall dunes that can be traversed. The direction of travel is marked one way for saftey and it was quite fun to blast up the dunes. There is also a swath of undulating smaller dunes and trees between the beach and the dunes that can provide some fun. I really enjoyed seeing all the different type of rigs running around. I especially liked the V-8 Dune buggies and even got to see one doing a wheelie across the face of a dune. That must have been a wild ride! It was very hot, so we alternated tooling around the dunes with swimming in Lake Michigan. My front suspension was a little soft for this type of running and I noticed some bad sounding clunking while bouncing full throttle up the dunes. I couldn't find anything wrong and I think the stock tranny mount was allowing the whole rear of the tranny/t-case to move around a little much knocking the case into the floor boards and the rear CV into that little bracket that holds the rear O2 sensor wiring on my '98 (remember, I'm running a flat crossmember [which raised the tranny/t-case a litte] and a long arm 3 link front suspension.) Sand is soft, but when hitting the undulations with the Jeep, I bottomed out quite easily even catching air once! Monday we ran up the middle of the peninsula and camped on the north end of the Mackinac bridge (which is longer than the Golden Gate bridge.) Tuesday we returned to our home in Northern WI stopping at a neat historic state park in MI where there is an abandoned iron making town from the late 1800's. Enjoy the pics, Jeff
