September 14, 2002
Bryan(Shad) and I met up with some Mitsubishi guys who were doing a trail run in Florida, Mass for the weekend and were nice enough to invite us along. As Ari and I were driving up the road to the campsite where we were to converge, we saw an adult black bear in the middle of the road which then ran off into the tall weeds. For the first part of the day we had four Monteros (Guy, Larry, Doug, Charlie), one Pathfinder (Bryan) and my Hardbody. Passengers were Charlie's son Ethan (3 3/4) and my 9 year old daughter Arianna. This group ran the IC Trail trail. It was climbing a rocky ledge on this trail that I backed up a bit and popped one side of the brushguard off of my truck when I caught it on a tree.

After finishing IC Trail, Larry and Bryan had to leave. The rest of us went into North Adams to have lunch. Along the way, Doug's truck was handling poorly - swaying and pulling to the extent that it looked to me from the rear position like he was going to go off the road. We stopped a couple of times to check it out and determined that he had a bent inner tierod-end on the passenger side. After lunch we went over to the auto parts store and spent a good hour or more getting it realigned. After a few stops we headed up the TR Trail.

This is an absolutely gorgeous trail. Winding up the mountain, it dropped off to the right of the trail and for much of it there are 50 ft cliffs to the left. Doug really wanted his climbing gear! About a mile into it there was a ledge to climb that I was unable to make with my open diff and had to get tugged up a bit. I think that was the only time the straps got broken out. Anyway, before I gave up I bashed into the rocks trying different approaches and managed to break an engine mount, although it took me awhile to pinpoint what I'd done. We didn't get all the way up this trail since it started getting dark before we had gotten halfway up it, so we turned around and went back down. I had planned to return and finish the TR Trail with them on Sunday but the busted mount made that unwise. It was a nice gathering and everyone there was quite agreeable and displayed excellent attitudes, even if Doug and Guy acted like an old married couple!