It was a truly amazing coincidence...
It was a truly amazing coincidence that when we pulled up to the Glendive Short Pine parking area we found this guy leaning against the sign reading the galaxy's most popular off-road magazine, Petersen's 4-Wheel & Off-Road.
Our plan was to make our way from North Dakota to another expansive private ranch on the Montana and Wyoming border.
A great majority of the roads are still dirt and gravel in this part of the country, and they definitely help accentuate every existing little bump, squeak, and rattle a vehicle has. It turns road travel into a deafening roar. Sometimes the road is rough enough to rattle your teeth loose. We felt a little sorry for the guys without protection in the open-top rigs and buggies because of the road dust, but then again, they love this stuff and there's no whining allowed on UA.
It wasn't long after we started out that two vehicles dropped to the rear of the pack and quickly pulled over. A badly damaged rear driveshaft on Fred Perry's Jeep Comanche needed attention, and a broken rear tri-link on Mark Brancieri's Geo Tracker needed welding. Luckily, the guys from Hobart were able to weld up the tri-link. Fred's driveshaft was removed and repaired and both vehicles were back on the road in no time.
Glendive is 6 1/2 sections,...
Glendive is 6 1/2 sections, which make it 4,160 acres of wheeling heaven. It is open to all modes of vehicular recreation. Its varied landscape offers hundreds of different challenges and obstacles, from steep hillclimbs to technical rock gardens and soft sandy trails. This OHV area was the perfect break for the UA crew in the middle of a long road day.
So what's a day on the Ultimate Adventure without a few surprises? Our fearless leader, Rick Pw, had secretly arranged for us to wheel the Glendive Short Pine BLM OHV area just outside of Miles City, Montana. This broke up the long highway drive and was a welcome relief for a number of us since we were already going through trail withdrawals. Glendive Short Pine is a successful OHV area created by the joint efforts of Bureau of Land Management and the hard work of local off-roaders. The park is 4,160 acres of steep hillclimbs. We ran a few steep and very off-camber narrow-ridge trails for a few hours and then hit the highway again. Glendive Short Pine is an area we could spend a day or two exploring.
After wheeling until we were content on the OHV park trails, we still had a few hundred miles of highway to travel before we landed at our next destination, the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch on the Wyoming and Montana border. Once we arrived, the nightly chores involved setting up camp, rustling up a hot meal cooked on the back of a UA rig, and catching a few z's under the Big Sky Country stars.
Wednesday's Carnage
Fred Perry: Remove rear driveshaft on the highway and straightened in Miles City, Montana
Mark Brancieri: Rear tri-link broken and welded alongside the highway
Keith Bailey: Leaky trans seal
 Most of the trails in the...  Most of the trails in the Great Plains are laden with obscure and unique rock formations and geography, which have been formed by millions of years of climactic erosion. This wasn't the lone rock alongside the trail making a good poser shot. It had to be straddled in order to squeak by a narrow section of the trail. |  Glendive Short Pine was a...  Glendive Short Pine was a fun place to four-wheel. We could have spent days wandering around the rock piles and exploring trails without ever hitting the same one twice. This OHV management area is another successful example of four-wheelers working together with the Bureau of Land Management. |  We made it to Frank Bliss'...  We made it to Frank Bliss' Ranch well ahead of schedule. We didn't expect to arrive until late in the evening. The pasture in front of the farmhouse was prepped and ready, so as soon as we hopped out of our vehicles we grabbed our gear and set up camp, and BFGoodrich Tires sponsored a hot meal under the stars. |
Day 6: Thursday, July 10
Ranchland Treasures
There's nothing more intriguing or inspiring than waking in the early morning to a burnt-orange sunrise on the Great Plains. The sights and sounds of ranch life, combined with the amazing smell of fresh-ground coffee percolating over a camp stove is nothing short of sensory overload. And let's not forget the fact that there are extreme trails waiting for us just on the other side of the barbed wire fence!
John Lambert continually amazed...
John Lambert continually amazed us with his go-anywhere, do-anything attitude. This is just one of the reasons he was invited back as a reader for his second Ultimate Adventure. Even in challenging situations in which a short-wheelbase vehicle would have extreme difficulties, John motored right on through like a champ.
Frank Bliss is proprietor of this sprawling ranch, which is unique in that Frank raises cattle and digs dinosaurs, and offers the same experience to enthusiasts (www.wyomingdinosaurs.com). The ranch straddles the Wyoming and Montana border and is a sportsman's paradise; and for sporting guys like us it's loaded with top-shelf four-wheel-drive trails. The ranch has trails that were cut by the folks from the Trailheaders 4x4 club out of Gillette (www.trailheaders.net), but there are also areas that have never been wheeled before. The possibility of cutting new trails is like Christmas and our birthdays rolled into one.
We spent the day on three trails on Frank's ranch. The first trail was an extremely steep hillclimb. At the top, drivers had to negotiate their vehicles around a small outcropping of rocks, which really wasn't that difficult but tilted the rig precariously off-camber. Taking the wrong line around these rocks could have been a disastrous multiroll accident. As this trail peaked the top of the hill, it wound its way up and over a narrow ridge and finished off in a maze of technical rock sections. The next trail-which really wasn't a trail-started in a descending grassy V-notch and ended in a canyon with a 10-foot vertical drop into a steep ravine.
 Slick grass is fun, especially...  Slick grass is fun, especially precarious gullies and notches that force a vehicle to keep sliding with little control. One of the Trailheaders leading the first part of the trail slid into this notch before stopping in this position. |  You know a section of trail...  You know a section of trail is tough when a rock buggy has difficulty making it through. Keith Bailey tried a few times giving it his best effort, but like everyone else eventually had to take the bypass to the right. |  Trying to make it out of the...  Trying to make it out of the canyon, Jeff and Julie Mello pulled off the most spectacular high-speed rollover of the event. Their old CJ was winched back over and escorted back to camp with a damaged transfer case. |