A few events should be on everyone’s wheeling bucket list. Easter Jeep Safari. Dakota Territory Challenge. Sierra Trek. All-4-Fun. And the Chile Challenge. If you are a longtime reader you have likely seen these events in the pages of 4-Wheel & Off-Road, as we have been covering them for decades. They offer not only some of the most challenging trails in the country, but are also run by volunteers. The profits raised from the events are used to keep those trails open.

In early March of every year the desert sun begins attracting off-roaders like moths to a naked light bulb. That desert sun rises over the Truckhaven Hills and Ocotillo Wells SVRA Park outside of Borrego Springs, California, and to this desert playground come thousands of Jeepers, wheelers, riders, and revelers. The barren landscape is sprouted with motorhomes, tow rigs, and tents of every size as the Tierra Del Sol Desert Safari gets into full swing. Vendors arrive with every off-road widget imaginable, and the weekend is capped off with a blowout raffle and a fireworks display that sends everyone home a winner.

Winter elicits different responses in different parts of the country. In some areas the 4x4s get put away when they start salting the roads, while others bust out their insulated Carhartts and goggles and wheel all through the winter. “We started going to Tellico in January years ago to avoid the crowds,” Keith Bailey says. And thus, Wild Winter Wheeling was born.

It takes a tough car to win the Griffin King of the Hammers, but it takes a tough man to just finish. Despite efforts from some of the most talented drivers in the world, only 27 of 129 racers reached the finish line. The vast majority of them were not household names but instead, guys who have rockcrawling experience, are familiar with their rigs, and know how to fix things when stuff goes wrong.

In our May issue we started out on our 2,300-mile trip across the Sahara Desert in Egypt. Also known as the Western Desert, the Great Sand Sea is a desolate patch of the Middle East where water is almost as scarce as the inhabitants. About the only humans around nowadays are smugglers from Sudan and nefarious agitators from Libya—and of course crazy guys like us.

What do you do in the summer when you want to travel with your Jeep and family, do some wheeling, and attend the biggest Jeep Fest in the nation? You go to Butler, Pennsylvania, for the Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival, of course! We’ve attended for two years now and plan to make it for a third year on Father’s Day weekend, June 13-16, 2013. This year’s event will be held just out of town, the venue promises to be more jeep-friendly, with more trails and room for growth, and will even allow dogs and their families to attend.

With trail closures and land grabs sweeping across our nation, it’s refreshing to see some positive people trying to reverse that terrible trend. The Tierra Del Sol club of San Diego (www.tds4x4.com) has had an adopt-a-trail program going on in cooperation with the Cleveland National Forest for some time, and has recently opened up some new trails for wheeling enjoyment about 50 miles east of San Diego. Club members cut a handful of new side loops off the Gunslinger Trail in the Corral Canyon OHV Area. Approved by the Forest Service, these trails show that they really understand the principles of multiple use management, rather than closing off the forest to all uses.

Each year we put out a call-to-action for all off-roaders who deem themselves and their rigs fit for the task of a full week of 4-wheeling, covering multiple states and thousands of grueling miles. If you think you meet the requirements and are up for the task of wheeling through some of the most incredible trails in the country, we want you to apply to take part in a once in a lifetime adventure, the Ultimate Adventure! Ever since the beginning of Ultimate Adventure we have gotten hundreds of applications from hopeful readers eager to join the elite ranks of those who have gone before.

Following in the footsteps of legendary performance driving schools such as Bondurant and Skip Barber, Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah, has made a name for itself with a full line of Ford Racing High-Performance Driving Schools, teaching would-be racers the finer points of piloting the Ford Mustang GT around North America’s longest road-coarse. In 2013, Miller Motorsports Park will launch a program geared towards those of us who prefer the dusty kind of road. The Ford Racing Raptor Assault program is a one-of-a-kind experience designed to teach the fundamentals of off-road driving, vehicle dynamics, and low-traction handling from behind the wheel of the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor pickup.

Egypt, the ancient land of mummies, pyramids and lots of sand. It’s not what most people would consider paradise, but then again we aren’t most people—we are wheelers. And yes, Egypt is on the other side of the world from where we live, but if you had a chance to go wheel in the desert, dirt, and sand for three weeks, wouldn’t you?

When I brought home the CheapBurban almost a year ago I expected to use it for Cheap Truck Challenge and then sell it, but since then it has grown into a low-buck camping truck. The truck has been getting tweaked and tuned, and I decided it was time for some adventure. I rounded up a small group of friends and we agreed on a six-day trip to Baja, Mexico, to watch some of the infamous Baja 1000 race.

Interested in winning a trip to the 2013 SEMA Show in Las Vegas? Well, then send us a photo of you and your hands at their dirtiest and submit it to lava.moments.4WOR@sorc.com to be entered into our contest presented by LAVA Soap. Please see the Official Rules below. *Note: The SEMA Show is a trade-only industry event that is not open to the general public.*

Rock bouncing is becoming more popular, especially in the Southeast. It’s all about big horsepower, big tires, and big air. These rock-bouncing tube buggies are purpose-built to do just that: bounce. They are generally 500 hp or more and built with bombproof drivetrains to withstand launching into the air off of rock ledges and such.

The year 2012 marked 60 years of the famous Jeepers Jamboree, a long weekend wheeling trip across the Rubicon Trail outside of Lake Tahoe in Northern California. We have attended other Jamborees before, but this year’s was a blockbuster. The crowd was huge, with over a thousand participants and more than half that many Jeeps—whoops, we mean vehicles. You see, even though Jeepers Jamboree would seem like a Jeep-specific event, there were in fact a good variety of 4x4s attending. Sure, those original wheelers back in 1952 were probably all in flatfender Willys or Ford Jeeps, but since then the Rubicon has seen almost every make of 4x4 cross its boulder-strewn track.

You can’t be on the trail all the time. If that brings you to the verge of uncontrollable sobbing, console yourself with some alternatives. If you live within reasonable driving distance of the northwest Ohio town of Lima (that’s Lime- ahh, sucker, not Leem-ahh), the Lucas Oil 4-Wheel Jamboree has been administering “four-wheeling Prozac” for 27 years at the Allen County Fairgrounds … right off Interstate 75. Lima is one of four big Jamborees held by Family Events in 2012, the others being in Springfield, Missouri; Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania; and Indianapolis, Indiana. It’s a place where you can bring your rig for the Mickey Thompson Show-N-Shine (shining is optional) and see what other folks have been doing. You can usually get some hands-on time with the latest tech from all the movers and shakers in the wheeling world. With all the big vendors there selling, you may also be able to make a good score on swag you need or swag you just want.

Twice a year the hills of northern Idaho begin to roar as thousands of trucks, Jeeps, buggies, beaters, bashers, hill-billies, mountainfolk, country boys, and cowgirls descend on the Moyie mud bogs for a weekend of wild and crazy good times. The Moyie (pronounced moi-yay) spring bog falls on Mother’s Day weekend, and they usually have a second yearly event every September. The event isn’t just a mud bog; there are hillclimbs, a wooded creek-bed trail, camping, and a massive bonfire party with a live band Saturday night. This year the event happened to coincide with one of the first sunny weekends in the Northwest, so tops were down and the action wild as ever, but many years the May mud bog is rainy and wet instead of dusty like this year.

Southern Florida is a place that often conjures thoughts of golf courses, glitzy South Beach, and heavy humidity. Anyone who has ever visited the lower portion of the state, and more specifically Miami, is well aware of the vast saturation of water that lines the landscape inside and out. What this means for wheeling enthusiast in the area is that you either like to wheel in mud or you travel far to get away from it. And while tractor tires and mega mud monsters rule the roost in the panhandle, there are still plenty of everyday wheelers that like to mix it up in the murky waters.

Some vehicles and cities go together like kittens and slippers. The list of 4x4s that share names with cities include Durango, Santa Fe, and Tacoma.

A call from a friend alerted us to a good time to be had with a group of older fullsize domestics, so we jumped at the chance to head to the desert. ArizonaK5 is a Phoenix-area group of Chevy 4WD enthusiasts who camp and wheel together. They had a plan to gather for a second annual K5 contest at a local OHV site.

Daytona Beach, Florida, is home to many great things: sand you can drive on, a race track where teams go very fast in a circle, waves you can swim in, surf shops and miniature golf courses to idle away your time at, and now Jeep Beach, a giant beach gathering of every make and model of Jeep. We attended this year and had a blast. The wheeling isn’t extreme by any means, but the atmosphere is idyllic, especially if you stay at the host hotel, Shore’s Resort and Spa, which is situated right on the sand.

There are many types of four-wheeling, but one that is less common is overland travel. Lots of people think overlanding is just buying a bunch of neat bolt-on widgets for their 4x4, but we describe this trend as getting away from home for multiple days and exploring and living out of your 4x4. It may be a long weekend in your local woods or a trip to the farthest reaches of the world. You may be going overlanding when you’re camping or exploring for a holiday vacation. Or you may be selling the house, packing the family in your 4x4, and taking them all on the adventure of a lifetime.

The Overland Expo arrived in the hills south of Flagstaff, Arizona, this past May for a few days of adventure. If you’ve ever dreamt of crossing the Sahara by Land Rover, exploring the Amazon by Jeep, seeing the outback from behind the wheel of a Toyota, or driving to Alaska in your Chevy, then this event will get you excited to go. The Expo is a meeting of explorers from newbie to veteran with classes on off-road driving and vehicle recovery and with advice on everything from border crossing to solar-powered camping supplies. A huge vendor area showcases anything you would ever need or want for camping and exploring the wilds of the world.

Private wheeling parks are nothing new, but over the past decade they have increased tremendously across America. This trend is especially fast-growing in southeastern regions that have been affected by national park closures. One park that’s earned a great reputation for a fun place to wheel is the Hale Mountain OHV Park. Located in New Market, Alabama, the 400-acre park is a packed with trails ranging from easy to extreme, and has a host of elevated terrain to keep any wheeling enthusiast entertained.

Our hobby of making 4x4 vehicles go off the easy paved roads isn’t as cheap as some other hobbies. Take Frisbee for example; all you need is a Frisbee and maybe a dog. Or fishing; grab a rod and some worms and find a body of water. And don’t forget hiking; just go outside and walk and violà! You’re hiking. You can do all of these cheap, or you can buy the top-of-the-line Frisbee, fishing rod, or hiking boots and now your hobby is expensive. Four-wheeling is no different. Cheap Truck Challenge, which began last month, is an attempt to show that wheeling can be done in the dirt on a close to dirt-poor budget.

How do you decide what is the best vehicle to buy and build on a budget? Simple: You take them four-wheeling and beat the dog snot out of them. That was the plan for our Cheap Truck Challenge.