Silver Lake Sand Dunes, MI April 1999

Overall it was a good weekend, except the weather on Sunday was far from perfect.  Saturday the dunes were PACKED, we had to wait 20 mins to get in.  The trip consisted of me with my truck, my roomate Tim with his VW powered Sand Buggy, and our friend Ken also came along.  Saturday night we camped out at the state park.  Read more about the trip below.

Here I am up on top of Test Hill, the highest hill in the park that you are allowed to drive up.  I showed up a couple Chevys that couldn't make it up ;-)

Just testing out the flex that I have here.  If the front would just articulate like the rear ;-)

Rippin' it up at the dunes!  This was fun, except the truck didn't want to fish tail as much as I had hoped for.  My BFG's aired down to 10psi just didn't want to slide very much.  On the right side of the pics you can see Lake Michigan.

Somehow Tim managed to bend and fold up the aluminum plate that runs underneath of his buggy.  He couldn't go anywhere because the plate was folded into the sand.  So I was trying to pull him back to the parking lot up this slight incline when I saw him waving his hands in the air so I assumed that he wanted me to stop.  That wasn't the case, so as I tried to start back up the hill again, all I did was sink.  No, I wasn't stuck like the 3rd picture might indicate.  So that big Ford in the 5th picture came along and said he would pull him out of the rut.  He was like "yeah, it'll be no problem."  Yeah right, he burried that thing.  So the guy got his other truck, the lifted crew cab and he yanked out his other Ford and then he yanked out Tim's buggy.  I didn't think, I could have gotten the buggy out so easily if I had just used the full length of my tow strap instead of doubling it back through my shackle.  That way I would have been in front of the ruts and we wouldn't have had to rely on the Ford's to get him out!  DOH!  Anyway, I pulled Tim and his buggy the rest of the way to the parking lot up some much steeper hills without a problem.  I thought Tim had had the buggy in reverse to help me out going up the hills, but it turns out that the buggy popped out of reverse and for the most part my truck pulled the buggy all the way up the hills and soft sand to the parking lot under its own power!  The buggy weighs somewhere between 1000 and 1500 lbs.!!  GO TOYOTA!!

Coming up out of a deep bowl.  This was fun, it may not look like it but Tim (who was taking the picture) told me I had like 6-8" of air under my driver side front tire!  WOO HOO!!

On top of a hill next to Test Hill with a nice background view of Lake Michigan.

Tim and Ken after burrying the buggy.  A quick tug with my truck and they were on their way again, but only to bend up the under side of the buggy!!!