Trooper Diggin

It is not much for power under the hood and definitely does not have the big mud tires or a lift kit underneath it like most four wheel monsters do, but this little sport utility vehicle is a Trooper!

Since our first trip earlier this spring down to the river bottoms with Ryan and his Jeep the boys have been wanting to take the Trooper down and go "diggin" with it. I must admit that I have been a little interested myself to put it into four wheel drive and see how she does. Though I can't say that I have had much opportunity with this vehicle since we got it to get out into the mountains or mud, I have been a little apprehensive to push the little thing too hard for fear of finding out that something is wrong or the four wheel drive doesn't work. Amy is insanely fearful about this sort of thing! We put it into 4wd the other day just to lift the front tires up onto a snow bank a little bit and she was through the roof. She clings to all the handles and totally freaks out even though the back tires are still on pavment. Meanwhile the boys in the back are loving all of it and only wanting to do it again and go higher.

Needless to say, just the boys and I headed off last Saturday to meet up with Ryan and his Dad for this epic adventure. I packed a lot of snacks for the boys and we stopped and got a package of hot dogs for a little fire cooked dinner down on the river bed.

All in all the trip was very fun and I think the boys loved it. The Trooper did very well in four wheel drive and ran excellent. The only complaint that I have about it is that the tires are just street tread, so in the mud they spin a whole lot to get very little done. I do need to throw some BF Goodrich All-Terrain tires under neath it and then she would be just fine.

We had a gourmet fire roasted dinner, accompanied by honey-mustard Pringles that were just divine, and played around until about 10:00PM. I would have liked to be home earlier than that with the young boys, but we are now getting over sixteen hours of daylight and all of us are having a hard time getting used to the fact that bedtime now comes long before the dark.

The only hang up on the whole evening was when Ty and Dane were playing by the river, throwing rocks into the water. Ya you can already guess what happened uh! It was as if it happened in slow motion though. Ty backed up the hill behind Dane and reached down for a rock. I was a little distance off and could see what Ty was doing so I hollered to him not to throw rocks right there, he would have to go back down by Dane who is about four feet away and down hill below Ty. The little stinker kept about his business and got ready to throw this rock about baseball size down to the river. I could see what he was about to do so I started to holler even louder, trying to get him to stop. I yelled out "Ty, Ty, Ty" each time getting louder, because the kid was not listening whatsoever. Sure enough he threw that rock as hard as he could and it thumped Dane right smack in the temple of his head, with a loud pop. It was really weird to watch it all unfold right in front of me and know what was going to happen, even anticipating it enough to instruct Ty before hand not to even pick up the rock, but that kid is mischief.