Well, Amy and I finally did the Rubicon! This was an officially sanctioned NAXJA event led in tandem by Richard "Goatman" Gauthier from Bakersfield and Grant from Colorado, and included a great collection of built XJ's (mild to pretty wild!) and one heavily modified MJ. Great bunch of folks, amazing trail, fine weather--what more could you ask for?

About half of the group who did the 'Con also ran Barrett Lake earlier in the week, so I knew many of the folks who showed up at the Loon Lake group campground on Tuesday afternoon. Others rolled in on Wed. and at least one Thurs. when we headed out for Spider lake. The Loon Lake CG was great, and the water warmer than I expected. Amy and I spent Wednesday hiking around the lake and swimming, taking it easy before what we figured would be a long day of driving. The parking lot was a never-ending scene of wrenching. If you weren't busy working on your own Jeep, you could always pull up a chair and a cold beer and watch somebody else get all greasy working on their Jeep. Repairs included a last minute water pump replacement for Loop (procured in Pollock Pines), some custom tie-rod bending for Keven, and a few other operations that I missed or only caught the tail end of. There were plenty of interesting mod's to check out.

Amy and I elected to join the early (7:00 a.m.) group led by Richard for the first leg of the trail from Loon Lake to Spider lake where we planned to camp Thursday night. As we prepared to hit the trail the campground host told us there was a fire over near the granite bowl and to stay off the trail, but we plowed on around the lake and headed down the slabs into the trees anyway. It was a pretty small fire and a chopper was already dumping water on it by the time we got into the trees. We made pretty good time and hit the top of the bowl about 9:00, just as Grant's late group was starting out.