JAN/FEB 2009

Fall Crawl - Cruising New England Style

by Sheri Becker

 

The 9th annual Fall Gathering was held the weekend of October 3rd-5th. Hosted by Yankee Toys, this is the largest event the club holds each year, typically signifying the close of our fourwheeling season. We had 63 rigs this year with about 100 people in attendance. Yankee Toys is made up of members from all over New England including New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut and even some members who make the trip down from Canada. It takes almost a full year to pull together an event of this size and we rely solely on volunteers to do the work. As we pack up on the final day, we are already discussing next year’s event.

The Fall Gathering takes place near a typical, small New Hampshire town. We are lucky to have a great variety of trails within a short driving distance of our campground. Our trails range from the stock friendly, unimproved roads to hardcore trails that are guaranteed to deliver some body damage. A large portion of our trails are located on private land as well as on land that is controlled by the Northeast Association of 4WD Clubs. We make great efforts to ensure that all proper channels are followed to ensure that we are able to have use of these trails year after year.

The tried and true volunteers, along with anxious drivers ready to hit the trail, started rolling in on Thursday. Getting a good location at the campground requires arriving early as the sites are all first come, first served. While some trucks snuck off into the woods for some early wheeling, our Trail Organizer, Lane Noyes, was already putting stakes in the ground and setting up our lanes for Friday morning. The anticipation was in the air.

Friday morning dawned with a slight chill in the air. We were off to a bit of a late start and as everybody started to roll out of bed, you could hear the low rumble of Land Cruiser engines coming to life. Registration was open and the trucks started to pull into line. Drivers were donning their event t-shirts, designed by Randy Elkin and Jason Peters (great job guys!) and the trail leaders had their maps in hand and were tuning their GPS units. After a short drivers meeting, it was finally time to hit the trail.

Friday’s stock run explored some private land and had a great representation of many types of trucks. In the lead was an FJ Cruiser followed by a beautifully restored FJ25 owned by Jim Casagrande, as well as the Canadian BJ70 and BJ42. We also had a RHD FJ45 pickup along with an HJ45 crew cab (which makes two of these rare trucks in Yankee Toys alone), and an FJ55 Piggie and an expedition built FJ62 rounding out the group. While the trail was mostly stock, there were a nice range of obstacles to test these vehicles. Steep trails downhill as well as uphill, off camber trails and some rock obstacles made this a very enjoyable trip indeed. Nothing can compare to the hardcore trails that we have to offer though. Large granite rocks and tree stumps make these trails almost impassable. Almost… then you have the big guys roll in. Kina Twigg- Smith’s Frankenstein is always present and makes for some great viewing, along with the rest of the heavily built FJ40s and 80s...

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by Sheri Becker