Barnwell Mountain

January 18-20, 2019

Our first Jeep trip in 2019.  With lots of trips planned this year, we were excited to make our first one with our Jeep Club, Bayou City Jeep Club to Barnwell Mountain located right outside of Gilmer, Texas.

On Friday afternoon we dropped the kids off at the church and they loaded busses to head to their annual middle school/high school winter camp.  Sorry no pics as they were too excited to get on the buses!

The we headed north. With a solid four hour drive to get there and a quick trip to wall-mart, dinner and a gas fill up in Gilmer once we got there it was close to 11:30pm before we checked-in.

We rented a cabin that is right on the property and it works out perfectly to be centrally located to all of the trails.  With a Queen size bed and two bunk beds, a full bath, sink and refrigerator, it is perfect to take care of all the necessities.  And, especially for this weekend with the wind, rain, and temps dipping into the 20's on Saturday night, it has a heater!

We arrived ahead of the cold front and while the weather was not too bad to unload, it soon became very windy with rain, thunder and lightning and a plunge in the temperatures to a brisk 32 degrees over night.  The cabin was great and with the tin roof we got to sleep to the sound of rain.

Saturday morning arrived with cold temperatures and lots of wind.  An abundance of mud puddles and some very squishy spots give the trails an added technical aspect for even some of the lower level trails that wouldn't normally exist with dry conditions.

But not of that put a damper on the perfect day of wheeling it turned out to be.

Our Lineup for the day! Thanks for the picture Towns family

 Chris planned out the trail list ahead of time with the goal of hitting many of the level 1 and 2 trails, knowing that that rain may cause some of the high level trail to be a bit too difficult.

 Starting with Omega first off.  I love pictures of Jeeps in a row.  We had 8 rigs with us for this trip.

 Just one of the many waterfalls we saw throughout the day.

 And one of the many mud puddles.

 Just a baby puddle to get the morning started.

 Thanks Emily for videoing us!  When we lead sometimes we work through obstacles before we realize we should have been filming!

 And next was this one.  So we went through it first and realized as the back end came off the drop-off that it was a little deeper than we anticipated.  But with lockers engaged we pulled right through it and we were tall enough that it didn't reach the doors.

 Next jeep couldn't pull out so he got to use his wench.    Getting it hooked up now.  The rest of the jeeps took the bypass.

 We didn't fare to bad, but you can see the passenger side dipped first and deeper.

 Lunch!  We went for burgers but ended up eating beef tips and rice with homemade mashed potatoes and corn nuggets.  A hot meal was perfect after the cold morning we had!

A view from the dash!

We rode all the trails we had on the list today plus added a few extra.  About 5:30 as it started to get dark, half the group split off to head back to the cabins and start dinner and we went to run a couple more trail as dusk settled in.

Dinner was chili by the Towns, and chicken and dumplings from the Thornhills, Hot dogs, smores and hot chocolate by the fire finished out our evening and we were snuggled under the covers warming up from the day by 9pm.

We woke to a beautiful, yet cold morning in the 20's but after a short breakfast at Whataburger and our first trail about 9:15 the temps were rising and it turned out to be a beautiful day.

We ran Any Sunday again and the headed to Politician trail which has a couple of technical spots before loading up the jeep and turning the key to our cabin.

We met the Trail Lizards on the trails on Saturday as they were there to do trail maintenance for the park and hooked up with them this morning to run one more trail called Desi' Way.

It was a level 2 but it had one pretty technical obstical that Chris was glad he tried.  Line was perfect. Three jeeps did it and the rest took the much safer bypass. 

With tires aired up, sway bars reconnected and shocks adjusted, we hit the local car wash to get some of the mud off and headed back towards Houston.   It was a great weekend, and a perfect getaway.  With the rest of January booked and a of February we will be ready to hit the road again in March and begin planning some camping trips to try our new roof top tent!