March 15 was a wonderful day for a trail ride out into the great Black Hills.  The Dakota Territory members that showed up for the March trail ride were: Greg and Rhonda Mumm in their 80, Donna Kinsella in her 60, Mike Heitland and his Father in-law Bob Fredichs in Mike’s 4-Runner, Kent Renaud in his Tacoma, Jeff Mars and Friend Mary Ann in Jeff’s FJ Cruiser, and guests Gavin, Jeremy, Trevor and Tray in Gavin’s ‘96’ 80.  Rayland Bender joined us later in Nemo. 

The group headed out of town towards Nemo, Greg and I were leading and decided we would go do a little trail ride that we had led several years ago.  The unfortunate part is, it has been several years and things often don’t look the same and we ended up in the general vicinity but not on the intended roads.  We were hoping for snow and we did find some but it was of no challenge.  We took several wrong turns and eventually we took the road out.  The best part was the road out ended up being the most challenge of the run.  The main road obviously wasn’t used in winter and we found some very deep snow covering the road.  It took several tries for Greg to get our 80 through the crusty snow, with Jeff and Mike both getting stuck while coming to our rescue.   Kent eventually backed in and strapped us backwards so we could take another run at the snow.  The last run through we were almost all the way and with a little pushing we were able to get our 80 to the end.  Everyone else used the skinny peddle and made it.  The next section of the road left little room for mistake so the skinny peddle was used by everyone and we all made it through. 

We decided to take a short break and drove down to Nemo to meet up with Rayland.  After Rayland showed up we headed for another area that should prove to have some remnants of the deeper stuff.  We did find some nice deep drifts and had fun breaking through, the rest of the road was very passable, but we made note of some side roads that looked promising.   

When we came out on Nemo Road Donna took her leave and the rest of us went back to see if we could get stuck and we were successful.  We had some fun getting stuck on one dead-end road then we went on to find another. 

 The next road looked quite intimidating, but Rayland was ready to test his metal.  He drove in and promptly got himself stuck.  And before you know it that all too familiar POW, Rayland’s half shaft was a goner.  So the extraction began.  It wasn’t long before we heard another POW this time it was his bumper which was now in two pieces and one of the pieces was still hooked to the tow rope.  We found another tow point and eventually got him out.

 Kent decided he needed to try this extra deep snow so in he went to bury his truck; we tugged him out so he could try it again, and so, we tugged him out again.  We decided we had played with our Toys enough for the day and we all headed home.

 What can I say?  We had another fantastic day out in the Hills!

                                                                                      Rhonda Mumm