Awesome day at the Badlands! I'm always amazed that I've been there so many times and yet I keep finding new trails. No breakage or winching required. Spent a good part of the day checking out the TREC course, since that looks like the best-marked trails that the Badlands has. Saw mac 'hauling balls' gyvr flying around in his junk, but he didn't race it (why not mac?) At some point a helicopter landed at the Badlands to life flight somebody out who had been in an accident. Don't really have any other details. :dunno:
TREC race was definitely worth showing up for. The side-by-side class had probably 7 or 8 of those little hell RZRs (see what I did there), and then probably 10 vehicles. The most "legit" vehicle for that style of racing looks like a Ford Ranger pre-runner. I spotted a few of the Branik buggies out there as well, but it seemed like they were more set up for crawling and weren't moving as quick as they could have been. Obviously you don't want to change your whole setup for a new racing circuit with a small prize that may or may not stick around.
ZJs... long arm front+rear make them pretty sweet for this kind of an event. One in particular had the V8 and all the doors off, suspension was doing its thang during the whoops and he made some great time. XJs represented their share as well, saw 2 or 3 of them out there. One guy in particular was driving like a bat out of hell which makes for a entertaining race. The "spirit" award goes to two guys in an Isuzu Amigo, which was not at all set up for racing (looked stock) and barely had enough power to get up the dunes.
Not sure about final standings, at one point the action died down and we didn't see many of the vehicles again for the while, we (the spectators) were pretty clueless about what was going on. I had to take off and get back home so I'm not sure what happened.
