Roamer Discovers Citrus WMA

Yesterday we spent the day with the guys Roaming around Citrus WMA. (Wildlife management area). We spent the day with Josh and Jason from KingdomOffRoad.com. I particularly like that they are a faith-based Jeep Community.

Ok. To start Citrus Wildlife Management area is in the Withlacoochee state forest. That's clearly way too hard to say so I think that everyone Just calls it Citrus. This was about 2 hours north of us here in Osprey, FL.

Rolling out on the trip

As usual, we met off of 64 and 75. We then proceeded to head north and meet the rest of the gang at Chevron Gas Station @ 9:15am to gas up prior 10455 North Broad Street, Brooksville, FL 34601.

It was a pretty interesting group. Mostly 7 Jeeps, one Taco, and two Jeep Cherokee.

10 car Convoy!!

As for us, it was my crew. My wife Jamie, and our two boys Connor and Owen. Let's not forget our Jeep - Roamer a 2021 Echo Diesel Willys. I'll try and do a build sheet on her in another blog. Our Dog, Roxy, usually joins us as well. This trip was Roxy's birthday and she just turned two! You can see Roxy sitting in the shade below.

I had just installed a new air compressor on my Jeep. The ARB dual. This was the first trip that I was able to "air down". What a difference it made. I didn't want to air down too low and lose a tire so 15 PSI it was. All the washboard areas of the trail were much smoother. Like, by an amazing amount. The tires absorbed much of the chatter. The additional traction was also very noticeable.

This is the air down form the back of the line

After the air down, we are off. So beautiful.

Mud puddles

Our track took us 33.25 miles through the Citrus WMA. We saw many mud puddles, some off-camber stuff, sand, and more sand. It was a well-planned route thanks to the research that Josh did in advance of the trip.

the Track!

Not 10 minutes into the trip we hit this obstacle. Below you can see Jason's new rig making easy work of it.

In this picture, Roamer is the one with the roof rack - It doesn't look like much but inside it felt like she may go over at any second.

Roamer in the Mud

For me, extending my trip with my family is the best part of offroading. On This particular trip, Jason brought his children who happen to be the same age

The boys found the nearest mud hole and had to play.

My boys are the two on the right, Jason's are the two in matching blue on the left.

On this particular excursion, we walked a half-mile on a side trail, we were looking for the "cave" and we found it as you can see above. For me, the smiles and the fun for the kids made this trip priceless. Another fun note was that the boys switched Jeeps. At one point I had Connor and Elliott, and Jason had Owen and Owen. Later in the day, Jason had all four boys in his Jeep. Yet, later I think Josh had a few of the boys in his jeep as well.

One particular memory: I think all four boys were in Jason's Jeep when he went up a steep sandy incline. the rest of the crew was having lunch when I heard just a ton of giggling from Jason's jeep. He had left the windows down and the boys in the back got face fulls of sand and just couldn't stop laughing. I think Jason was mortified at the amount of sand he now needed to clean out of his Jeep.

Recoveries:

On this trip we had 3 recoveries. I got to pull out Barbara's lil red Jeep, a White 2 door Jeep and finally the Taco. I will see if I can dog up some pictures of the recoveries. Im super glad I bought my winch. It has been used 4 times over two trips!

Biggest Tires gets the wettest

At the very end of our trip, we all aired the tires back up. Of course, that's also when the storm hit. The sky literally opened up and it just started downpouring. It was raining when I got to fill my tires but not that bad. Our fearless leader Josh with the largest tires (40's) experienced the rain firsthand. You can see him above enjoying up the tires. Bigger tires mean they take longer to air up. To Josh's credit, he never uttered a complaint.