Your SUV is not a Jeep, My Jeep is not an SUV

It started off innocently enough as a request from a co-worker to accompany him on a hunt for geocaches at the Canadian River OHV area. Now, before I go further you should probably understand what a "geocache" is by following this link. It is something that I've been interested in because of the travels that I do in my Jeep to many remote and difficult places to reach. My coworker knew that I had spent time at the Canadian River with friends and knew the area well and wanted me to act as a tour guide as well as an emergency vehicle should the need arise.

My coworker drives a 1996 Ford Exploder Sport 4x4 which was Ford's attempt at cutting into the Jeep Cherokee market. His vehicle has over 200,000 miles on it and has been off-road a grand total of 4 times since it's completion date. Stock tires, stock rims, stock axles, stock clearance, stock manual transmission. Fortunately for my co-worker, the places he needed to go to search for the caches were not too difficult, save one.

After finding the first one easily, traversing the 4-inch deep river to the second one, and nearly getting both of us stuck in the sand, we started our trek up the river bed to the third one. This was a bit more difficult as we crossed several areas of mud bogs, thick sand, and a few deeper spots of Canadian River Red water. We made it to the third cache and loaded up the waypoint for the fourth and final location...another 10 miles downstream. That would make it about 17 miles from the Highway 87 bridge. Coworker stated he felt comfortable with the conditions and off we went up the river towards Boys Ranch.

Everything is going great until I spot a location that could be interesting for our annual Canadian River Run/Off-road trip. I swing the steering wheel over to take a look. Little did I know that the sand was a good 12 inches deep and VERY soft! The initial attempt to drive forward failed so I threw the Jeep into 4-low hit the gas, and dug my way back onto more solid ground. Swinging my Jeep around, I noticed that Coworker's vehicle was slowly sinking. I grabbed the radio and told him that he needed to get out of there because he was sinking. Unfortunately by then, it was too late:

Yes, let's just say a few "colorful metaphors" were flown by the occupants of the Exploder and I was sizing up the situation. An attempt by me to pull Coworker out failed miserably as six angry squirrels under the hood was just not enough to pull out an Exploder stuck in quicksand. Now my 4-hour tour was going to become a whole-day ordeal.

A phone call to W.C. and his brother-in-law for emergency assistance was placed around 10:56 am with hopes he could get away from his activities and save the day. Brother-in-law's assistance was then requested at 11:07 am when I realized I wasn't going to be able to pull Coworker out. The rescue squad arrived at 1 pm...missing a vehicle! Apparently, W.C.'s pickup had gotten stuck halfway between our location and the bridge. This was not a good sign! With the assistance of two Jeeps yielding a total of 12 angry squirrels under the hood (or about 475 horses for those more in-tune with automotive terms), we were finally able to extract the Exploder from it's sandy and wet spot and headed back to the W.C. pickup.

Upon arriving at the second scene of vehicular impairment, this is what we saw:

Another hopelessly stuck vehicle. SO, brother-in-law and I hook up once again and unleash our total of 12 angry squirrels:

And SUCCESS!

We proceeded back to the Highway 87 bridge and Coworker treated us to Lunch at the Canadian River Cafe.

So, what lessons were learned you ask?

1. Mud tires are essential.
2. Never stop on quicksand...keep rolling.
3. Geocaching can potentially be hazardous to vehicular health.
4. I need a winch, place to keep my Hi-Lift jack, a better tow rope, and a hand-held GPS unit.
5. It takes about 3 hours to wash 3 vehicles with a power washer to get all the mud off.

And last but not least:

6. An Explorer or other SUV is not a Jeep and my Jeep once again proves it is more than a SUV!

Oh, one other thing...yes, I had fun!