Baystate Jeepers

A group of Baystate Jeepers tackled Paragon Adventure Park on June 10^th and 11^th and even made it home to brag! With a total of nine rigs, ranging from a stock Rubicon to a 37” tire – TJ monster, along with a whole bunch of camaraderie and teamwork, everybody had a great time. We spent two full days challenging our jeeps and experiencing one of the best four-wheeling parks in the whole country. 

            It seemed like everyone had to overcome an obstacle or two, even before arriving at the park. I spent the week before the trip installing last minute parts, while Laura was lying in bed trying to recover from whiplash. Jon Watson barely made it to the park because of family health complications. Even Rich Belliveau and Bob Davis were delayed due to a trash truck rollover on the highway, resulting in a 3-hour traffic jam. I feel the most terrible for Frank Ravosa, who somehow got the dates, mixed up and thought the trip, was two weeks later… Sorry Frank!

            On the first day, I met up with Kurt Klopp and Ken Wallace in the motel parking lot, where we lowered our soft tops and headed over to the park. We ran into some light morning drizzle that went away as soon as we pulled into the park. Jon Watson and Andy Lawton arrived just a few minutes later and in no time were inside the Paragon office watching the safety video and handing over the liability forms. By time the video ended, we were all itching to hit the trails, so we made a beeline directly to the closest trail, “Chicken Run”. The Paragon trails are rated as Green (easy), Blue (medium), Black (hard) and Red (only with a guide). Then each color category is further divided into levels of 1, 2, and 3. Typically the competitions, such as NEUROC, take place on the black 2 and 3 or red trails. “Chicken Run” was rated a blue 2, so it was a great trail for us to start out on. We all made it through without too much difficulty, other than Jon seeing just how close he could get his back body panel to a

tree…. and the tree won! We were soon back on the main coal road in search of the next trail.

            Trying to up the difficulty a little, I took the group over to “Whompum”, which was rated as a blue 3 trail. I had seen a lot of pictures on the Internet and spoken to several people who recommended this trail, so I thought it would be fun. We had some trouble finding the trail, but some nice guys from NAXJA pointed us in the right direction. The entrance to the trail was pretty scary; a very steep drop, nearly straight down. Sure enough, we were all a bit hesitant, so we did some reconnaissance to make sure we could actually find a way out of this trail once we entered. As “guinea pig”, I mean trail leader, I was the first to see just how steep a TJ could down hill without loosing all control. Sure enough, the hill was so steep that my cell phone fell out of my cup holder on the way down. Within ten minutes, the rest of the group had followed me down and we were onto the next part of the trail. At this point we encountered the first real rock crawling for which Paragon is so famous. We tested our jeeps and spotters by driving over giant boulders, where the slightest misjudgment or spotter error could lead to getting stuck or even damaging the vehicles. Once again, teamwork got everyone through with nothing but giant smiles.

Ken	Kevin

In the afternoon we met up with Bob and Rich, who were revved up and ready to hit the park. They ended up taking on one of the black 2 rated trails, “M Trail”, while the rest of us went over to a neighboring trail called the “Small Rock Course”, rated at a black 1. Kurt, Jon and I tried some of the easier lines on this trail, before we all re-grouped to head over to the “Play Area”. We reached this adult playground, filled with mud holes, jumps and sand dunes and had a blast seeing just how far we could push our jeeps blasting through the mud pits. By this time we were all tired and the park was closing soon, so we headed back to the entrance and called it a day.

Day two was even more fun then day one! We started out by heading down “Rabbit Run”, which had unbeknownst to the trail leader been changed from a blue 2 to a black 1 trail. We soon encountered a tricky down hill rocky section of the trail, where we again came together as a group and carefully got everyone safely through. The rest of this trail had several good obstacles, keeping everyone busy. We passed through “Sleepy Hollow” on the way to “Turtles Tail”, which was a really nice climb along the side of a hill, where we went up 500 feet in altitude over a distance of just 1000 feet. The group then headed down “Turtle Trail” and made our way along “Logging Road”, deep into the southern part of the park. We then tackled “Woodpecker”, a fun trail that weaved in and out of some swampy areas with a variety of obstacles. The group then looped along the “Muddy Pipeline Bypass”, where we found some easy, but fun mud holes and enjoyed some of the sunshine we were sheltered from while deep in the woods.

At this point we met up with Rich, Bob and Mike at “Rattlers Tail”, a Black 2 trail with some very difficult sections. Bob quickly walked his way through the trail, while Rich helped spot Mike and I over the rocky terrain. Kurt also gave this trail a shot and did a great job of traversing some extreme terrain. The day was winding down, so we decided to head up “Hummer Hill” trail, to try and get a birds-eye view of the park from the “Mountain Top” area. We got to travel some really nice trails, but sadly did not experience any vistas of the park.

 
Everyone agreed that they had a great time at Paragon and we were planning our next visit. Hopefully frequent trips to Paragon will find a permanent place in the Baystate Jeepers schedule, as no off-roading enthusiast on the east coast should go on without experiencing this great park.

Again, I’d like to thank everyone that came and made it a great trip. From left to right – Jon Watson, Andy Lawton, Ken Wallace, Kurt Klopp, Myself and Edrick. Also, thanks to Rich Belliveau, Bob Davis and Mike Lajoie (not in the group picture)…. See you all next year or sooner!

                                                                                    -Kevin Wyrsch