Another Great event for the books....

[Freebird01]

First and fore morst to everyone who attended the event THANKS!!!

If it weren't for you guys our event would not continue.


Ok event recap...

rain....rain.....rain.....

Due to some unforeseen circumstances I was unable to stay Thursday night, however Friday started out with a bang as mid morning showers rolled into some pretty heavy downpours that went for most of the day. I will let someone else report on the trail riding as I chose to hang back at camp and chill after having a rough Thursday.

By Friday evening most of the regulars had showed up and even a few new faces. I have to say that I feel that this year we had the most new faces in awhile. It was great to meet some new people (bentparts, purpletracker, Rabidrhino, I'f i missed you im sorry!!)

Friday night turned into a typical Gonzookin campfire night and a good time was had by all....

Saturday morning (after the headache cleared from the night before) was a bit slow going. we got to the park around 10am and proceeded to set up the Top Zuk Challange. It was setup to mimic an RC Rocs(www.rcrocs.com) series rock crawl course. And with a toned down set of rules and no rig requirements we pitted everyone on a closed course....buggy and trail rig side by side. Special thanks to Mellowyellow88 for acting as our official course judge!!

The rules were pretty simple. Make it through 4 gates with out having to back up or hitting any cones (doing either resulted in penalty points) and finish the course in under 10 minutes. Everyone seemed to enjoyed it and it really showed that its not your rig its how you drive it.

We had a 3 way tie for first place with 3 rigs finished with the same score....based on the times (lowest to highest) here are the top three. (check out gonzookin.org in the near future for the scores to be posted)

1. Carolina_Zuk (Rawlings Barnes)
2. KaptianK (Celan Thoma)
3. ikuzus (Chad Trimmer)

Rawlings managed to finish our course in under 2 minutes with the Popsicle!!!!

Which leads me to thank Rawlings for making the trek all the way up to Gonzookin with Cole and the Popsicle!!! It was our pleasure to have you with us, too bad you couldn't stay longer but I think he is hooked on Rausch Creek now...

With the rest of the day running into trail riding I headed out with D-rock (burnt clutch cable) so I could run and get the grill for the group dinner. Our staff had everything prepped and ready to go by the time i got back with the grill!

We had a great spread for the dinner and our staff worked very hard to make sure everything went well.

From there we rolled right into some thanks to the supporting venders including our event regular Sean Devinney of Aftermarket4x4.

RRO, Zuksoffroad, Trail Tough, Low Range Offroad, Ladd Hanford Suzuki, Spidertrax just to name a few!!! We had more then I personally expected due to our current Economy. Its great to see these guys supporting our event!!!!!

We also had a scavanger hunt were 5 buckets with numbers ping pong balls were placed around the park. We must have hid them a bit too well because not many were found. Thanks again Madsammer for gettin them at the end of the day!!!

Sunday morning lead into yet another downpour which had everyone soaked to the bone before rollin out of the campground!

All in all I felt we had a great year and as always I am looking forward to next year!!!!

Thanks again everyone who attended!!!

[locked 88]

thank you jason for throwing such a great event. rausch creek is definently a blast. even though i didnt have my samurai out there and i was sick the whole weekend i still had a great time. i hope you can make it out to zuwharrie, hopefully mine will be running by then lol.
i also want to thank rro for the rock sliders they look like a stout piece of work and atoz fabrications for the gift card. i will be checking yall out soon
and aftermarket 4x4 for having all the trail repairs and for just being sean, no other explination

[D-Rock]

A HUGE thank you to all of the folks who put this event on!  You guys rock! I had a great time.  I wish I could have stayed Saturday night.  I had a blast anyway.  Looking forward to the next one.

-Derek

[aftermarket4x4]

I really want to say a big THANK YOU to ALL of you guys and gals that put on GonZookin as I understand how much work is put into making it a great event for all of us to attend.  I also wan to to thank the Chef and those that picked up & set up the food at the pavilion as the dinner was awesome and hit the spot after a long day of wheeling. The organization was there to keep things going smoothly and the only problems I noticed were the "bumps in the road"  that knocked the wheel off of Jason's Ford Ranger  . Tom, thanks for rescuing him so you guys could finish placing the scavenger hunt buckets  . GonZookin is one of our favorite events and this is why we travel 6 hours to make it there every year!

What a great time!

Sean (Killed the XXX-90!) DeVinney

[KaptainK]

Agreed!, This years event was awsome!  A huge thanks to all the staff for all the organization, good food, good wheelin, and of course good times around the campfire!

Another huge thanks goes out to Randy (MelloYello88) for hookin me up with a rear spring to replace the first one I broke on day 1.  Not only did he remove the crusty old bolts but he even met me half way to pick it up.  Got the Samurai back together by 10pm and had a full day of wheelin on Saturday.

[Fullsink18]

We had a blast as usual.  I am pretty sure my dad is hooked. Now he just needs to build his own.  Friday was a good shake down ride to for my new suspension, everything worked great. 

Even though I blew out my front diff saturday morning in the comp.  I still had a blast and got to ride around in Ron's sami (i never rode in one yet).

Jim