7-30-2011 12-41-41 PM

A brief admission of ignorance... We've never driven a 4x4 before, and, uh... weren't exactly sure how to put it in 4LO. So we broke out the manual. The missing ingredient in our initial efforts? Putting the rig in NEUTRAL.

Hey, at least we were stopped when we tried to switch over.

Seriously though, this would be a textbook example of how NOT to offroad intelligently: didn't know the trail, had no map to speak of, weren't familiar enough with the rig, and had no recovery gear in the event we got stuck.

In our favor: the trail was short and near a well-traveled route, there were numerous "public land" signs to reassure us we weren't venturing onto private property, and we had the manual and I wasn't afraid to use it. :-/

Lesson learned.