Lock the Hubs!

(This is Suzy again, adding my 2 cents worth.)

Steve and I like four-wheel driving.  And we absolutely love how four-wheel driving gets us to some amazing places. 

It started with my 1982 Firebird, and me having to go to the bathroom.  We were on our first vacation together, on our way to Telluride.  In the middle of nowhere, traffic was backed up for miles for a construction delay, and I really had to pee, so we turned onto a dirt road where I could just go behind a tree.  The sign said “Last Dollar Mountain Road — 4WD Only”, but we weren’t planning to go far, so we didn’t worry about it.

We kept driving, and the road wasn’t too bad at all.  We found a pretty place on a ridge and set up our tent under some aspen trees, then we kept driving over the mountain toward Telluride the next morning.  We figured we’d turn around if it got too bad.  It got kind of bumpy, then it got very skinny, then it got very, very steep, but it was still passable.   At one point, some guys in a Jeep going the other way looked at us like we were crazy, which I’m sure we were.  Well, not crazy, just incredibly stupid, considering that we were in a 1982 Firebird with no clearance.  Anyway, we eventually got to Telluride via one of the most beautiful roads in Colorado.

We traded in the Firebird on a 1984 Ford Bronco II.  Back then, 4WD wasn’t a thing you turned on inside the truck.  You had to get out and actually lock the hubs on the wheels.  So we’d be driving along in 2WD until it got steep or rocky, then one of us would say “Lock the hubs!” and we’d get out, we’d literally lock the hubs on the wheels, then we’d continue crawling over the rough road in 4WD. 

After a while, we came to say “Lock the hubs!” when anything got hard.  Hiking up a steep hill?  Lock the hubs!  Carrying a heavy box in from the garage?  Lock the hubs!  Concentrating really hard to debug a program at work?  Lock the hubs!

Locking the hubs got us to some incredibly beautiful places.  One summer, we met Donna, Bob, Mike, and Cindy for a week or two of camping in Colorado.  Bob saw a lake on the map, 4 miles off the road… turns out, it was 4 miles straight up a mountain.  Clear Lake, elevation 12,000 feet.

We eventually got a Landcruiser that had a 4WD switch inside.  But we still said “Lock the hubs!” when the road got rough.  The Landcruiser got us to another set of amazing places, this time with Eric and Lee in the back seat.  Now we have a Tundra, and to this day, we still say “Lock the hubs!” when the road gets rough.

Our road is about to get rough again.  In fact, it’s the steepest and rockiest road we’ve ever been on.  But I know we’ll get through it. 

All we have to do is “Lock the hubs!“.

Clockwise from top left: The Firebird on Last Dollar Mountain Road; Suzy & Steve on Last Dollar Mountain Road; Steve and the Bronco II; Clear Lake, Colorado; the Bronco II on the road to Clear Lake; lock the hubs!