Bill Ward

When I was in grade school I lived on the south side of Rapid City, South Dakota. We were one block from the Edge of Town--and the start of the Unending Fields. They were wild fields with lots of trails, a few stands of trees, some dried up water ways--and the Old Yellow House WAY out in the sticks! It was a childhood dreamscape for a budding off road adventurer! My friends and I spent most of the summer (and as much time during the school year as we could sneak in) out exploring the Unending Fields. We often walked but, mostly, we rode our bicycles. Our bicycles--the off roading wonder machine for kids in grade school back in the day. Alas, when I went back many years later I found out the Old Yellow House had been torn down and replaced by subdivisions. I also found out that it really wasn't very far out there; it was only a few blocks. But when I was in grade school it was Way OUT There--way out in the Unending Fields. Those summers, those years, those trails, and those friends were only the Beginning. I've been doing some form of off roading, on and off, ever since. Motorcycles, mountain bikes, a '73 Jeep Waggoneer, various trucks, ATVs, and now a side by side and a Jeep Rubicon. To Get Out and Go! That's the dream, the goal, the purpose. And pretty much always has been--even though I list my start date as 2005 which is when I got my first ATV and got serious about going off roading as an adult in pursuit of escape and exploration. I was living in Wisconsin at the time and covered most of Northern Wisconsin on my Yamaha Grizzley (hence my dirt world nickname, Griz) with side trips to the Black Hills in South Dakota and the trail systems in Utah. In about 2010 I moved to Northern Idaho where I mostly used the ATV for farm work and switched my back country explorations to either my F350 or my Blazer S10. In 2020 (yeah, THAT 2020) my wife and I moved to Southern Idaho where I started enjoying going out into the high desert areas of the Owyhees to the south of us and into the Boise National Forest to the north. It was on the Trinity Ridge Road, in the Boise National Forest, that I learned my fairly new F350 with suspension built to carry a camper and pull a trailer was NOT a particularly comfortable trail rider. Not comfortable at all, actually. So I told my wife I needed something that actually had functioning suspension. You know the kind: where the tires and wheels move up and down in relation to the chassis when going over rocks and ruts. Yeah, well, the F350 doesn't do that. The Kawasaki KRX 1000 does. Does it quite well, actually. Alas, Southern Idaho can be hot (and cold) and dusty. The KRX doesn't have air conditioning and isn't dust resistant and my wife doesn't much like that. So, when my daily driver wore out, I got a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe. It's enclosed, keeps the dust mostly out, has AC and heat, and still has suspension that allows the tires and wheels to go up and down in relation to the chassis when I go over rocks and ruts. And it can carry all my camping gear, my RTT, my wife, and my dog. Life is Good! See you on the trails!