I have a great story for everyone so gather round the brightly lit computer screen and listen up. This is a tale of two guys and a Jeep.

It all started at about 9:00 last night. I received a call from a friend and we decided we were going to hang out. We went to Dairy Queen and picked up a shake for my Dad and proceeded to go out on a drive looking for puddles.

Now we knew where to find a good one. One road near New Smyrna had been slowly flooding over and a couple days ago we hit it and had some good times in washed out sections of roadway. Now by washed out I mean this stuff was impassable by anything less than a 4x4 with considerable ground clearance (aka. the Wrangler) and this was two days ago. I would say it had a good 50-75 foot section where the entire road was flooded anywhere from 6-25 inches deep.

Well yesterday afternoon it rained. Quite a bit. We decided that the road (Martin's Dairy Road) would be even more flooded than it was two days ago but still passable. So we go down and the section that was washed out for 50-75 feet grew to half a football field in length.

This sent up a red flag in my head. If it grew that much in length, how deep could it be? I shook this from my mind and decided that if I put my passenger tires where the lip of the road should be I'd make it through.

Excellent. It worked we got to the other side. We go to turn around and we find that we are not to sure we can go back the way we came. So we decide that if we stay to the right again we can find the lip of the road and cruise along it.

Fatal error. It turned out the lip on that side of the road had been washed out entirely and was impossible to find. So we started cruising along the tree line hoping that we would find it again. Then disaster struck.

The Jeep bogged down in second gear in 4 lo. It stalled. No problem. I dry shifted into 1st (sans clutch pedal, don't want to suck water in) and started her up. Stall. I tried again but gave her gas. Too much. The rear bogged down deeper. Restart. Trouble but we make forward progress. The Jeep starts to slip. Stall. We try reverse. Slip. Stall... we're boned.

My friend and I turn to each other and start laughing in a half panic/worried state. We're alone. Who can tow us out? He starts making calls. I start checking forums. I gave a couple of guys a call from the thread in the Sunshine State forum here a little while ago. No luck. My friend has the same. Well I guess it's time to throw up the white flag and call home.

My Dad picks up. "Yes Son?". "Dad we're stuck on Martin's Dairy Road in about a 50 yards of water, can you call someone?". "Let me try" *Click*.

Ten minutes later he calls back. Edgewater Towing can get us out but it will cost $120 bucks. Fine I took the offer. With the chance of rain going up tomorrow I couldn't risk this situation getting worse. I was already ankle deep in water and if it got any higher it would go into the glovebox where my cb was.

Half an hour later Edgewater Towing is on the other side of the... well channel I guess... asking ME for directions how to get to me. I got stuck. You don't want my directions. He sticks to the right in his F350 massive duty or whatever and comes around behind me. He backs up and says you need to hook this winch to your tow hook.

Well my ankles are wet anyways so I manage to rock crawl my way out and around the Jeep so I can access the rear hook. I hook it, get back inside, and he pulls us out. He turns around and I let him lead us back out. I figured if he got stuck and I pulled him out he'd have to pay me .

So far there is no damage to the Jeep. As we we're driving out the clutch slipped a couple of times and made this loud... almost thud sound... but I disengaged, revved the engine, and it cleared it out just fine. The airbox stayed dry. The carpet got soaked so we pulled it at about midnight when I got home. I pulled all the plugs and I drove the Jeep to work today.

Ironically the guy who towed us out had the same name as me and I was just talking about getting a winch and new bumpers on jk-forum earlier yesterday afternoon.

So tomorrow the Jeep is getting a thorough cleaning. Anybody know how to get stank smell out of Jeep carpet? I'm considering just vacuuming it and febreezing it.

Oh my Dad also managed to snag a couple of pictures from the tow truck. I told him to bring the camera. I'll post those when I get off work later tonight.

 

No gators..... I was waiting for gators.


The carpet needs to be removed and thorought cleaned / rinsed / sanitized rinsed somemore and then dried before you fabreze.

Thanks for the story.

 

Wow. Good story. Water, especially unknown scares me.

 

Gators....ahhhh!

 

That looks like a wild road to wheel on. That will be a good memory for days to come. That is some good wheeling down there.