Abby Sunderland's Boat - Wild Eyes

Abby Sunderland's Boat - Wild Eyes

1964 Landcruiser

Modified 1964 Landcruiser, the person that owned this vehicle before me put a 327 chevy engine in it, which made it accelerate nicely. Close to where we lived in Fair Oaks CA was a place along the American River that was made for four wheeling. There were natural hills  moguls and steep hills to climb which I found were dangerous until I learned to maneuver a vehicle that had spun out on the side of a very steep hill. Going up the hill I was almost to the top when it became too steep and the wheels started spinning. With the brakes locked they would hold the vehicle from going backwards but every time I would let the brake off a little the front end would slide to the side which would put the vehicle across the side of the hill and in this position would cause it to roll. I sat there a very long time afraid to move; my brain finally went into gear and told me to put the cruiser into gear, the reverse gear that is, so that it would be driving it backwards instead of coasting, this gave me more control of cruiser and I backed down to safety. PTL

    We would rabbit hunt with the cruiser in large fields. With the top off the windshield would fold forward onto the hood allowing us to shoot at the rabbits with a 22 cal. pistol. It was fun and made us laugh until this smart rabbit ran through a portion of the field that was irrigated with us following but sinking down to the axles. We had to be pulled out with a very long chain but the rabbit was gone.

    We joined a jeep club and went on many joyful excursions; one was womens day where the women would drive. What a fiasco when the excursion was to a snow area. When a member of the club gets stuck they get a cowbell to attach to the front of their jeep, The bell was passed around a lot on womens day.

   Scotty's Castle Lets Go Seeit.com. (Please type this into your browser) The club went to Death Valley, played on the sand dunes and established a camp somewhere.but I don't know where that was. Some of the group decided to go and visit Scott's Castle so Ginny and I went along. After driving for about an hour we decided that we were lost. The ones with the maps were a little confused but what were we to do as we did not have any maps besides that we had no idea where we were, we just had to follow them to the next intersection where they said we needed to go as fast as we could because it was getting dark and cold. In fact it got so cold and we didn't have any coats so Ginny got down on the floor board and covered herself up with the carpet that we had put on them.  You wouldn't think it would get that cold in the desert in the summer below sea level. We finally got back to camp unfrozen but never found Scotty's Castle.

    My jeep club members nick named my cruiser "Socky Sipper" But it has been all over CA and NV making it a legal machine. We went to Mulakoff Diggins (the largest hydraulic mine in the world) and climbed all their hills and flew over some.

I went on a trip with three of my  friends on the Rubicon Trail which starts in Lake Tahoe and goes over the Sierra's to Placerville CA. The trail went over rocks as big as a house and through streams that came right through and across the floor boards. The only trouble we had was we hit a rock with the front differential and knocked the plug right out of it. We could not find the plug so we carved a tree branch to drive into the hole and it worked.We saw one jeep that overturned on a slope.  There were also some dunebuggy's there that needed a tow out of there. It was a beautiful trip and we had an enjoyable fun time,

  When we would go camping we would  take the cruiser with us and go cruising in the hills. This one time we were climbing up to a ridge and when we got to the top there was a dirt road up there, we followed it a ways and noticed that there was a stream of oil in the middle of the road. Soon we came to a beautiful Mercedes Benz sitting in the middle of the road. It was quite evident that the car had hit a rock and punctured the oil pan. There was no one around so we passed the car and continued on down the road about one half mile and came across four little older ladies just walking along the road, We offered out help and they said they needed  to get to a phone to call a wrecker, We could not take all of them so the owner of the car came with us and we headed back to our camp. When we left the dirt road we were crashing through brush and rolling over logs and all the little old laddie could say was "my this is a fine car". We got her to a place where she could call and  she found a wrecker close by. About three hrs later here comes a wrecker with the mercedes in tow.  The little old laddie got out of the wrecker and brought a fifth of Scotch and gave to us with many thank yous.















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