I have a very small family with only 1 brother, and 2 cousins you'd think it would be easy to get us all together....it isn't! Because the family is small, and my cousins/brother, are very close to my age we were pretty tight growing up. I spent summers at my cousins, out on the farm, and my cousin and I rode just about everything you could think of all over the farm. Go-carts, three wheelers, motorcycles, heck they even had a motorcycle that had wide tires on it. I loved those times in the country, we'd be gone all day.

We have a cabin in Broken Bow Oklahoma, and it will sleep 23. So, I came up with the idea that we should all get together for a few days. My dad, cousin and I have UTVs, and Broken Bow has some great trail riding so a plan was hatched. Between the kids we have now, parents us cousins we ended up with 16 coming down for a few days.

The first day i decided, with this large of a group, it would be best just to stay to the main road. The road through the forrest is pretty well maintained and there isn't really much needed in the way of technical driving or any risk of a machine flipping over. We toured through the forest, every so often pulling over at a creek to cool down. It was great to see all the younger ones get some creek swimming time and just generally enjoy themselves. Bonus, cell phones didn't work, so even the older kids were engaged. The only downsides to day 1 was that the road was dry dirt and everyone took a healthy amount of dust. The other down side was there wasn't much to get the adrenaline going...nothing too steep, or no water that was too deep.

Day 2 the ladies really wanted to explore more of town. This opened my cousin and I to go back, and get off the beaten path. We took some pretty steep trails, and unfortunately found some pretty deep water. By the time we realized how deep the water was it was too late, we had water coming over the seats.

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I'll tell you in this situation a winch is invaluable. It took us about 3 hours to get the machine unstuck and dried out. Pro-tip: When the belt gets wet you aren't going anywhere, but if you pull the plug out of the belt housing it dries a lot faster. We also found a pretty steep trail that nobody seemed to be going up, so of course we had to try it.

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That trail is a lot steeper, with some pretty deep ruts and rocks that makes it pretty challenging.

Overall, it was great, and with everyone's busy life I don't know if we'll get a shot at doing it again....but this was time well spent.