Cherie and I were excited to return to Wheeling for Hope this year. While we expected we’d miss it last year since we had a newborn addition at home we had not anticipated the event would be cancelled due to Covid. So this year we were excited to see a little return to normalcy just like everyone else. Ethan sat this one out, staying with Papa and MorMor back in Charlottesville giving Cherie and I a weekend for just the two of us.
This year we were in just a spectacular group. Group 4, lead by Chris Boucher and tailgunned by Cliff Bryant, our whole group was just a collection of good people with the right attitude. Also worth calling out were Trey and Kiersten Critzer who we met at the event and plan to wheel with again when the opportunity arises. Check out Trey’s video capturing the event from their Nissan Frontier. JT and Phillip were also a pleasure to meet, thanks for making the weekend memorable.
JT and Trey ended up on our winchline at different times this weekend. Both were a little different. JT got high centered at the bottom of a very steep hill meaning I needed to anchor to a tree to keep from sliding forward while winching. Trey got hung up on a tiny slippery rock in the middle of the woods meaning we needed to use our rarely used snatch block to change the angle of the recovery.
Saturday night was especially cold and wet. The raffle was great and as is usual went past dark because of how many items they had to give away. We won a small electric lantern that alternates between very bright white light and “flickering” amber/orange light which looks very campfire-esque. Each time you open it it switches to the other mode, kind of cool. We were glad we were staying in Charlottesville though because of the cold wet night, something we chose to do since we weren’t camping with anyone we knew this year.
Overall a great weekend though, as I think the pictures show. Glad we were able to go and have a great weekend with some new friends.
