The Big Nasty

On Saturday we took the kids on an adventure. We drove about an hour from our house just a few miles from the Oregon border. Our destination: The Big Nasty Hill Climb. We found ourselves in the middle of a pasture next to some very large hills.

The main point of this 2 day event is to drive a dirt bike up the hill as fast as you can and see how far you can get. Sounds easy right? Not so much. These hills were straight up almost and the soil was pretty sandy. The spotters on the side of the hills were having a hard time even WALKING up these hills. They were using ropes to help keep themselves from sliding down. Brilliant, right?

So who in their right mind wants to even attempt this crazy idea? One of Doug's employees apparently. He's done it for the last few years and each year gets a little farther up the hill. This year he even won his age category (oh yeah there's a whole judging system with classes and people actually do this PROFESSIONALLY!!!). It made the whole thing a lot more fun to actually know someone who was participating. His kids also go up the big stupid hill too. It's hard for me to imagine my boys (or girl - there was a whole class of girls and a lot of them made it a lot farther up the hill than some of the boys did!) doing anything that crazy. I would have a heart attack for sure.

There's a whole camper city. People come for the whole weekend. Last year there were 10,000 people! I had never even heard of this thing. There was a helicopter giving rides, tons of food vendors and lots of other things to look at.

The kids had a BLAST. We got there around 10 AM and didn't leave until 4:30!!! They all fell asleep on the way home. It was a good thing too because we had a few people over to watch the Boise State Broncos play that evening.

For the first couple of hours of the day Gabe was pretty overwhelmed with the whole thing. He just sat snuggled into my chest with his eyes closed. But eventually he warmed up to the whole thing. They loved watching all the motorcycles go up the hill and they would say "Uh oh, momma!" when they would crash. It was really a fun adventure and we had a great day doing something new.

You can learn more about it here. http://www.bignastyhillclimb.com/

Where Gabe spent most of the day. Poor little guy.

The cool trick jumpers. They could even do complete flips!
The REALLY Big hill (used by the pros). Only a handful of people made it all the way to the very top.
The "SMALLER" hill but actually harder I think than the bigger hill. No one actually made it to the top of this hill.
Doug's employee on one of his rides up the hill. They ride until the bike won't go anymore and then it will sometimes pop off the bike. Then the people with ropes try to catch the bike and help the rider get back on so they can ride it back down the hill. Crazy stuff!