Range Rover Classic - Rackspace Hosting

FROST IN FLORIDA!
An Inconvenient Truth:
Story by: Sonja Palomino Photos by: Janet Poelsma
It’s the Day After Tomorrow in Davenport, Florida. Today is February
16 at the Wallaby Ranch, the new site for the Florida Winter Roundup.
It’s a freezing Friday night. Now I know what you’re thinking…
freezing… in Florida… yeah, right. Really, it was freezing! As the sun
dropped, so did the temperature. By 11:00pm, frost had covered the
tents of the assembled enthusiasts. Some gathered around the blazing
group campfire to join in warm conversation about the day’s events.
Several of us remained by the fire for several hours, mostly out of fear
of walking away from the heat just to go into a cold tent and praying
that your sleeping bag will be thick enough to keep in the body heat.
Remember, we are Florida folk. At about 3:00am we stoked the fire
by adding several large logs hoping that in the morning we would be
able to get it going with little effort. That night, the mercury kept
dropping and didn’t stop until it was at 23 degrees. So much for our
warm and fun in the sun Florida off-roading event!
Earlier that morning, when it was much warmer, we brought our
’04 Discovery II and our ’67 Series II-A Land Rover, and joined over
300 Land Rover enthusiasts and 70 Land Rovers at the 6 th annual
Florida Rover Roundup. After five years of riding the trails in the
Ocala National Forest, we decided a change of scenery would be nice.
Wallaby Ranch is a world famous hang gliding school located in
central Florida near Walt Disney World. It sits on over 500 beautiful
acres. Over the past several years, Malcom Jones, the proprietor of
the ranch, has hosted dozens of Land Rover customer appreciation
days for dealerships throughout Florida. This year, his spectacular
locale proved the perfect spot for our event.
One of the benefits of this property is the seemingly unlimited
amount of land The existing trails had names such as Proving
Ground, Trek Trail, Safari Trail, and Emu. These trails consistently
challenged the stock Land Rovers and the novice drivers,
particularly after a good rain; however, this year we have been in a
drought and all the trails that are usually under water were bone dry.
Knowing that the chance of enough rain to soak the trails was
unlikely, we altered some of the existing trails to make them more
challenging, and even built a new one. We focused on improving the
Trek Trail to use for our trials competition. Many obstacles were
added and the trail was extended. This trail was designed to push the
limits of the vehicles without incurring any damage.
8