Beginning in October, we tackled Mike's Sky Ranch area. While we did not know exactly which path the course would take, we knew it would go through there somewhere. We didn't know which direction the course would go either, but we figured it would not go UP Simpson's Hill because of all the complaints about that in the last 500 (thank god; that hill is awful!). We asked the owners of Mike's Sky Ranch if they had any idea what path the course was going to take and all they could say was that they recently saw Sal Fish in the area, but he wouldn't tell them anything. So we familiarized ourselves with EVERYTHING. Because we could not find babysitting the first weekend, we took the kids with us and pre-ran in our suburban. While it was a very slow drive, the suburban made it through everything, and it allowed me to get a good map in my head of the different roads in the area and the type of terrain. I became worried about some of the difficult goat trails in the area. But Tim helped me by stopping the car, getting out with me and walking up and down the paths while visualizing exactly where all four tires on the quad needed to be placed in order to successfully pass through in either direction. I was left feeling a little nervous about this section, but I still thought it was doable and I had to just wait to see which difficult parts the official course would cover.

It was this first trip pre-running with our suburban that we learned that our family of four could actually sleep comfortably in the car. However, we didn't bring enough blankets this time because we were still in the San Felipe frame of mind and did not realize that the Mike's Sky Ranch area gets as high as 4000 feet in altitude. It was a coooold night, but a fun one because we had a little bonfire with the kids at night and a great breakfast at Mike's Sky Ranch that warmed us up in the morning.