Ya'll ever experience driving your LMTV onto an Army base?
I have a story.
My buddy and I rolled into Red River in my M1079 to recover a M1082 trailer I'd won at auction. We checked in and after about a hour getting all the clearance paperwork done, the soldier at the desk handed us a faded map that looked like it had been Xero'ed a thousand times. He muttered "just follow the signs" and pointed towards the door. So with map in-hand, off we go thru the checkpoint.
The first couple signs were clear, but pretty small. We missed the third one (iirc, it was cardboard and had bent). So we went right instead of left. And that's when the fun began...
Keep in mind that Red River is in pretty deep woodlands. One turn in and only the road and trees are visible. We started passing all sorts of wonderous vehicles, equipment, and building. A tank trail I wanted to "accidently" turn onto. Pretty much
every missing HMMWV x-door missing from auction trucks (some stacked dozens high, sometimes just a pair learning against trees) scattered along the roadways. Lots of vehicles from the Gulf and Afghanistan adventures (my buddy had been kicking doors in Iraq in OpDS so he knew all the vics and a lot of the unit IDs). Miles of turns and hundreds of structures with wonderous giant air handling units with untold treasures buried deep below all passing before our eyes as we became even more hopelessly lost.
After an hour of being lost in the woods and driving in circles (which had gotten less fun as we were already behind schedule and had like circled thru areas we were absolutely not intended to see) we still couldn't reach anyone at the number they had provided. We were sitting at yet another t-intersection in the woods when I spotted another LMTV coming up behind us. I motioned them up, and two civilian-dressed guys looked at us at first puzzled then sorta in shock. I can only assume that they were maintenance or motor pool guys out goofing off in a truck they had worked on. We explained our situation and after eyeballing us for a bit, they said "go back that way, make one left, follow the road until you see building, make the first right."
And we did. Nobody asked where we had been and we were in no hurry to volunteer the info. I don't think we'd have really been in any trouble but I didn't want to stick around to find out. We hitched up the load, caged the brakes, tapped the drums with a 5lb sledge to get the shoes free, and homeward we went...
