Adrenaline Rush – Conquering Obstacles

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE FENDER

The obstacle was right in front of her and despite trying several times, Caroline Keown was not able to get past it. But she was not ready to back down with her off-road rig. She took another good look at the triple set of old truck tires that were layered to create a mountain, packed in with red Florida clay. For 15 minutes she tried to go left, tried to go right, but her monster of an off-road vehicle was hung up.

The determination was written on her face. Keeping her tires spinning, and not paying much attention to the screaming roar of her engine, she decided to punch it, scaling the tire mountain and going airborne before coming down with a loud thud that shook the ground as a couple of dozen onlookers, most with cell phones filming the jump, cheered her on.

“I love that adrenaline rush,” she says moments after the run, with triumph written clearly on her face. It’s the calm but exuberant moment after exercising all the force and power of her off-road rig and coming out in one piece at the other end. Laughing, she admits, “I knew coming out of it I was going to land hard.” With the adrenaline rush, she says she didn’t feel a thing. “But when I go back and look at those videos I go, ‘Oh my God, I should be hurting.’”

For Caroline and other weekend warriors who own rock crawlers and king-size jeeps, The Swamp, a 100-acre off-road paradise located 30 miles north of Panama City becomes “adrenaline central” for two Saturdays every month when skills and equipment are put to the test. Just about anything built to tackle hills, sand, mud, and water on four wheels will show up to prevail over the mud-holes, mountains of dirt, rocks, and heaps of old tires.

Caroline is one of the regulars at The Swamp, making her way around the 100 acres in a custom-built rock crawler she calls “Spicey” that stands out with its atomic orange color. For her, the rush is the reward. “You look at an obstacle and you just keep trying and trying,” she says. “And then you just feel the tires grab and you know this is it, this is it!”

One of the few women you will see driving the big rock crawlers at The Swamp, Caroline has a reputation for not backing down and not giving up. “She’s really just one of the boys,” says co-owner of The Sawamp, Charles Bode. He says a lot of male drivers underestimate her driving ability. “She’s hurt a lot of feelings when she out-drives the guys,” he says with a laugh.

Getting over a mountain of tires is good for one rush, but Caroline, 52, is always looking forward to the next one. She says each obstacle is a different challenge so it just continues for her. Coming from Atlanta, Caroline has been staying with family in Panama City Beach the past two years and shares a passion for the sport with her younger brother, Evan Garner, who is also a regular at The Swamp. Evan chews up the ground in a rock bouncer that looks like it came out of one of the Mad Max movies and sounds like a train. Caroline used to borrow Evan’s old jeep before she bought her own rock crawler. Now they both are part of a close-knit group that frequents The Swamp and travels to other parks around the country several times a year.

Ask Caroline, or almost any of The Swamp regulars how they got started and they’ll likely point you towards the man in black, the man they all call “the Godfather.”

Tim Drbal, 52, has a couple of off-road vehicles; one that looks like a giant Jeep and a rock crawler he shares with his son. The crawler used to be a 1985 Toyota 4Runner that he purchased for $200 15 years ago. It now looks like a bunch of truck parts that have been welded together. It’s not pretty, and it’s not even close to looking intimidating, but you should see it climb. With only a 4-cylinder engine, Tim Drbal’s rock crawler is slow but can conquer just about everything and anything.

What earned Tim his Godfather title, are the miles, the hills, and the rocks he’s climbed and his willingness to help others get into the sport. A Mosley High School graduate, he has worked as a mechanic in Panama City for 31 years. He says in the heavy-duty, off-road world you either need to have a little bit of money or a little bit of mechanical talent. “And I have that little bit of mechanical talent,” he says laughingly.

Tim started with a dirtbike, then added a four-wheeler, then a four-wheel-drive truck. He remembers reading about an event in Utah, a Jeep safari that could be described as the Super Bowl for off-roaders. Intrigued, he made his first trip west in the mid-90s to participate. He says the event is what hooked him. Since then, he has made 15 trips back to Utah.

The adrenaline rush for Tim starts when he is packing up to go out for a trip. The entire trip is a rush of excitement, with every obstacle and every hill as a challenge. He says on some hills out west you can get to the top where you don’t know if, on your way back, you will be driving back or tipping and rolling down the hill.

The off-roading trend finally spread to remote areas in Tennessee and Alabama and his drives became a little shorter. That was in about 2007, Tim remembers. The Swamp opened in 2015, celebrating its fifth birthday in March.

Now driving his third home-built rig, he recalls that 20 years ago he bought his first vehicle for $2,200 and every year after that he would invest another $1,500. One year he would add power steering, the next year he got power brakes, and the next year after that, he added bigger tires. “It’s just been a progression over 20-plus years,” he says. When his first rig finally wore out, he took it apart, saved all the good parts, and started over.

“When you have a home-built buggy that just doesn’t look fancy, people might say, ‘He’s never getting up that hill, and then all of a sudden you do,” Tim says.

He is quick to point out that the best thing about this sport, or hobby, is that it doesn’t really matter if someone spends $2,200 on a vehicle or $100,000—everybody is out there playing, cheering each other on.

When Tim got started, he says his was the only custom-built rig in the Bay County area. Other drivers used their regular trucks and jeeps. He started getting questions from people who were thinking about upgrades. He shared what he had learned and helped others in the area move up to bigger machines. Soon, other enthusiasts joined him when he went to events in Tennessee and Alabama, where they would see a couple thousand buggies and come back with ideas on customizing their own. “Now they all blame me for spending their money,” he says with a grin.

Besides being an inspiration, the Godfather often helps other drivers with “spotting.” When Caroline reached the height of her frustration before punching it on the Tire Trail, Tim pointed out her options. He says it can be hard to see the big picture when you are behind the wheel. “It always helps to have someone there to help read the trail,” he remarks.

Caroline takes that a step further and says that Tim’s expertise is always welcome. When she first started getting behind the wheel in her brother’s Jeep, it was Tim sharing his knowledge with her. Her brother told her, “If Tim ever tells you to do something, then do it. Don’t question it, just do it.”

“The Godfather is the one that got every one of us into this,” says Charles Bode as he leans against an old rusty jeep and watches four-wheelers buzz around The Swamp’s big pit. He and his father, who everyone just calls Pops, are co-owners of the park where $10 a vehicle and $10 a person get you in the gate for all the obstacle maneuvering you can stand. The two team up with volunteer Latrel Mossburg to run the facility.

Bode moved to the Panhandle from Oklahoma in 2012. He drove a stock jeep on trails in the area until he met the Godfather when he was out riding one day. He was getting tired of just riding trails and wanted a bigger challenge, like the ones Tim and a few others were tackling with their rock crawlers and heavy-duty buggies. So he started adding parts as he could until he had a capable vehicle. The idea to open The Swamp followed.

Bode and his father had the vision of making The Swamp a family-oriented place where you can feel safe bringing your kids. The park has its share of the big rock crawlers, but you also see kids on four-wheelers and families riding in jeeps on the trails and in the mud and water obstacles. “It really doesn’t matter out here what you have,” Bode says. “We’re all family and it’s not a money thing.” He adds that he likes this sport because everybody is equal. “We are all just horsepower and adrenaline junkies,” he adds. Between 50 and 300 people come to The Swamp on their normal open days every first and third Saturday of the month, but several thousand will show up for their big birthday bash the first Saturday in March each year.

Bode says The Swamp has a motto. “We spend money we don’t have, to buy parts we don’t need, to drive over things we shouldn’t.” He describes the off-road community as a brotherhood of people always willing to help each other. On Saturdays Bode spends most of his time helping people fix their rigs when they break. When he’s not doing that, you can find him in the concession stand cooking up hot dogs they call “Swamp Dogs” and hamburgers for those who didn’t bring their own lunch.

The Godfather shares that willingness to help as well. Like many of the serious drivers, he routinely overpacks and brings tools and parts, just in case others on the trail need help. It’s not unusual to see repairs going on next to a trail or in the middle of an obstacle. Tim says they fix things on the fly because “we want to keep the fun rolling.” When a buggy flips over or ends up on its side—and that does happen—other drivers come to help and get the vehicle back on the trail.

The most colorful character you’ll find at The Swamp is definitely “Pops,” Charles Bode Sr., 72. Easily to spot in a crowd, Charles’s trademark outfit is a pair of overalls with his dog, Furby, tucked in front of his chest. He carries the small long-haired Chihuahua everywhere he goes. When someone gets stuck or stranded, Pops and Furby come to the rescue in a purple Grand Cherokee with a broken windshield and a metal cage over the entire body.

Late in the afternoon, Pops likes to sit by the pit and watch how drivers handle the obstacles. When everyone has left, it’s Pops who drives a 1985 bulldozer around, moving sand and clay, positioning tires, and trying to come up with new challenges every week.