Prescott Rally is one of my favorite rallies. Fast but technical roads and a beautiful landscape.

This year, Chuck Wilson and I took on the challenge in his rally truck, Old Dirty. The truck was in tip-top shape, so we drove out to the first stage with confidence and looking to have a good time. The scenery on the way to the first stage near the town of Jerome is always a treat.

The first two stages were a blast. Chuck and I had a lot of fun in the truck. It turned out that the provided stage notes were not quite as accurate as hoped for, which created a few scary situations, but there was noone to blame but ourselves, since we had chosen not to participate in the early morning recce. Nonetheless, the rally was great fun.

Next came service, which is traditionally located at Depot 59 several miles away from the stages. On transit, we drove right into a wonderful sunset, see below.

Since the truck ran well, there was not much to do at service, so we drove back out to stage 3. At the startline, a worker told us to watch out for a crashed car a little over a mile into the stage. As it turned out, we never got to see that car. Coming a bit too fast into a lefthander, Chuck had to correct with the result that we ran out of room to set up for the next right turn. The truck got sideways as it slid towards the ditch. Chuck stayed in the gas and managed to keep the truck sliding around the turn for a moment, but then the left rear tire caught a big rock - we rolled several times.

At first we thought that we had rolled far off the road, but then we realized the car was right in the middle of the road. So I ran uphill to post the warning triangle and to slow down upcoming drivers while Chuck started checking out the truck. He managed to find his finish cigars and tequila flask, and, since we were finished, we smoked the cigars and drank tequila.

Fortunately, we didn't get seriously hurt. I'm quite bummed that we didn't get to finish the rally. Will need to try again next year.