Florida Gambler 500

Can't believe NO ONE from this site participated in this awesome event over this past weekend. I know my Runner would have done an outstanding job of the sugar sand and trails but considering we just got her repainted last month, it was out of the question. Guess we will be hunting for another manual one thats in rougher shape that we can use as a woods/trail Runner.

 

Woulda gone but live California.. but!! we’ll be down in mex for the 1000 later this year.

 

They have another one scheduled for Tennessee in September. Kinda wish sometimes I had mine painted in Rhino paint instead...so I could play and not worry so much about the brand new black paint job.

 

Not the Florida one, but I have done three gamblers already. I ran a Sequoia in one and a Jeep ZJ in the other two, not my 4R. The sequoia is clearly not the right vehicle. The ZJ was perfect but I lost it to a deer driving back from the Lonestar México gambler last May. Looking for another vehicle now. Those Gambler rallies are lots of fun.

 

I live in Tennessee, can someone share more details about this?

 

We found out about the Tennessee Gambler on Facebook.

 

Do a search for your state and gambler 500, most communication is done via Facebook. Very low key events and lots of fun. There are events all over the US. The concept is to get a cheap vehicle and hope that it lasts the weekend. A typical event would be arriving Friday afternoon, evening to a campground. Saturday morning, You receive a sheet with waypoints/gps coordinates that take you over varied terrain, bonus points for off-road, but nothing extreme. Back in camp, you bs, cook, drink and talk about the day. Repeat on Sunday. You can expect to cover about 500 miles total. However, it rained on my first one and the roads were red clay roads. We returned to camp at 9pm with only about 70% of the waypoints. The teams that did the whole thing arrived at 4am. There are no winners or losers. It is all done for fun and usually there is a charity associated with the event. Fees are in the range from $0 to $25 depending on logistics and normally you pay the campground fee. These are not luxurious places so about $10 per night. These are ground root events with really nice people organizing and participating. Check out the cars used a 4R is almost cheating. It gets addictive.

 

Awesome. I have the perfect vehicle for this! My friend gave me a 1993 Land Cruiser and I'm in turn giving it to a different friend, who is going to put a salvaged engine in it. I think the trans and transfer case are good. If we can pull it off in time it should be a blast.

 

I’m looking at events here in the southwest to attend this fall.