Spring’s officially been here a while, so we started thinking about firewood for next winter. We now have an agreement with a lady to clean up her property’s woods in exchange for the firewood we can scrounge, which should work out pretty good as soon as the ground firms up a bit.
I jumped the gun and decided to go out there early and grab a load or two, and as soon as we stepped out of the Suburban we knew we’d be in trouble if she set foot on the grass. I love my ‘burban to death, but it’s only a 2wd vehicle and despite having a working posi in the rear-end, it’s still like a labrador on linoleum if it loses traction. 
So we decided to play it safe and leave the Suburban and the trailer on the gravel… at least that was the plan. The trailer we’re using is some dumbass short thing – the wheelbase between the wheels and the rear wheels of the towing vehicle is ridiculously short. If you take your eyes off it for a second you’re jack-knifed and have to try again – so I did my best not to take my eyes off it.
Naturally, that meant spending far too long with my eyes off the gravel – long enough at least to drop two wheels off it and onto the very, very soft grass which very quickly turned into a muddy soup with the around 4,000 ft/lbs of torque I think the ‘burban can deliver to the wheels.
We looked around for things we could use, but there wasn’t much that was any good… the house on the property was all locked up, there was a couple steel buildings but all were pretty well empty. We scrounged up a pressure treated 4×4, but couldn’t really get it into a position to make any use of it – one side of the vehicle was sitting on it’s guts.
We tried every traction aiding trick in the book to no avail – I finally gave up and called my wife to pick us up. We ended up having a neighbour with a 4×4 pull it out – it didn’t need much help to get out, just enough to get the front tire out and then it came out under it’s own power… but it needed help after all. We grabbed what wood we can, and brought it home, to wait for the ground to firm up before trying again.
I do have a great plan to build the ‘burban out into a 4wd, and I spend probably a couple hours a week doing research to that end – however I lack the funds to buy the 4×4 running gear I’d want to do the swap, and I don’t want to wimp out and use a 10-bolt front diff when everything else is built so heavy.