➡ The text discusses the author’s experience with a night vision device, which works well with some moonlight but struggles in pitch black conditions unless an IR illuminator is used. The author also shares his encounters with wildlife and his visit to a gas station with a historical tree. He mentions a local bar that is a tribute to John Wayne and the movie True Grit, and how it faced opposition from the Black Lives Matter movement.

➡ The author visited a gas station in the West, where he learned about its history from the owner, Bob. The station, known for its ‘Hanging Tree’, faced controversy from people wanting to remove its historical signs. However, local residents, armed and ready to protect their history, successfully discouraged them. The author appreciates the station’s history and services, and criticizes those who try to erase it.

I’ve seen a lot of crazy things over the years while traveling on the road, and I made it a point to get it all on video. Anything with a crazy story, anything with a, you know, historical background. I’ve tried to get it all and lay it out in a video. Well, in this video, I found something that might be the most racist thing in the United States or it just may be American history. But that’s up to you to decide. So I’m gonna have you sit back, relax, and check this out. I’m Sam. I’m Amy. We’re from California and this is Jailbreak.

Nice. Thank you, ladies. You’re welcome. In the previous episode, I left off in Missouri. I was accosted by a girl trying to steal my truck. And I did a walk around video of a friend of mine’s, brand new, troopy, but I had to deal with my tranny. The transfer case is. It has to be replaced. So I have to get to Colorado Springs, where another transfer case is waiting for me. So quickly to the Batmobile. It’s crazy because the way this truck looked wasn’t my first priority in any way whatsoever at all. But you gotta admit, it does look pretty cool.

The first truck I tried to buy was concrete gray. It was not black, but that fell through, so black it is the Batmobile. At any rate, I’m going off on a thing here. I hate to keep talking about the transfer case, but it’s a daily reality that I have to deal with. And this is part of the story. So I apologize if I’m complaining, quote unquote. There’s chapters in every video you can skip, but here we go. So almost a month ago, I left Boston and I headed down to West Plains, Missouri. I met up with who I had to meet up with.

I fulfilled my obligations and according to tracking, my transfer case was traveling. It was finally shipped and it was traveling to Colorado Springs. So that was my next stop. I gotta make it to Colorado Springs. So away we go now, heading towards Colorado Springs. I know I’ve got time because I’m gonna land there right around the fourth of July weekend. I know the kid that shop that I’m sending the transfer case to is going on vacation. So I’m in no huge rush. So I decide to find myself a nice campsite in Kansas, if that’s even a thing.

Now, usually I just blow through Kansas because it’s flat, it’s kind of boring, and it’s usually really windy. But this time I Overlander turned me on to a good Spot. It was called the Osage Fish Pond and it was BLM land and you can camp there for up to 14 days. So that’s exactly where I headed. And I found a pretty decent spot, but it was an absolute mess. Now bln land is awesome because you can camp there for up to 14 days. You move your campsite, you’re good to go. The problem is some people actually live there and they trash the place.

I found dirty diapers, all sorts of crap. So I went around the entire area and policed it all up and then turned it into a fire. Once I did that, I just sat back and enjoyed the view because it was beautiful. So after enjoying the place, cleaning it up a little bit, setting up my truck, my campsite, etc, I did a little exploring, shop, spooked a few birds and then hit the wreck because I needed to get up the next day and hit the highway. I have a hard time staying in one place for all too long, unless of course I’m way off grid.

But it was time to hit the road. Colorado Springs, here I come. So with not very much to do or see while traveling through Kansas to Colorado Springs, I just basically put the pedal down, stopped and got gas and repeated until I finally made my way to colorful Colorado. My destination in Colorado Springs was Redline Land Cruisers. It’s owned by a buddy of mine named Justin who I’ve known for several years. These aren’t one of the new overland shops that bolt on bumpers and shock absorbers and lights and call themselves Toyota technicians. These guys are the real deal.

They work on your truck exactly like it was their truck. So why didn’t I bring my 4Runner there? Because A, I was on the west coast and B, it’s a Land Cruiser shop, but I should have known better. Thomas, Justin, Brian, Rodney and Georgie all treat your vehicle like it was their own. And they do some pretty amazing stuff here. So I’m stoked that Justin gave me some time to work on my truck. You may remember Justin from the time we got stuck above NORAD. Yeah, so it’s Sunday morning, today is the 15th and it’s 9 o’ clock in the morning.

I gotta do a live show with a couple of other YouTubers on another channel. But then after that I’m meeting up with a subscriber from Jailbreak in his Land Cruiser and I’m taking him up there. You see that way up there where those antennas are? Well, there’s a shelf road up there that a lot of vehicles go over to their destruction. And I Was up there two years ago with Justin from Redline Land Cruisers, the owner, and we’re going back up there. Last time we were up there, we ran into a snow slide and it was bad.

Almost didn’t make it. We’re in a bit of a bind here. You see what I mean? We ran into snow and we thought we could get by it, for we made a slight error in judgment. Fortunately, I brought two shovels. Unfortunately, we have two kids. No, I’m not doing that right now. Trying to straighten the truck out so it doesn’t go over the side. And I’m trying to keep the kids calm and myself calm. Let him do this. There it is. There it is. There it is. Oh, my goodness. Those Max Tread pros work great. You’re better than you were.

After you go through an experience like that with a guy, you tend to gain some trust. And that’s what we have. Walking through the shop is like walking through a Toyota museum. There’s always some sort of truck like this 55 sitting on an 80 chassis. This is sick. You see this kind of stuff at Redline all the time. If I had the time to spare, I’d actually work for Justin, but I don’t. But if you’re a Toyota technician and you want to work on vehicles like they belong to you with nobody breathing over your shoulder, hit up Redline because I’ll leave a link below.

Now, I arrived at the shop well before my transfer case did and right in time for the fourth of July weekend. So I had some time to kill. And that’s exactly what I did. No two ways about it. Colorado’s got plenty of ways to fill your time. So I grab a hotel that I’ve stayed at before, and my intent is to edit a bunch of videos, which I did. I banged out about five of them for all my different channels, so that was awesome. But now it’s time to explore. So quickly to the mountain bike. Literally right next to the hotel was a trail called the Santa Fe Trail.

And apparently it’s a on United States Air Force property. So I definitely put some miles on on this trail. And I did it mostly at night. It’s nightfall right now, so I’m riding out. By the time I get back, I’ll be riding in the dark. But that’s perfect because I want to check. I want to test out a digital night vision camera that I got from a company called Aurora. It’s an Aurora Pro. This isn’t true night vision. It’s digital night vision. And as long as You’ve got a moon, you’ve got night vision. It’s pretty badass.

Check this out. Now it’s on nighttime setting and we’ve got a very good moon. And yet not another star in the sky. Just that. Just a heads up, it is pitch blackout. I can’t see anything. This thing works really well, man. It sounds exactly like something’s walking through the water. That’s trippy, man. So that appears to be badass. But let me show you what this camera does when it’s dark out. I was in Black Canyon, which is a dark canyon, and I’ll show you what this thing did there. So this is what it looks like when you have very little moonlight.

Because I’m in Black Canyon National Forest and you’re about three quarters of a mile down this canyon. Driving in will take out your brakes. Take note of the little thing in the sky. Now, I could see this little thing with my naked eye, but most of those stars you’re seeing, I couldn’t see. This thing works well when there’s a really bright moonlight, but it is not true night vision. But for 1000 bucks, for most people, this thing does what most night vision can’t do. It can record, but it has its limitations. I mean, I can see the stars, all is well.

Looking up, good to go. But when you look down at the mountain or the canyon, you can see, but you can’t dist. You can’t differentiate anything from anything else. For the most part. That was kind of, you know, it kind of bummed me out. Now, I didn’t use an IR illuminator, which I could have, and I probably would be able to see a whole heck of a lot better. I will test that out when, you know, in the next couple of days. But here’s the deal. If you’re using night vision to track somebody and you don’t want them seeing you, if you use an IR illuminator and they have night vision, you’re lit up like a Christmas tree.

So this thing’s pretty cool, but it definitely has its limitations. And this is not a sponsored product. I recommend it if you need light night vision. But if you need tactical night vision, you need something like the PBS 14, which is a monocular, or PVS 7s, which is a biocular, or the PVS 30, which is a rifle mount. That’s my opinion at least. See, right here on the canyon walls, you can’t see anything. I mean, I can see the sky, the outline, etc, but you can’t see anything. It definitely needs Light to work. You see what I’m saying, Sam? So for a thousand dollars, this is a good piece of kit because this is with a three quarter moon and it lights it up really, really nicely.

No problem. You can differentiate between the grass, the trees, the water, the rocks and anything that may be creeping in there. But when you have limited light, you can barely see like you just saw. It is what it is. It’s digital night vision. If you’re looking for night vision, night vision is probably going to run you between 3,500 and $6,000. So 1,000 bucks is a score. It gives you capabilities you usually wouldn’t have. But again, it’s not bulletproof whatsoever at all. I will compare this to an iPhone Pro 14 max to a PVS 14 true night vision with a Greco recorder on it.

You have to add an additional item to your night vision to make it record. They don’t record out of the box. Thermals, on the other hand, do record out of the box. But this is the Aurora Pro and I wanted you to check it out. So there it is. So there you have it. There’s my unbiased, unsponsored, mind you, opinion of these particular optics. If you’ve got a little bit of moonlight, you’re good to go. If it’s pitch black, you’re going to need an IR illuminator. But in another video dedicated just to this, I will compare these side by side by side by side with even with thermals.

So you can really check it out. But let’s get back to what I was doing. So I’m in Colorado Springs, I’ve got to wait for my buddy to come back from vacation. And I still haven’t received the other transfer case from Yoda Masters as of yet. But it’ll be here. I spend the time in the hotel room, which I can’t stand doing because I’m paranoid about my truck being, being alone. But whatever, I make the best of it. I ride around at night time in here and this is an enormous trail that goes on forever. It’s the United States Air Force Academy property apparently.

But there’s a lot of wildlands in there because nobody can mess with anything because it’s United States Air Force Academy property apparently. So I’ve done this trail about four times. One time every single night. I love riding trails at night and I happen to come across this and I thought this was hilarious. So while poking around, I discover an enormous beaver dam. It has three layers to it and a massive beaver’s den. This little Stream was dammed up by these beavers on this property and turned into this angry beaver. Very angry beaver. Give us. Give us a little tail slap, mate.

There you go, laddie boy. That’s a fine job. So there’s 1, 2, 3, 4. And then there’s an unknown entity that I saw surfacing, knows only which. I don’t know what it is. Oh, you sure pissed off the beaver tonight. Seems like I was a bit hard on the beaver, wasn’t. We still got a couple of young whippersnappers approaching, but that one’s really angry. You can tell no beavers were actually harmed in the making of this video. FYI. I got curious and I followed the pond that the beavers had made down to this, the choke point, so to speak.

Because there was an unknown thing in the water that kept surfacing. And I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what it is. And I’m pretty good with wildlife, so I start nosing around and it’s getting dark, so I got a flashlight. Well, actually, you’ll hear it. I’m trying to figure out what it is over here using a flashlight because it’s getting dark. Whoa. Whoa. I’ll tell you what, that gave me a jolt. Now, I still have no idea what that was, but I nearly sharp my pants when that happened because I didn’t see it in the water.

And then suddenly it launched like a torpedo out of a submarine. Scared the shite out of me. But you can get a special permit from the Air Force Academy to fish in there, and many people do. I guess there’s all sorts of crazy fish in there, but I don’t know what that particular one was, but. But it definitely surprised me. So over the last few weeks, I’ve gathered an incredible amount of content and I just have to put it all together. I’m really pushing it, making this video this long. But after I was done messing around with the beaver, it was time to hit the road.

I didn’t want to stay in a hotel any longer. I’m waiting around, so screw it. I’m taking the truck to Ouray. I’m going to the mountains because I love that area. And I’ve got time to kill over the 4th. 4th of July weekend type thing. So I head that way and I run into my favorite gas station. No ethanol VP Racing fuels. And I find this comical sign sitting on the gas pump. And I’m videotaping it, and as I do so, the owner walks up to me. Now, the owner is a 78 year old guy, tall, cowboy type guy with Wolfman Jack type hair.

Google it. And he proceeds to talk to me. And he’s like, yeah, I’ve seen you here before. Not too long ago, I said, I come here every time I go to your a. Whether it’s in my Land Cruiser. And now the Forerunner, one of the two. And we start shooting the. And blah, blah, blah, and talking and all that stuff. And I realized that there’s a thing on this property that makes this property very unique. It’s called the Hanging Tree. And that’s actually the name of the gas station. And it’s more than a gas station. It’s an RV park.

You can stop there and use a bathroom, you can wash your clothes, you can take a shower, all for free at a gas station. And he was explaining how Black Lives Matter tried to make him, force him to take this down. And he was explaining, that’s absolutely ludicrous. We’re not taking this down. It’s a piece of history. And apparently a couple of people confronted him and he rebuffed them. But then he told me a story that I had no idea about, about a restaurant called True Grit that’s right up the road. And BLM tried the same stuff with them.

Now, you all remember blm, correct? Well, let me refresh your memory. During the pandemic, when most people weren’t allowed to go to work, weren’t allowed to take care of their children, weren’t allowed to leave their house, etc, Black Lives Matter was somehow completely immune to the pandemic the rest of the world was suffering from. You’re crazy. You’re crazy. You’re crazy. And they basically did whatever they wanted. The cops wouldn’t do anything to them. They were running around breaking things, smashing things. And then the people that were actually running the Black Lives Matter movement took all the money they raised and bounced.

Yeah, Sound familiar? They break people’s faces for money and bounce. That’s what I do. So. Exactly. Maybe that wasn’t the greatest comparison, but you understand what I’m saying? So the guy that owns the Hanging Tree tells me about this bar in town in Montrose that I’ve gone to before because they serve food and it’s your old school boardwalk, spurs on the wood floor, swinging door type place. And when you walk in, it is a living, breathing John Wayne museum. Everywhere the eye looks, you can see all sorts of things about John Wayne and specifically the movie True Grit.

I mean, this is serious. This is America at its core. You see what I’m saying? And Apparently, Black Lives Matter had a serious problem with this. But we’ll get to that in a second. So when you walk through this place, you can order, you know, drinks, obviously, but I don’t drink. But you can order food to go. I can do food to go. And I’ve done it before. But I walked in here and I walked around, and I didn’t realize there was an upstairs. See, Notice what I’m showing you. The BLM had a serious issue with this Black Lives Matter.

Can you imagine why? Well, to me, we need more of these places in the United States because this is old school stuff. Everybody in here was polite. Everyone acted accordingly. And any. Everybody treated each other with respect. You see what I mean? And this is an enormous reflection of the West. All day, all night. I mean, I’m from Boston, and I absolutely had reverence for this place. It’s an amazing place. But here’s the story as he told it to me as best as I could remember. Okay, before I run this clip, I just want to remind people that this channel is not made for people that are easily offended that shelter in place, or they may be snowflakes.

So be warned. And if you are any of those three things, please unsubscribe and run away right now. Thank you. So I just ran into the owner of the Hanging Tree gas station. BP racing. I stopped there all the time because they have phenomenal no ethanol gas out west. They run ethanol, and supercharged trucks don’t like ethanol, I’ve discovered. And he walked up on me as I was taking a picture that I found rather comical on the gas pumps, it said, we’re out of gas except for a super or premium. So I’m taking a picture of it because it was a bunch of spelling typos that I found humorous.

Well, as I’m turning away, the guy walks up behind me and says something or other. And I ignore him because I’m an asshole. And I also. It’s early in the morning, and I’m thinking, this guy’s probably gonna ask me, you know, I got no gas, I need money or something to that effect. He catches my attention again, and I actually talk to him, and his Name’s Bob, he’s 78 years old, and he’s the owner of the place, which is kind of trippy. And he goes on to tell me an absolute history lesson on this entire area, including his Hanging Tree, which one person has been recorded as being hung on turning into a BLM kerfuffle, we’ll call it.

And then he tells me about True Grit, which is a restaurant in town based on John Wayne, something to that effect. And a bunch of these crybaby millennial, whatever you want to call them, type people thought they were gonna jump in a bus and roll out there and tell these people to take down all their history signs, etc in their residence. And sadly, they were met by 60 plus residents that were exercising their right to bear arms and they rebuffed them, we’ll call it. How about that? The millennials jumped back into their little charter bus and scampered away and all is well and the place still stands.

And as I’m saying, as I’m making this video, I’m watching some quote unquote millennials walking by making sour faces as though they were just. Just had a pine cone inserted into their rectum with a plain plunger. You know what I mean? Yeah, it goes in smooth, comes out like a hand grenade. At any rate, the history on the hanging tree is actually awesome. And the fact that anybody wanted to pull it down is ludicrous, man. Absolutely ludicrous. To me, that gas station, the hanging tree is an icon. I’ve always stopped there because they got awesome gas.

They let you use the, the bathrooms in there, they’ve got a shower you can use in the back, bathrooms in a washer and dryer, and it’s all free, you know what I mean? And people still want to about it. It’s unbelievable. At any rate, I wanted to record this before I forgot it. I’m out. So, long story short is these fellas all jumped on a bus, they headed to Montrose, Colorado, and they were going to make the guys at True Grit take down their paraphernalia. And this is what the residents had to say. I’m your huckleberry.

Indeed they were. The residents actually rallied around this place and did what you’re supposed to do. They protected their property as nobody else was able to do it. Apparently, Black Lives Matter got away with a lot of this stuff in most cities and towns, because most cities and towns people are not armed and they depend on the police. But the people in Colorado acted as grown adult Americans should have. There was a threat and they rebuffed it. Enough said. True Grit still stands to this day. And as a little comparison, here’s a mug shot from Machine Gun Kelly.

And here’s our modern day Machine Gun Kelly. He thinks things have changed a little for the worse. I do. But who am I to talk? At any rate, so there it is. Episode two is in the books. I’m sure will be few, will be less a few subscribers tomorrow or worse. But it is what it is. I’m not going to be ashamed for being an American, being a veteran and living in this country because of a lot of people that think taking everything away somehow makes everything whole. It’s not how it works. We’re going in a bad direction right now, and I’m not part of that.

So it is what it is. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you hit that like share and subscribe. Leave a comment below and if my channel’s still up, I’ll return the favor. I am out.
[tr:tra].

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