I got 2 that I really like, although the first was before I picked up my 4runner.
We were camping at the beach, and some guys that were camping about 1/2 mile away were driving aroud, checking out the water to go spearfishing. I guess they were staring at the water a bit too hard, and dropped the entire passenger side off the "road", which is just a patch of asphalt about 15ft long, put on a high spot of the road close to the water to stop erosion, leaving the abrupt edge of the road as a 15ft. tall hill of sand.
Anyway, they managed to high-center their Dodge 2500 diesel truck sideways (sitting on frame, both passenger side tires spinning in the air. Luckily they had no tow strap, so my very prepared behind comes to the rescue. One of them went back to get his jeep, which couldn't pull the truck, so we tried tandem pulling with both our Tacoma and the Jeep. That got us nowhere, but one of my friends was sitting there giving advice to the dodge owner. He said "If you just turn towards the water, you can drive down the sand off this hangup, and then continue forward where it's easier to come back on the road."
Following the advise (which was pretty good, it looked/sounded scary but is what I would have done) this guy guns it, neglecting to let anyone know what he was doing. Next thing I know, his truck is going this way, while the jeep and tacoma are going that way, and I'm in the middle with tow straps all around, and everything hooked up. Luckily I dodges the flying straps, the truck got out, and we only managed to hook a bumper light on the jeep and rip it off with the strap.
Nice adventure for the night, until they come back about 2 hours later, asking if they can use the strap again, and probably our help with the truck too. As we went to their campsite, we noticed their truck, bone stock, backed up to shore with a trailer. They had driven a bone stock dodge, no lift, no tires, straight to the water. Of course they were stuck in ridiculously soft sand/small pebbles. Not being able to get within 50 ft. of the truck without getting stuck ourselves (I actually survey the ground before I go somewhere
) we were at a loss. It ends up there was a beach party full of high school kids, and of course they all come over to see what's going on. So now we have a bunch of drunk clueless kids trying to offer in their opinion. Luckily one of them had a strap, although high lifted truck had no gears, and he was unable to help pull.
Luckily my "strap" is an old fire hose with the nozzles cut off, so it is quite long. So we unhooked the trailer (by this time waves are basically crashing on the front door of a quad cab truck), aired down the tires, and tied 2 straps together, stringing it 50ft. across the beach to the Jeep, which was parked up on a hill on a solid rock. With about 15 strong guys lifting/pushing, and the jeep pulling, we could get about 6 inches before the jeep drove off the rock into soft sand and got stuck.
So we would pull 6 inches, stop, reverse the jeep, retie everything 6 inches tighter, then pull again. This continued for about 15 feet before the dodge was in solid enough terrain to drive out alone.
Definately one of the longest and most strenuous extraction I've had to deal with.
Ahh I guess I'll save my 2nd story for later, too much text already
