RC for your family hikes?

               So I have found that the biggest downside to my hobby right now is that I actually can not make it to the track as much as I would want.  I do have responsibilities now, after all, not just me myself and I when I am home, but I am watching my 3 month old son as well.  We do not get to always get to the track too after my wife gets off of work as it could be cold, or we may decide that we need the exercise from a walk a bit more than just standing outside around a track.  So what can I do?  Typically speaking I would make sure all the maintenance was performed on my vehicles, than just sit there, in front of my computer and read forums.  Forum after forum, usually ones that pertained to vehicles I owned, but not always, just absorbing all the information I could, after that I learned that I liked to watch video's on YouTube.  You can learn a lot from those guys on there, in a very short amount of time, that has step by step instructions on "how to"  usually along with an explanation as to why they were doing it or how it worked.  After so long though you can only watch so many video's, so that is why I decided to try my hand at my own thing.  I still watch there videos and do my research on the forum's but I have since added this blog to it all...but this still doesn't completely cover the times I can't make it to the track, so instead I got an idea, from a buddy.  He has this RC truck that is a mini rock crawler.

  It is about the size of my Mini 8ight, but is designed to go over much more complicated surfaces.  They are not all that fast, but are not supposed to be either, so I could take it with us on our hikes.  The problem being that I have a pretty restricted budget, but my birthday is right around the corner, so perhaps I could get it with all my birthday money?  So the research begins.  I needed to find something that was not only hobby grade but in a very tight budget.  After some research I actually did not really find any other mini rock crawlers other than the one my friend had, which had just recently had production stopped, and was re branded with a few new bells and whistles for almost twice the price...ya that was definitely not going to work.  When I was just about to give up on the idea, I came across this little crawler from Exceed.  It was right down my budget range ($100), and except for weaker and cheaper electronics the chassis seems very close if not identical to the one my friend has (Losi).  I am pretty excited about this and can not wait to put my order in, for the addition to my "garage".  I looked around on YouTube and there was only 1 full review on this vehicle, so that made my digging for information a bit more difficult, but in the end, I decided it had all the equipment I would want on a rock crawler stock, with an easy conversion to four wheel steering.  Because the YouTube content for this vehicle is so restricted, and I plan to do my own video's as soon as I finish getting my equipment and set up, This may be one of the trucks I do my first series on, so keep an eye out for that in the future too!  This should give us something to mess around with while we are out on those fun hikes we are getting used to.  I live at the base of the Rockies so finding a place to hike and play shouldn't be hard at all!  If I decide to get competitive, they do have "rock crawler course races" too, that we could look into, and because it moves so slowly, it should be a great truck for my son to drive a couple years! its just win win all around the way I see it.