Stick Figure
Observer
Warning while the trip is over, the photos and video sorting is not. It will take me a "few days" to finish this up!
Background:
I grew up in Omaha, Ne and moved to southern California several years ago for work. After dragging all of my belonging out over several trips, plus holiday visits I had reached my limit of driving the direct route. A few years back I took a job in San Jose California, and that made this drive EVEN WORSE! Now I could literally leave the Bay Area jump on the 80, and a few (28) long hours later I would be there. Obviously we needed more adventure to make this trip bearable and so we have been taking more creative routes ever since.
This year I let my girlfriend do a lot of the planning and added a few suggestions as I found time to look at the maps. Overall it worked out well, and as usual the biggest complaint was the need to come home.
Here we go:
Day Zero:
How can you have a day zero? Simple you include a few days of prep and leave early.
New for this year, the Delorme In Reach Explorer. With around 270k miles on the 4Runner at the time of departure I was starting to get a bit nervous about the inevitable issues. The truck hasn't give us any recent issues, and didn't on the trip, but it was time to be a bit safer. The tracking ability was an awesome added bonus.
Fresh set of Duratracs on a spare set of Tundra wheels. My previous set was too new to get rid of, but not fresh enough to be prepared for anything.
Finally a new wiper switch. I have been dealing with a non working "intermittent" and wipers that don't know where to park for several years, and for $130 and 10 min of install I have no idea why I didn't do this sooner.
A change in fridges mid year from my Whynter to an ARB unit ment I needed to figure out mounting. I had previously build brackets for the Whynter to move the mounts to the bottom of the fridge, but the ARB was easier to just pull straps down from the handles themselves. I did a quick false floor out of some spare wood, and put a few 1" holes through it to allow some endless loop straps to mount through. (Same with the water and chains just not pictured). There is still more to be done, but for an afternoon of work it was a lot better than dealing with unsecured items or a tangled mess of ratchet straps.
We left a little ahead of schedule for once and departed San Jose around dinner time on "Day Zero" and got out to Fresno California. While this wasn't a huge distance to go it got us away from the traffic that would have been a huge hold up the next day.
Day One:
A fairly clean 4Runner ready to get going in the hotel (yeah I said the H word!) parking lot on day one.
Day one had one of my route additions which was the cut through of the Death Valley area.
Somewhere along the way we found this quaint little house to stop for a bit lunch:
Last minute "sandwhich shelf" addition in action!
Shortly after lunch we made our way into Death Valley.
We didn't spend a ton of time, but you have to stop for some tourist photos. Really, we spent just enough time in Death Valley to know we need to come back and wonder why we haven't been here before.
Dinner time snap of the 4Runner somewhere over the Nevada boarder.
Final photo of the day is from the Valley of Fire State Park just north of Las Vegas, Nevada where we stopped for the night.
More Photos from day 1http://mostdesigns.com/brandon/?p=1296
Background:
I grew up in Omaha, Ne and moved to southern California several years ago for work. After dragging all of my belonging out over several trips, plus holiday visits I had reached my limit of driving the direct route. A few years back I took a job in San Jose California, and that made this drive EVEN WORSE! Now I could literally leave the Bay Area jump on the 80, and a few (28) long hours later I would be there. Obviously we needed more adventure to make this trip bearable and so we have been taking more creative routes ever since.
This year I let my girlfriend do a lot of the planning and added a few suggestions as I found time to look at the maps. Overall it worked out well, and as usual the biggest complaint was the need to come home.
Here we go:
Day Zero:
How can you have a day zero? Simple you include a few days of prep and leave early.
New for this year, the Delorme In Reach Explorer. With around 270k miles on the 4Runner at the time of departure I was starting to get a bit nervous about the inevitable issues. The truck hasn't give us any recent issues, and didn't on the trip, but it was time to be a bit safer. The tracking ability was an awesome added bonus.
Fresh set of Duratracs on a spare set of Tundra wheels. My previous set was too new to get rid of, but not fresh enough to be prepared for anything.
Finally a new wiper switch. I have been dealing with a non working "intermittent" and wipers that don't know where to park for several years, and for $130 and 10 min of install I have no idea why I didn't do this sooner.
A change in fridges mid year from my Whynter to an ARB unit ment I needed to figure out mounting. I had previously build brackets for the Whynter to move the mounts to the bottom of the fridge, but the ARB was easier to just pull straps down from the handles themselves. I did a quick false floor out of some spare wood, and put a few 1" holes through it to allow some endless loop straps to mount through. (Same with the water and chains just not pictured). There is still more to be done, but for an afternoon of work it was a lot better than dealing with unsecured items or a tangled mess of ratchet straps.
We left a little ahead of schedule for once and departed San Jose around dinner time on "Day Zero" and got out to Fresno California. While this wasn't a huge distance to go it got us away from the traffic that would have been a huge hold up the next day.
Day One:
A fairly clean 4Runner ready to get going in the hotel (yeah I said the H word!) parking lot on day one.
Day one had one of my route additions which was the cut through of the Death Valley area.
Somewhere along the way we found this quaint little house to stop for a bit lunch:
Last minute "sandwhich shelf" addition in action!
Shortly after lunch we made our way into Death Valley.
We didn't spend a ton of time, but you have to stop for some tourist photos. Really, we spent just enough time in Death Valley to know we need to come back and wonder why we haven't been here before.
Dinner time snap of the 4Runner somewhere over the Nevada boarder.
Final photo of the day is from the Valley of Fire State Park just north of Las Vegas, Nevada where we stopped for the night.
More Photos from day 1http://mostdesigns.com/brandon/?p=1296
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