8cam's 97 turbo

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Well the trip from AZ to GA was 12-13mpg. We'll be leaving for Moab in just over a week and I'll track it then and see how it changes. Not expecting much of a change really. The low profile and lack of wind noise has me guessing there will be very little difference.
 
Yesterday afternoon I set it up in the driveway and put the bedding in. This is a Nemo Duo bag with two of their insulated Cosmo 3D pads in the sleeves, and the fit is just perfect. I love this setup. Pop the dump valves, and close up the tent with everything inside, no problem at all.


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how did Cruise Moab go?
 
Thanks for the reminder. Work has me so slammed since I got back, I haven't had time to post hardly anything. Cruise Moab was fantastic, really had a great time out there. Problem for me was, a big customer was going through a major installation at the same time, so I ended up on my laptop whenever we had service, working most evenings, etc. So it didn't feel like a vacation half of the time!

It was a final thrash the last week to get everything ready for the trip. I got the CB mounted, tie down straps in the back for the camp boxes and cooler, bought all the supplies and made sure everything was ready to roll. Peggy and I hit the road at 5am Saturday morning - it would be a 2-day drive to Grand Junction.
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I've driven the cross-country routes multiple times and I prefer I-40 just because I think it's more scenic and avoids Kansas (sorry if you live there!), but since we were meeting the Kokopelli group at the trailhead outside of Grand Junction on Monday morning, it made more sense to head further north and take I-70. From home base in North GA, we headed through Tennessee, Kentucky, a little bit of Illinois and then finally a left turn through Missouri, Kansas and Colorado.

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I have to say the bugs though Kansas were unreal. What in the holy hell are these giant Mothras with the yellow guts? Two weeks later and I'm still cleaning that crap off.
 
Saturday was a long day, but we finally made it to Topeka about 8pm, had a light dinner in the hotel room and crashed. No pics there, but imagine a Fairfield Inn. Then put a white 80 out front. Yep you got it.

We forgot to set the alarm and overslept, didn't get out of Topeka until 7:30am, destination Grand Junction. Originally we had planned a stop in Denver to see Peggy's sister, but between our late departure and her sister's schedule, we just straightlined Denver, and would see her on the return trip. First sight of the Rockies! It never gets old.

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We made it to the Courtyard in Grand Junction about 7pm, and then went out to a nice dinner at The Rockslide downtown. Great burger, great beer. We deserved it after 1700 miles in two days! No pics there either, but GJ is a really nice town, like it a lot. After dinner we hit the Safeway to lay in the supplies for the trail, then back to the hotel and crashed.

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We had to be at the Jouflas Campground to meet the group around 8am to air down, get the tech inspection done, and oh yeah meet everyone else. Up at 6:30 getting ready, quick preflight in the hotel parking lot. This would be the last time the wheels and tires looked so....black.

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But we made it to the meetup point without issues, and it was pretty easy to figure out where we needed to be! Ended up a pretty diverse group including a 200, four 100s, an FJ and two 40s, and several 80s. We were originally supposed to hit the trail at 9am, but had a delay because of what we thought was a lost dog. She was so sweet, no one wanted to leave until we figured out where she belonged. Turned out she was a working ranch dog who was just wandering around. Problem solved, and we were off a little after 10am.
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A quick stop to regroup and yep my tires were already getting intimate with the terrain.

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Did I mention this was my first time off-roading of any kind? Other than driving the Dodge on a dirt road that is. I didn't really get a lot more pics of day 1 because I was just focused on keeping things straight and learning how the truck feels doing all this crazy s***. Day 1 was really about some easy trail riding, one really good hill climb where I learned about low range, and epic views. A really good intro to off road cruisin.

The weather was cloudy, but nice and we eventually made it to the campsite at fish ford. Lots of dirt and cowpies all around, but we found a good spot and got set up. This would be the first night ever in our completely untested roof-top tent. When we drove through Missouri we had some pretty good storms and the tent was nice and dry inside, so I figured all was well. Until all hell broke loose.

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This is the only pic I got of the storm, when we took refuge in the truck and it was almost over. Doesn't look like much but the winds were gusting near 50mph with hard rain coming in sideways. Luckily I had zipped up the tent before it hit, but WOW. Did not expect this in the desert.
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Monday night was the campfire potluck dinner, and everyone brought something to share. The rain stopped for a while, and we had a wonderful dinner with a great group of folks. Pretty much right after dinner, the rain hit again, hard. This pic was taken by Daniel Markofsky, our trail boss, and we were all taking shelter under the Nitro canopy. So glad they brought it! Peggy is waving to the camera and I'm in the back right with the orange hat.
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This was a great group of people, made a lot of new friends and definitely plan on keeping in touch.

Well the rain continued well into the darkness and the only thing I could think about was how wet our tent was going to be. This is a prototype, at this point one-of-one, and had never been water tested. I just knew the sleeping bag was going to be soaked and we were going to have to sleep in the truck. This was a big trip for us, and I had to convince my wife to go with me, telling her how beautiful it was. Not an auspicious start!

Around 9pm the rain got a little bit lighter and we decided to make a run for it. I climbed up the ladder and unzipped the tent, really afraid for what I might find. And it was DRY! So we bundled in, bagged our (nasty) shoes, and settled in for what turned out to be a warm, dry, comfortable night's sleep. Huge relief.

Until 2am when the storm came back with a vengeance, this time throwing in HAIL just for variety. Wow that sounded like machine gun fire. And the wind was nuts again, damn near blew off the rainfly. Luckily it has safety straps and they did their job.
 
I'll post some more tomorrow, getting late here and I'm hitting the sack. However I'll say this much, the 80 is a badass machine. And that would really be proven over the next two days.
 
So after the deluge Monday night, we all woke up to what seemed to be another rainy day. Light rain off and on for the first hour or two, and LOTS of mud. Getting out of Fish Ford required surfing huge mud pits, and the turbo 80 did great. I'm not running aggressive mud tires, they are General Grabber ATs, very comfortable on the highway. Well they did just fine in all that slop, never a problem at all.

After a couple hours, the blue sky appeared and from that point on through the rest of the week the weather was what you'd expect. Crystal clear air, blue sky, with the mountains looking like they are in HD everywhere. My wife finally got it, we were both floored by the scenery, just an incredible place.

We found a great place to stop, dry out, and see some dinosaur tracks. This place is endlessly surprising.

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Next stop, Top of the World! This was on the bucket list, probably the biggest reason for my return out here. I didn't get to see this last year, and this year I was not missing it. What an incredible 360 degree view, just blown away. I wish we could have spent more time up there, but by this time it was late in the afternoon and we were the last group to reach the top, so didn't really have time to hang out. There was a storm coming across the valley and we wanted everyone to get their pictures before heading back down. Turns out the storm didn't even bother us, and the weather stayed amazing.

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I love this shot of Abishek. That is exactly how I felt standing up there!

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Top of the World was without a doubt the most intense off-roading I had ever done (until the next day). That climb is no joke, serious ledges, fricken walls really, lots of huge rocks, and I did the whole thing in low range with just the center diff locked. Never had to use the axel lockers at all, and the 80 was just a mountain goat, climbed right up everything. And then back down the same way. I see all these 4x4s around here (I am in North GA, lots of jacked up trucks) that basically run on dirt roads, if they even get off road at all. These guys have no idea. There were times I felt like I was driving straight up a wall and holy s***, it worked. Just blown away by the capability of these things.
 
That evening we camped at Roberts Bottom, a sheltered area right on the river. We scattered to find relatively level spots and set up for the evening. Good thing because there was a storm later that night, didn't last long, but we had no issues at all. We made dinner and just generally relaxed. I have to admit Peggy and I weren't very social that evening, just tired. The group did build a fire and had a nice evening, but when the rain hit I think they all pretty much scattered to the tents.

We crashed and spent another nice night in the Terrapod tent, no issues at all. I did remove the rainfly because of the high winds, but otherwise everything was great.

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Next morning the sunrise was just beautiful coming off the canyon walls. A little coffee and breakfast, and then we hit the trail again. We'd be doing Rose Garden that day!

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On the trail headed to Rose Garden Hill. There were a couple places where we climbed ledges every bit as intimidating as the run up TOW. But I got this.

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There it is, Rose Garden Hill, a view from the top. Somehow we're about to drive down this thing.
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The views from here are just as epic as anything. Heck of a parking lot!
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Yes I really did drive down Rose Garden Hill. Complete off-road novice, this trip was my first time other than simple dirt roads. I tried to listen and learn, and followed every instruction as closely as possible. Daniel and Ples were fantastic spotters, got the whole group to the bottom safely without a scratch. I said before how impressed I was with what these vehicles are capable of, and this took it to a whole new level.

We had lunch at the bottom of the hill, probably the most incredible red rock stadium I could imagine. There aren't enough wows.

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After Rose Garden Hill, things became a lot less stressful! We had an easy drive along the La Sal mountain road, then into Moab via Sand Flats road. A fantastic three-day run, and probably the best introduction to this part of the country you can have. Absolutely amazing time.
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I don't have a lot more pics to post, but the last couple days were still great. On Thursday we were scheduled to run Fins and Things, and we joined that group in the morning. The problem was, it was so crowded that it was basically a traffic jam in the desert. We were able to run an obstacle, then wait 20 minutes, then move forward, etc. Peggy and I looked at each other and said "Moab Brewery." So we took the chance to bail out in the campground, didn't finish Fins and Things, and then headed into town for food and brew. Hey that was awesome too. After the excellent burger and beer we hit the car wash across the road and cleared about 50lbs of mud from every nook and cranny on the truck. That stuff was like concrete.

The rest of the day was relaxation, and then spent an hour or so at vendor night, where we saw all the friends we had made earlier in the week and made a couple of new ones. Lots of very interesting ways to spend money there! My wife just kept steering me away from stuff.

We also had a minor mechanical problem. I hit one of the fins pretty hard and knocked my alignment off. Everything drove just fine, but now the steering wheel was pointing at 9 o'clock. Friday was Poison Spider and I wanted to make sure everything was 100% before tackling that trail. We tried to get into one of the alignment shops Friday morning, but after saying they could do it...they didn't. So we missed the trail on Friday.

But things work out for a reason. We were planning on leaving Saturday morning because we had a 2-day drive to get back home before Monday. I mentioned we had tried to visit Peggy's sister in Denver on the way out but couldn't make it work. Well we decided since we couldn't make the trail on Friday, we'd just head to Denver and spend the afternoon and night at her sister's place. That turned out to be a great decision, had a wonderful time with them, great dinner, and then got up Saturday morning and had a great breakfast with them. That meant the drive to Topeka was a lot shorter, and broke the run home into an easier trip.

All in, a fantastic trip and the 80 was absolutely bulletproof the whole time (except for that alignment issue). I'm so impressed with the capability of the truck, amazed that I was able to use that capability, and meeting so many great folks. Daniel was a great trail boss, shepherded a motley crew of folks through three days of wildly varying weather and terrain, and made it memorable for us all.

I will be back.
 
8cam said:
After Rose Garden Hill, things became a lot less stressful! We had an easy drive along the La Sal mountain road, then into Moab via Sand Flats road. A fantastic three-day run, and probably the best introduction to this part of the country you can have. Absolutely amazing time.
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Curious, because I have not done a trip like that, about additional fuel required or fuel stops. When, where? Did you carry extra fuel?
 
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