As we'd gone to bed the night before, it had been decided that we'd do a group breakfast the following morning. These are always extremely tasty affairs of bacon, eggs, and potatoes - this time, supplied entirely by Dan @drr. (Thanks again Dan!) By definition, these mornings are always a little more chill, since it takes time to get everything together, and no one wants to rush the eating part. By 8:00am, Mike @Digiratus was cooking up potatoes, I was waiting for the last minute to make eggs, and Dan was busy with the bacon. Zane bounced between all three…
2 CommentsYear: 2020
We were awoken early - just after 6:00am - to the sound of rock trucks speeding down the road near camp. Apparently one of the local quarries started work early, and three of the drivers were trying to make good time to their destination! Dan @drr - already an early riser - was the first out of his tent, Echo excited to get a new day underway. As they headed out on a walk, I putzed around in the tent - a little photo processing and reading - until I heard Mike @Digiratus climb down around 7:00am. The sun was…
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It's been a busy month. I'd been home for less than 48 hours in the last 3 weeks, our trips to the Nevada BDR, a special place in California, and a family vacation to an amazing little place on the Sacramento River in Castella, CA. keeping me on the move. But, when Mike @Digiratus reached out to see if I wanted to go camping for a week - along with Dan @drr and Zane @Speedytech7 - I found it impossible to say no. So, less than 24 hours after returning home, I was linked up with Dan and the road…
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TL;DR - I don't really know what this is, but I'm going to keep monitoring it. Hopefully it's nothing.
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TL;DR - After cinching down the cover for the tent a few hundred times, the stitching for one of the buckles on one of the cover straps ripped out. I sewed it back together and everything is good again.
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TL;DR - The mid-skid is now securely fastened to the frame again, nearly a year later!
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With the interior removed for my sound deadening project, it was the perfect time to install a dashcam that I've had sitting around for - I don't know - call it four months or so. I've wanted a dashcam for quite some time - not so much for the safety aspects that some feel it provides - but to capture video, and possibly even stills - of various things we see out the windshield but are unable to grab the DSLR to photograph. So, when I saw a good deal and great reviews for the Viofo A119 v3, I picked…
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Having just completed the Nevada Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR), we now found ourselves in at the southern most tip of Nevada, quite a distance between us and home. We found ourselves there with a week to spare, having finished the trip a few days sooner than we'd originally expected. Only the timing was unplanned however, as we'd run the BDR this direction on purpose. By doing so, we hoped that we could meet up with Pops on our way home at the same spot we'd spent a few days with him just a month before. Well, as it turned out,…
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Stage 1 - Pahrump to Oatman Like many of the medium-sized towns along the NVBDR, Pahrump has - I assume - grown since the route was created. As such, some of the roads that were once dirt have been paved, and we found ourselves on pavement for longer than we expected as we made our way south out of town, passing cross streets and developments that weren't even on our map. Eventually though we reached dirt, and thus began one of the least enjoyable segments of the entire BDR. (How's that for a glowing endorsement for the area south of…
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Stage 2 - Gold Point to Pahrump As you may recall from the previous story, we left off in Gold Point - so far, our favorite sort-of-ghost-town of the trip, and I promised two naked ladies and a penguin in the desert. I should warn you now - I probably oversold it. But anyway, let's get started. A little before 11:00am, we pulled out of Gold Point, excited for the next segment of our adventure, and happy to be back in the truck and out of the already 94°F heat that was getting oppressive in the desert. In the distance,…
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Stage 3 - Tonopah to Gold Point As we exited Tonopah, @mrs.turbodb and I were more than a little curious about the route we'd take to Goldfield. We've driven the 27 mile stretch of US-95 more than a few times on our trips down and back from Death Valley and it just doesn't seem like there's much out there in the way of dirt roads and alternate routes. And as it turns out, we were right! For the first 10 miles or so, we simply travelled the old (but still paved) US-95 that apparently works its way south just to…
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Stage 4 - Austin to Tonopah. Our fuel tank once again topped off, we immediately climbed out of Austin and into the mountains to the south. We didn't have far to go though - just outside this historic little town is a the craziest little castle tower - Stokes Castle. Built on the mountainside overlooking the Reese River Valley, the three-story castle was built in 1897 by Anton Stokes - a wealthy mine owner and builder of the Nevada Central Railway. Constructed of native granite slabs, it was made to resemble a villa that Stokes had admired outside of Rome.…
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Stage 5 - Elko to Austin It was just after 5:00pm as we rolled out of Elko after fueling up. This, technically, had been the end of our first stage - but with several hours of daylight left and dirt roads calling our name, we felt no need to call end our adventure early! On that note - something @mrs.turbodb and I find interesting about the Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) stages is that they all start and end in towns. This - to me - doesn't make any sense. I mean sure, it's easier to map from one town to…
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Introduction It seems that every year for the last several years, we've run a BDR - a Backcountry Discovery Route - during the summer. This year, as we were in the middle of our adventure, I wondered aloud to @mrs.turbodb - "How'd we get started with these anyway?" A bit of pondering and theorizing and we determined that it was really just dumb luck. Well, not luck so much as misfortune. See, back in 2017, we'd gone camping with my Dad and Uncle down to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Actually, it was the same trip where we'd…
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I just got done camping in one spot for three days. Temps were in the high 80's, the ARB 50qt fridge was set to 35ºF, and the 175W inverter was running much of the time charging various electronic devices. The whole time, I didn't start the truck once. A couple weeks ago, my dual battery system would have been hosed by the end of this trip - probably wouldn't have even lasted the entire time - but when we pulled out of camp this time, the batteries were topped off and had power to spare. This my friends, is the…
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For two years now, my A/C hasn't really worked. At some point - 17 years after it was originally installed - it developed a slow leak. As spring turned to summer in 2018, I noticed that - as Nelly might say - "it's getting hot in herre," even as I cranked up the cold. For a while, I ignored it. There was no way I was ready to tackle the A/C system from a skills perspective - or so I thought at the time - and I knew that taking it to a shop was going to be rather expensive.…
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The next couple of days flew by faster than I think any of us expected - or wanted. We shouldn't have been surprised, really, because that always seems to happen when you're somewhere fun and surrounded by people whose company is enjoyable. And while the weather got a little more overcast - and a little cooler - they were still pleasant and went a little something like this... I'd set my alarm for right around sunrise. Actually no, it was well before sunrise - maybe 45 minutes or so - when I'd climb out of bed, grab the camera and…
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