In all my wanderings of Nevada, one of the highlights has been all of the military machinery that I've encountered. There's nothing like the thrill of a supersonic jet rupturing my eardrums as it thunders by a few dozen feet off the ground; or climbing up on some rusting Cold War tank, while inwardly hoping the silent bomber circling above isn’t actively lining up a practice run on the very thing you’re standing on. Those experiences generate a kind of adrenaline you don’t get from a slot machine. Still - for no reason that I can put my finger on…
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I'd delayed my hike to the top of Boundary Peak - Nevada's highest point - for 24-hours, and that turned out to be a good thing. As I turned off US-6, clouds - that had deposited rain and snow over the course of the day - still obscured the peaks along the northern end of the White Mountains. I crossed my fingers that the weather guessers were right, and that they'd clear up for the first half of the following day; if not, I was in for a rather anticlimactic summit. Still not sure this is a good idea. The…
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I have no real goal around peak bagging in Death Valley, but something fun just happened, and so now I'm keeping a list. Maybe someday it will become the basis for more. While @mrs.turbodb and I were enjoying our first Fall 2025 trip to Death Valley, I shared with her that we'd be climbing Funeral Peak on the last day of our adventure. Keen to see what Digonnet had to say about the hike, she pulled up Hiking Death Valley on her Kindle and was surprised to find that the hike wasn't listed at all. However, it did mention (highlight…
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I figured that the next leg of my adventure would be a rather predictable one. In fact, as light faded from the sky as I drove toward through the Marietta Wild Burro Reserve, I sort of wondered what I was going to do for most of the following day. A slight rearrangement of my schedule. My destination - deep in the Excelsior Mountains - was one where I would have told you that, with near 100% certainty, I was going to find my first fully-functional, rolling ore cart. I say would have, because I'm getting about an hour ahead of…
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Morning along Pine Creek. A quarter mile from the Pine Creek Tungsten Mine, I remained fantastically horizontal for 12 hours while my body recovered from the ordeal of the previous day. As I climbed out of the tent to start my new day, I decided that perhaps I'd overdone things a smidge, and that I should take this as a rest day. Twenty minutes later, I found myself a mile down the road - enjoying a big bowl of Wheat Chex - just outside the Pine Creek Pack Station, as the thump-thump-thump of a helicopter grew louder overhead. Initially unsure…
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For the second time in as many trips, I'd been abandoned. This time, a trip to the Arizona Strip and North Rim of the Grand Canyon was on the books until life got in the way for a few buddies, and as they bowed out, so did @mrs.turbodb. This left me in a bit of a pickle, as I'd left the Tacoma in California at the end of my previous outing, and still needed to ferry it down to Las Vegas for the winter. So, it was back to the computer and a bit of time sorting through the many-lifetime's-worth…
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This is a special place to my Dad, one that he's been visiting for more than 30 years. As such, I've used names we've given to local landmarks or redacted the names of places that might be too revealing. If you recognize any of the places shown in the photos, please help to keep them special by not mentioning their names or locations. It is not often that I get to visit Dad's special little spot in the Sierra twice in one year, and I suppose that technically this year is no different, since we were foiled in our first…
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It's been another few months, and more than half a dozen trips! As usual, the Tacoma has performed well, though it's certainly starting to show its age in a few places... mostly having to do with the emissions system. Of course, these summer months - and trips - were also the only time of year that the Tacoma is at tome here in the Pacific Northwest, and as such, the best time to perform any preventative maintenance and modifications that will carry it through the winter and into next spring. As such, in addition to the items that I've mentioned…
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TL;DR - I've started seeing P0420 and P0466 check engine lights (CELs) as often as once a day on trips.
Easy to clear but still annoying.
TL;DR - The lithium system provides so much more power than I know what to do with, that I find myself turning off the charger so that the battery has a chance to cycle below 90%. The cabinet that I built is good, but needs a few updates.
This battery is a beast.
Several years ago, I installed Diode Dynamics SS3 fog lights into my Relentless bumper and they've been fantastic! At the time, I wired them into a three-position - single-pole double-throw (ON-OFF-ON) - switch that I installed in the driver side kick panel, where the three positions allowed me the ability to have the fog lights: ON - turn on directly | OFF - off | ON - turn on when the low beams were on. This was great until I decided to reuse the switch location for my ABS disable switch, which set me on the path to finding another…
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For a long time, I've wanted to disable the ABS on my 1st gen Tacoma. In fact, when I originally ordered the truck in late 1999, I explicitly ordered it - more than a month before I was going to take delivery, which was quite a bit of lead time in those days - with no ABS. Unfortunately, the day I went in to pick it up - after being assured the previous week that they'd have the truck I ordered on the lot - they still hadn't acquired a truck with the options I'd requested. Instead, they had a…
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TL;DR - I've needed to rebuild my front coilovers for a few months now but have procrastinated the job since it's rather time consuming. However, when I heard my front lower spherical bearings starting to make noise, I knew I couldn't put it off any longer.
Time for a rebuild.
After completing the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route, we're up to nine BDRs since we started running them in 2016. Through the running of each one, @mrs.turbodb and I are - as you can imagine - regularly comparing the current BDR to the past ones. Now that I've been writing down these thoughts for the last five or so, it seems like a good tradition to continue into the future. TL;DR - The Colorado BDR - especially the northern half - is a fast BDR with plenty of varied terrain, though none of it feels all that remote, largely because Coloradans…
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TL;DR - The spot where my NMO ham radio antenna mount punches through the roof has been rusting for years. I think this was due to poor design of my original antenna. I've cleaned up and repainted the roof, and I think the antenna I use now will not cause the same problem again.
"Factory"-ish.
After grabbing lunch in Eagle, we hopped on the freeway - a slightly embarrassing experience, given that we were aired down and travelling rather slowly - for the six-mile stint back to Gypsum and the start of Stage 5. In fact, we'd be splitting off from the main route, which follows the highway for a stretch, opting instead to run the 15-mile "Harder Alternate," rejoining the main route at the Colorado Canyon Gorge. "No Jimmy, the fish wasn't 'this big,' it was only four fingers long." Gypsum, keeping it real. Stage 5 - Gypsum to Steamboat Springs North of Gypsum…
Continue readingGypsum to Steamboat Springs and WY - Pavement and Private Land | COBDR Stage 5 and 6
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Having finally reached the summit of Mt. Antero - a place so accessible and yet not included on the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) - we were headed into Buena Vista just before 11:00am in search of something to eat. We'd learned our lesson the previous morning - having arrived in Lake City before the traditional lunch hour, opting to skip lunch, and later regretting it - and @mrs.turbodb was working the airwaves to find a good spot to stop for lunch. Half a day later - having added a highlight that every BDR adventurer should enjoy as part of…
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As we cruised down the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains, I knew it was the perfect time to take a detour. As is common on a Backcountry Discovery Route, the Colorado BDR was designed to get us from point A to point B, but not necessarily by seeing the coolest things along the way. There are many reasons for that - which I won't get into here - but in this case, just south of the stage end at Buena Vista, there was a 14,000-foot-tall peak - Mt. Antero - that I'd been trying to reach the top of…
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One of the things we've learned about running a Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) is that trying to time a stage to a day - where the day ends at the designated end (and thus beginning) of a stage - is a bad idea, at least when you're trying to camp. This is obvious once it's realized, and it makes total sense for the dual-sport bikes that BDRs are designed for, since they often use towns as places to find a roof for the night, but for a truck - where the sleeping arrangements are in the bed - it's better…
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We headed out of Telluride just after 1:00pm, and I was worried. We'd finished the entire first stage of the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route (COBDR) in half a day, and I knew that if we didn't slow down a bit, we'd find ourselves all the way through Stage 2 - and the Alpine Loop - before sunset. And that would be terrible, because I already knew where I wanted to camp for the night, and it wasn't past the Alpine Loop. In fact, it was only about halfway through! Luckily, speed is something I could control. Well, that and we could…
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