We were both tired and stir-crazy when we finally got to Bella Coola, a full thirty-one hours after leaving home. The plan - given that it was already 6:30pm by the time we disembarked - was to head up a nearby Forest Service Road (FSR) to find camp. But then, as I maneuvered the Tacoma into position for a final shot of the Northern Sea Wolf, another truck - fresh off the same boat - headed up the same road! This immediately gave us pause - we're not generally keen to share the end of the road with other folks…
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Every summer, I look forward to having the truck at home, so we can head north - across the border - to explore some of the most amazing landscapes in the entirety of North America. In all those travels to Canada, the Kootenays - in eastern British Columbia - have continued to capture my attention, with soaring peaks, glaciers, and brilliant lakes that make any hike worth the effort. But this time, I'd gotten wind of another place. Further north and on the other side of the province, the Central Coast seemed to offer some fantastic landscape of its own.…
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After completing the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route, we're up to ten BDRs since we started running them in 2017. 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 Montana BDR had the absolute best Stage 1 of any BDR we've run. Working through the ridgelines of the Gravelly Mountains - especially early in the season when…
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Welcome to Libby. As we pulled into Libby, the sign welcoming us to town was fantastic. Unlike the other small towns we'd been through in northwestern Montana, there was no WordArt here. Surely a sign doesn't say much about the people in a place - Lincoln, Seeley Lake and Thompson Falls had all been quite nice - but it was cool to see something a little more permanent as we transitioned onto the eighth stage of the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route. We weren't planning to spend any time in Libby - we had plenty of fuel to take us through…
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Having both very much enjoyed the dam at Thompson Falls more than I thought we would - and having already completed two stages of the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route over the course of the day - we had no aspirations to make it deep into Stage 7 before settling down for the night. Rather, our only hope was getting out of town. If we found a nice spot with a view, that would be icing on the cake. Headed out of Thompson Falls, into the Cabinet Mountains. As they'd been earlier in the day, the roads started out smooth. Pavement…
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Having made the decision to eat lunch at the top-rated restaurant in town - technically, the Conoco gas station - we glanced at each other as we entered the establishment to a sign notifying us that the wait time was upwards of twenty minutes. Sure that this must be the time for to-go orders - as opposed to priority customers that opted to eat there - we grabbed a table and quickly homed in on the special - Huck's Burgers. Top tier St. Regis eatery. Placing our order, we were sure that our starving stomachs would be imminently satisfied, but…
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Rolling into Seeley Lake at 6:31am on the Fourth of July, we'd be forgiven if we'd thought it much later in the day. The town was bustling with activity in preparation for what was surely going to be a huge celebration. Perhaps this was - as their slogan insisted - The Middle of Everywhere. With a couple of errands to run - we needed to pick up some milk for breakfast, some small chocolates to offer as gifts to future fire lookout occupants, and something else I don't entirely recall - we cruised down the main drag, the entirety of…
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Where the first three stages of the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route (MTBDR) were more than 125 miles in length, Stage 4 was a mere 72 miles and contained no expert alternate routes that would - at least in concept - suck up more trail time. What it did contain, however, were a couple of BDR-suggested attractions that were high on our list to see. The first of those was just outside of Lincoln, so before even really getting underway, we were out of the truck and traipsing into the Sculpture in the Wild. Once so ubiquitous in Montana and the…
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I'm not sure "on Earth" is really true, and there isn't really a hill, anymore, but we'll get to that in a moment. Butte was by far the largest city - or town, if you ask @mrs.turbodb - that we'd pass through on the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route (MTBDR). Being the hub between Stage 2 and Stage 3 was nice, as it meant that anyone who had run into trouble on the first couple of stages could pop into a local auto parts store or shop to get those issues addressed, before tackling the final six stages. And the three…
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Virginia City - a self-described ghost town; full of living people. After surviving the sloppy descent into Virginia City, we wasted no time in fueling up and getting back on the road. We'd covered significantly less ground than we'd planned to on the first day of the Montana Backcountry Discovery Route (MTBDR), and @mrs.turbodb had informed me that we would need to cover 200 miles per day from here on out if we were going to complete the route in the time we'd allotted. That's a tall order - even for us - but we hoped that the long mid-summer…
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It's summer, and that means it's time for our annual run at another BDR (Backcountry Discovery Route). We've been doing these for a decade now, and - at least for the western states' routes - we're starting to run out of options! Luckily, the good folks over at RideBDR must have a sixth sense about these kinds of things, because just a few weeks before our departure, they released what they called the "final link in the Western BDR system," a 900-mile route from the southern border between Idaho and Montana to the Canadian border. Getting There As always, the…
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I have been sorely lacking in my rig reviews as of late. In fact, it's been nine months since my last look at what's been working well - and not so well - with the Tacoma, and so rather than just a few trips between this and the previous review, there are 14 trips! Three quarters of a year is a long time for things to get a little wonky out in the wild, and there were a few things that definitely needed some attention, though as usual there were no real major problems; the Tacoma continues to be an…
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Our tent is old. That's a good thing, I think. We've had it since we started this whole adventure thing, now almost exactly a decade ago. It's performed well during that time, and though I've often lusted after something GFC-ish, I can't say that the tent has ever let us down in any way that a much more expensive camper would have solved. In fact, there are really only three features I've found myself "missing" - if one can miss something they've never had - in well over 1,000 nights sleeping above the bed of the truck. A hardshell wedge…
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TL;DR - My 26-year-old door handle finally broke, and I've replaced it with a metal one.
There are so many things I've loved about my Tacoma since the first day I got it. Nowhere on that list has been any of the stock lighting. Over the years, I've taken care of the most prominent offenders. My first mod - back when the truck was still just a truck - was disabling the daytime running lights. Then, mostly to finish the "look" I was going for (I was explicitly trying to copy another truck I thought looked great at the time) I added Hellas to my front bumper. But it wasn't until I added fog lights -…
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There's no camp site more special than the one I visit with Dad every year in the Sierra. I've been going for a lot less time than he has - though he assures me that I'm gaining on him, as a percentage of my age to his - but we've both come to enjoy the time we spend there each summer. It was a shock then, when we found our favorite spot inaccessible last summer! With 459 trees down over the road - some of them more than 4 feet in diameter - there was no way we could clear…
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While Tacoma troubles may have prevented me reaching the summit of Waucoba Mountain on the first day of my trip, my failure to reach the top of Mt. Tom on the second day had me hoping for a bit of redemption. Luckily, I had a final day in my schedule before I had to head to the other side of the Sierra for a trip with Pops, so I decided to backtrack in the hopes of knocking one more summit off my list of Death Valley High Points. Wanting to get an early start, I arrived at the trailhead -…
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It was dark at 4:00am, but the moon was out and I could see just the hint of light on the horizon as I pulled on a sweatshirt and began folding up the tent. Camped at just under 7,400 feet, I'd gotten my first good night of sleep in three days, banking nearly ten hours of shut-eye as a cool Sierra breeze streamed down the canyon overnight. I'd need every minute of that recharge; the day was going to be a doozy. Not that I ever really stood any chance of keeping up with Matt @theesotericone. By 4:17am, I started…
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The trip started off with a bang. It wasn't the kind of bang that's exciting and gets your blood flowing, rather, it was one of those bangs that generally indicates your day is about to change. In a bad way. Surprisingly, it wasn't my flight on Frontier - which sported the Piper the Pelican livery - where the problems began. It started when I arrived at the storage location for the Tacoma. I called the after-hours security number, and Kevin picked up after a couple rings. He sounded surprised to hear me. "Uh, I'm not there right now, give me…
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Putting Bannister House behind us for the time being, we continued our trek through Grand Gulch towards Pollys Canyon. There wasn't a chance we'd make it all the way in a single day - that would be backpacking insanity - but we still wanted to get a few more miles under our belt before calling it quits for the day. In fact, we were hoping to get to the Big Pour - where I'd heard from the BLM that there was some "doesn't look great" water, since it's always nice to have plenty of water for dinner, a face wash…
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