This story starts a little differently than most. See, every year a core group of folks head out for a two-week-or-so excursion to a spectacular location for a bit of wheeling, a good dose of camping, and a ton of fun. But last year was different. I mean sure - we had all those things for the most part, but we had to cut the entire trip short when - within a couple hours - all three trucks ran into serious issues on the trail. It's worth reading at least that part of the story from Redhead Down, but I…
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First post of a major trip, great place to start reading.
Do you have a recommended place to buy Toyota parts? ...I need a rear taillight and quarterpanel. ...We were camping near Greenwater and even though we had an awesome Rainier view I hatched this plan to explore a new area that may reveal some riverside spots. Only hitch was that I knew FS-19 was closed due to construction, so I figure we can take the Naches Jeep Trail to bypass the closure. ...our ambitions definitely exceeded our skill. LOLJoe When he texted me a few days before our departure, Joe had no idea that we already had upcoming trip planned…
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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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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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We'd just been to the Owyhee area, but when the opportunity presented itself to get together with Mike @Digiratus, Zane @Speedytech7, Ben @m3bassman and Kirsten for Memorial Day, we knew we had to go back - the lure of getting together to enjoy the outdoors with friends, greater than the desire to explore somewhere new. Plus, even though we were in the same general area, we were able to come up with an itinerary that wouldn't exactly repeat what we'd done just a few weeks before. That is, if all went according to plan. Like all trips, this one wouldn't…
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In all of our trips to the Owyhee area, we've only ever really explored the western half - the Owyhee Canyonlands. Of course, there's some really cool stuff there - Three Forks, Coffepot Crater, the Honeycombs, Snively Hot Springs, and Juniper Gulch - but the Owyhee area is quite a lot larger than its Oregon acreage. With this trip, we were going to change all that - and then some! Our plan - at least at the beginning - was to hit up the Owyhee Uplands Backcountry Byway, a ~100 mile journey from Grand View, Idaho to Jordan Valley, Oregon,…
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Preface You'll note pretty quickly that this trip took place right near the beginning of what has become a worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. At the time of the trip, there had been approximately 600 cases and 24 deaths across the USA. 18 of those deaths were from the Life Care assisted living community in Kirkland, WA. Schools at all education levels were still open, and while some companies were starting to allow employees to work from home, it was not widespread, and definitely not mandated. There were no travel restrictions - or even really talk of such restrictions on a broad…
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Prologue It was 4:04am on a Wednesday morning when I pulled out of the driveway and pointed the Tacoma south towards Death Valley. I was looking forward to the warmer weather - the forecast in the mid-70°F's - but even more than that, I was looking forward to the company. Because - while I was all alone for this leg of the trip - I planned on making two connections in the next several days that were long overdue. But first I had to make it south. At 20 hours - with refueling and food - it would be a…
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This trip is going to be EPIC. In fact, once we complete our 8 days in the Mojave National Preserve, we'll probably be done exploring the area - we'll hit all the important bits, and will have no reason to go back - except to show of the coolest areas to our friends.Famous last words! Spoiler: I need to go back. Just look at all the cool places we'll go (in blue). The First Day (Christmas) It was Christmas day, and for us, that meant we were kicking off our next adventure by starting the two-day trek from the Seattle…
1 Comment![In Search of Overlooks - A Fall Trip to Western Death Valley [P1]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49072602511_82aa16d541_h.jpg)
Death Valley is not nearby, and yet - it continues to call time after time, urging us to make the 20 hour journey south to explore its wonders. And it's hard to say no. That's how - on a Wednesday morning - we found ourselves packed up in the truck and heading towards southern California, excited for the three-and-a-half days we'd have to explore. I promised myself that this trip would be different. We wouldn't attempt to squeeze everything in; I wouldn't over-schedule our time; it wouldn't be like it always is - a mad dash to not miss a…
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I was stir crazy. I'd been back from our didn't-go-quite-as-planned trip to Colorado for two weeks and it was time to get out again. And this time I wanted it to be with @mrs.turbodb. Knowing that she'd be unable to resist a trip back to the Alvord Desert - and for our first time, Steens Mountain - I knew that would be our destination. It'd be a relatively short trip - four days total - but I figured that even at that, we could do a couple things we'd wanted to do for quite some time: We could get to…
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September 15, 2019. It was 2:00pm when I parted ways with Pops in eastern California - our relaxing trip into the Sierras just the start of a 3 week journey for me. The next two weeks would be adventuring to - and then through - Wyoming and Colorado with some of the normal folks - Mike @Digiratus and Monte @Blackdawg (and his dad Steve), and also a new face to me - Brett @Squeaky Penguin. I've been wanting to meet Brett for quite some time now, so I was definitely looking forward to the opportunity. But here I am getting…
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August 27, 2019. Most of the trips I do require a full day - or more - of freeway driving just to reach the trailhead, so you can imagine my delight when we decided to do a trip on the west coast. Sort-of. At least, our meeting location was only four hours away - in the tiny little community of Mazama, WA. From there, we'd head north - to British Columbia, Canada - where we planned to run The Whipsaw Trail and then make our way north and west to Molybdenite Peak - before turning south again for the United States.…
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We've run two Backcountry Discovery Routes (BDRs) in the past - Oregon in 2017 and Washington in 2018. So, when it came to planning for this year, we decided that we'd run what we thought would be one of the coolest BDRs out there - Idaho. Little did we realize that it would mean spending most of July in the beautiful state - we had, after all, just finished exploring the southeast and then the central parts of Idaho a couple weeks before we'd planned to embark on this south-to-north traverse of the state. Not that we were complaining - this was clearly,…
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July 4, 2019. We always seem to get our trucks reasonably level when we're out in the woods, but something about the level driveway we'd parked in made for an extremely easy night sleep. Or maybe we were just tired from our previous three days - gallivanting around the southeast parts of Idaho. At any rate, we were up late (for us) when Ben @m3bassman opened the garage door at 8:00am - our planned departure time giving us plenty of time to get dressed, eat breakfast, and get the tent put away. In fact, it was still a few minutes…
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The day started out just like any other. Well, any other where the previous included a 12-hour drive from home to the starting point of our next adventure. So let's back up for a moment... We'd arrived at Bruneau Canyon Overlook just after 10:00pm the day before - our drive from home behind us, capped off by dinner with Ben @m3bassman, Kirsten, Mikey @pizzaviolence, and Amber at their local taco joint - Enrique's - a place they'd recommended a year before when we spent Two-and-a-Half Days in Idaho. Having grown up in California and with a few great taco trucks at…
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Summer in the Pacific Northwest is hard to beat. So, I wouldn't blame you for wondering why - with a week of sun and 75°F in store before Memorial Day - we were headed for the inclement weather of the Oregon-Idaho border and Hells Canyon. So let's start there. In what I believe to be a tradition that I've stumbled into, Monte @Blackdawg and Mike @Digiratus generally get together for a trip every Memorial Day, and this year the plan was go meet up in Lewiston, ID for a few days of puttering around and enjoying ourselves in the outdoors.…
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April 25, 2019. It'd been several weeks since my last trip and as usual that meant I had a bad case of the shakes. Spring is such a frustrating time from an adventure perspective - the weather seems so nice, and yet everywhere interesting is still covered in snow. And, the winter staple - the desert - is getting hot. You can imagine my delight when a check of the weather showed that the Alvord Desert - a place we'd visited for the first time last October - was going to have weather in the mid-70's. From my perspective, we hadn't…
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Just before our two trips to Anza-Borrego, Monte @Blackdawg reached out to see if we were interested in a late-March trip to Canyonlands and some hiking of a few nearby slot canyons - perhaps even some that we'd attempted in our F.U.Rain trip last year. Not really realizing how close it was (5 days) to the completion of our trip, and definitely not realizing the work that would need to be done to the truck between trips, I responded in the only way I knew how. Interested.turbodb As it turned out, it was a mad dash between trips. I had…
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Oh man, was this going to be fun. A trip like no other (so far). A trip with a twist. A trip that was actually two. Let me explain. For a while now, Anza Borrego Desert State Park in California has been on my list of places to explore. Like Death Valley - which we've visited quite a bit and recently hiked for three days - it's a great place to visit during the winter because temperatures in the summer can get rather unbearable - so much so that certain roads in the park are closed from mid-June to September. The…
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