OnlyDirtRoads

One Last Trip (for the tent!)

At Overland Expo, we decided to buy a new, trailer specific tent. An order was placed, with an estimated delivery daye of "late summer".  A couple of Fridays ago, I posted our "old" tent for sale on a couple of forums, and promptly decided to go camping. Where? No idea. We were packed and ready to roll out; and had only to fill the water tank with water. As I was doing so a neighbor walked by to see where we might be headed. He mentioned that the access road to one of our favorite places to fish will close in mid-August. We decided to go there. The lame part: It's maybe 45 minutes from our cabin.

All the dispersed campsites were taken, so we stayed in the state campground. It's small and well kept, and a 5 minute walk to the trailhead. Our neighbors were nice and most of the sites surrounding ours were vacant. Saturday we walked down to the Cache La Poudre, which involved a mile of trail downhill, to the river. We walked another few miles downstream and jumped in. Before long, with Nancy on one side of the river and me on the other side, we were both catching fish. We caught a LOT of fish. Brookies big and small, a couple of rainbows, and a bunch of cutthroat all happily rose to a yellow stimmie. We had a blast. I even slipped on a rock, and fell in, getting pretty much soaked. I was happy to not break my flyrod. A big thunderstorm rolled in around 4 so we broke down our flyrods and hiked back to camp. Nancy cooked yet another great dinner and we parked ourselves on the hammocks until it got dark.  As we talked about getting into the tent, a nice doe walked right up to our camp, took one look at us, and sauntered into the darkening woods. It was a good day: we caught a couple zillion fish, had a good 6 mile hike, I took a cold bath, and we had a great dinner.

I returned home to learn that several people wanted to buy our old tent. A couple of emails; and arrangements were made to pick it up. The next day, we learned our new tent wouldn't arrive until the end of August.  We hope it will arrive in time for our vacation in September.

Next post: September, the Lost Coast, and us!

Camping, finally!

A few weeks ago we hooked up the Horizon and got out of Dodge. The High Park fire made getting to the cabin impossible, and camping in Baja Wyoming dodgy; so we opted to explore Halfmoon Creek. I'd been there once, solo, and wanted to spend more time there. One drives through Leadville and turns west at the turnoff for the fish hatchery. A couple of state campgrounds exist at the mouth of the drainage. They are super-popular as camping in one of them puts you right between Mt. Elbert and Mt. Massive; so you can do two 14ers in one weekend. On a weekend with good weather, you will see more tents than you could have ever imagined. Once you drive a bit past the campgrounds, the road gets quite rocky. Eventually the road ends at a high basin around 11,000. You can see the remnants of a huge mining operation, and not very many people.

We set up camp so as to overlook the creek and put some distance between our camp and the road. Setting up camp with the Horizon doesn't take long. I didn't unhook from the FJ; so setup was as easy as removing the tent cover and flipping the tent open. There were some mosquitos, so I setup our Big Agnes Twin Butte awning and hung the mosquito netting room. We call it the "bug room" and it gives us a 10x10 room free of insects. It seems wimpy, until you are covered with persistent mosquitoes that never go away. Then you realize you'd pay any amount of money to own one. As there was a state-wide fire ban, I hung an LED lamp, which was mostly used to wash dinner dishes.

Saturday, we had a "slackers duathlon". After a late and leisurely breakfast, we rigged up our flyfishing stuff and walked into the creek. We were into fish right away. Nothing huge, but we caught many many brookies (and released them all). None were too particular about type of fly; after a long spell of not fishing, it was a great way to reaffirm we DID know how to fish; and regain some lost casting skills. At some point, we realized we could keep fishing until dark and would keep catching 8" brook trout; so we went back to camp, changed out of our wading boots and put on dry socks and hiking boots. We followed the old mining road to the highest part of the basin, including one last mile in which we climbed over 1,000 feet. At altitude, we were ready to turn back and walk into camp. After 4 hours of hiking, we were really happy to have an electric fridge with very cold drinks.

Sunday, after breaking camp, we decided to drive back over Weston Pass. This involved driving back to the main highway, driving south for a few miles, and turning east on an unassuming county road. In fact, the first mile runs through an exclusive development, and you feel like you are trespassing. The road quickly turns to dirt and climbs for the next 9 miles. Weston Pass was once the busiest haul road in the state. In the 1800's, before a railroad came to Leadville, miners would load ore into huge wagons pulled by several oxen, and transit Weston Pass to Fairplay, where the ore was then put on a railcar and shipped to Denver for processing. The eastern side of the pass had many hotels, bars and bordellos, back in the day. Now there are traces of foundations and crumbled walls. All 20 miles are passable by car, although high clearance is nice to have in a few spots. The western side is rocky and rutted in spots, while the eastern side could easily be driven in a Prius. 12 years ago, I rode a cyclocross bike from Fairplay to Leadville and back over Weston. It's not technical; but it sure beats sitting in I-70 traffic. The last few miles to Fairplay, the road was as washboarded as I'd ever seen, and it took some experimenting to find a speed at which we didn't feel like we'd beat the FJ, trailer, or ourselves to death.

Plugging back in...

The last weeks have been busy with travel and blog posts got less important for a while. As I started to get caught up, I realized I had started to create a monster..a blog with many pages about mods to the FJ. This wasn't really what I intended, so I'll fast forward through that. Interested in something specific? Drop me a note and I'll expound upon anything, if I can.

To fast forward through the "refinements" to my FJ; I'll do no more than enumerate upgrades. Interested in how something works? Just ask.

Protection and Recovery: ARB Bumpers Front and Rear, Man-A-Fre skids, Warn 10,000 winch with Amsteel cable. ARB Twin Air Compressor. Hi-lift Jack.

Electrical: National Luna Dual Battery Monitor and Controller, 2 (two) Sears Platinum DieHard group 31 marine batteries, sPod auxillary power management, custom Contura switches. Multiple 12v power points. USB iPad charge ports.

Suspension: Front: ICON Coilovers with 700 pound Eibach springs. Rear: Icon 2.5 Piggyback shocks and OME "Heavy" coils. Total Chaos front UCAs. MAF Upper and Lower Control Arms in rear. Redeye Fab swaybar links F&R. Icon Panhard Bar.

Lighting: 40" Rigid Industries LED light bar. 2 Hella backup lights at back of rack. IPF Headlight bulbs. LED interior lights, Baja Designs 6" Prerunners with yellow lens.

Expedition Gear: ARB 50 liter Fridge/Freezer, Gobi Stealth rack with ladder and toolbox, Fiamma 7' Awning, MAF Auxiliary Fuel Tank.

Navigation and Comms: Cobra 75WXST CB with Bandi Mount, Toyota GPS Nav system.