Coast to coast drive in JLU, going home now.

[jbcrane]

A short addendum to the "Maybe don't invite LittleDog into your house" consideration...

I've done what you're doing. And it's grand. Yes - there are peaceful highs on the whistle of wind coming through a cracked open window, the perfect song on SiriusXM, the right temperature coming from heated seat/steering wheel, maybe a venti flat white with a couple extra shots to prime the pump, the wind at your back, the sun on your face. Then there are other times spent wondering what on earth I'm doing? And where will I be tonight? And man, I haven't showered in a week... that explains why people keep their distance on the odd occasion I'm out of the vehicle long enough to notice such things. And yeh, I'm a little hungry too. BTW, my name for your rice & grits is Metahie Casserole. Invented in Alaska one evening in Tent City after a long shift running the guillotine on the salmon line in Petersburg. My mom asked years later if Methaie was some exotic Inuit, or Athabaskan dish experienced while up North. No, I said. It's an acronym for Mix Everything Together And Hope It's Edible.

But what I remember most from such trips are - weirdly - scenes from un-identifiable, un-noteworthy stretches of highway where the light was doing a particularly good job painting the land before me through the windshield - good enough to cause me to stop, climb out onto often wet gravel, crank the film advance on my F2 and snap a few frames of Velvia, or Ektar, or Portra 400 or whatever else I had thawed and loaded. Today these scenes just suddenly appear as I sit at my desk, or walk the dog in the evening. Like little electric shocks triggering the bulb in my memory to flicker on for a moment and display the frame randomly queued up in the carousel.

That - and people met along the way. In the evening setting up camp, over a beer while installing hood struts in a campground at the base of Mount Olympus, or making coffee on the tailgate table after a hike in the rain.... or cooking dinner - alone. Or at a gas station where a pretty young lady pretends to be stranded in her van, holding a sign, and I wave her over and fill her tank just because.

So travel well @LittleDog. The adventure you're on will end, but also last a lifetime.

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[LittleDog]

So I'm puttering around, ostensibly organizing the pantry but maybe really just snacking and waiting for the 'filter-out pile' Metahie to make up its mind and either cook or congeal, and I figured I'd better make up for a few lost days before I forget what happened. I left the Grand Canyon? Where'd I go after? Luckily, the camera roll on my phone provides some good reminders.

Such as this poor sap at Petrified Forest National Park that tried taking a free souvenir.

Poor Volkswagen Dasher. Almost as bad luck as trying to take lava rocks out of Hawaii without someone selling them to you first. I tried looking for a 'TV stone' from all the cave and cavern visits of my childhood, begged and whined for until purchased, and then promptly lost. The store lady smiled and intimated that she wasn't hiding one particular kind of rock from amongst all the kinds she had strewn about the store solely on my account, and bade me good luck. I'm saving that luck for another day.

Afterwards, I noticed on my Google maps that there was a lone star, way out next to nothing: 'The Lightning Field', an installation piece maintained by the Dia Art Foundation in a tiny town called Quemado. (If you live in or near Quemado, sorry for making fun. You're not really next to nothing, Pie Town is only 20 miles away) I-40 is the closest major highway to it, and it's not that close. I couldn't imagine a reason why I'd ever make such a wide detour again, so I went for the gusto.

Here's where I'd show an image of such an interesting-sounding place:



The reality was, I couldn't find it. How? That whole town is probably 3x5 streets, (I just looked, it's only 3x4) and I drove all over. I finally gave up and called the number on the website, to be answered by a sleepy-sounding young woman.

Now just imagine getting woken up and having some weirdo say how difficult to find you were, and asking how exactly to get to you. When you reply sleep-confusedly, the weirdo says that they probably saw you somewhere online, years ago, and thought you were beautiful and it's taken this long to finally get this close, and though they can't seem to pin you down exactly, they are really close. REALLY close. Are you in that building over there? Could you maybe stick your head out and see?


Well, it turns out that, Sorry they were Closed for the Season, her phone is a perk for volunteering or something, and no, you can't "still just drive out there to see a bunch of sticks in the middle of nowhere anyway, they're just standing there" because they are a classy place and they require reservations that fill up immediately upon release for the active season and have hundreds, even thousands on the waiting list to see the "bunch of sticks", thank you very much.

She did apologize, and activated her 'professional voice' once I mentioned Lightning Field and Quemado. She must have quickly realised that I was:

A) Just some poor, dumb, lost art tourist.
B) Too far away to cause her immediate harm.
C) Definitely not savvy enough to find and stalk her online.

Turns out that reservations involve starting in town, then you go out and tour it during the day, and then stay overnight at the installation to hope really hard that while lightning doesn't actually hit you, it gets pretty close. If the weather doesn't cooperate, you admire the sticks.

I think the forum here might be a little subconsciously on my mind nowadays. You might be proud to hear that when she dismissed my driving out into the hills on my own because they make people park in town and send out a driver in a truck, I may or may not have sat up a little straighter in my seat down in that dusty dirt road and proudly proclaimed, "That's alright, I've gotta jeep!"

Although I'm mostly stock, I don't think a lift or bigger tires really helps against, "Sir, really, you can't come, we're closed".


Luckily and accidentally, all the way down the rest of Highway 60, then a skip onto 380, (A mere 200 miles of kicking myself away) is the final resting place of Smokey the Bear:

Thank you, tiny highway signs, for rescuing a poorly planned detour.

The little museum there is nice. The garden and boardwalk in the back where Smokey is feeding that fir tree is pleasant. I recommend it, but I'd probably recommend most museums. (I am naturally a terribly, terribly slow museum goer. Given time, I won't skip exhibits, and I read every little plaque. One bad thing about seeing all of these places is the nebulous, imaginary sense of urgency pushing me through these scenes and states. A fly on the wall {because these museums are usually empty when I visit} might see me rush in, look around wildly, wander randomly, suddenly stop and very intently read only posters number 4 and 7 out of 13, look at the spot my wristwatch would be if I didn't mail it to NJ already, then scurry away to the gift shop for a participation trophy)

Lots of unexpected trips down memory lane in the exhibits, as you'll suddenly hear old public service announcements and see old commecials or posters. Lots of neat tidbits about the real Smokey Bear too, and the workers only shake their heads and roll their eyes a little when you joke that the Smokey Bear Museum should be in Tennessee, before telling you his life story.

Lookit that! A tiny bear on a little airplane!

Then they'll commiserate with you as you suddenly remember that Woodsy Owl used to exist, but not really anymore, and tell you about how Canadian Smokey Bear is being changed to a female fox mascot, while being unsure how exactly to explain why "Well, is it a sexy fox?" is not really a relevant question in the matter. I think it's greatly relevant to the kids. I spent too long and not long enough in the museum, before going out into the street to nearly get run over trying visit the barely unattached, but affiliated, gift shop where I purchased glow-in-the-dark prizes. (If glow-in-the-dark is an option, I almost always choose it. Much of my camping equipment is orange/fluorescent, glow-in-the-dark, or lost)

Afterwards, I gawked at Capitan Mountain, where a tiny, slightly crispy bear cub was rescued over 75 years ago, and then found a BLM spot, with electricity! This was around when the Jackery charge gremlin started showing up, so I paid a bit extra so I could start troubleshooting it, though a "bit" might be an understatement and bad pun. The next morning:

$20! Though it's my own fault for not getting any of the 50% discount passes before I left. Each spot came with a horse corral, that I suddenly, just now, regret not doing anything with. They can charge because horse people are willing to pay; I suppose I would too, if I were horsey. But it had vault toilets, water and electric, and zero horse apples on the ground. Tidy campsite. I parked right next to a toilet and ate a daring but unrememberable meal, and was glad for it. Not many greens in the desert.


That's the day after my last trip post, best as I can remember. I just finished eating two red potatoes for dinner: Part II. Some day between now and when the previous trip post happened, I foolishly purchased a bag of red potatoes for some reason. I don't remember when, and there's nothing so mundane as that particular bag of potatoes in my camera roll, so there's nothing to place the date. I do remember a pretty young bag girl making wisecracks (or maybe crushing on) to the deadpan cashier, and me joining in. It was like a John Couger Mellencamp song. She made a mashed potato crack and I made a scrambled egg joke. (How she cracked a mashed potato, I'll never know) He grunted. It was horrible and endearing. My only clue to how long it's been since then is the number of eggs I have left. (Three of six, after this morning)

I only mention this because the timing and details of this trip might get a bit jumbled after that day. No, they are definitely jumbled already. For fear of losing them, I might put in a little scene, like the oblivious and undeserving heartthrob above, whenever I remember them, and not strictly within the correct sequence of where and when they occurred, and certainly not with any sense of why or how. I don't think it really matters when they happened, just that they happened. My temporal sense is awful, but writing the little things out at least cements the actual occurrence in my head a bit better. Hopefully these posts and this trip will lead to me having a head full of cement, as may have been falsely suggested in the past.

This story based on actual events. The Names and Places and Facts may have been changed due to my forgetting, misremembering, or **edit: lightly** embellishing them.

I did only few things, but drove about 360 miles that day, which maybe is why I didn't post that night. The next day was similar, but that's another post.


@jbcrane Man, I was going to stop there, but your bit about the light and the land and the F2 really got me. I've been missing that this whole time, a familiar weight hanging off my shoulder, giving me scoliosis, just ready for stuff like that. I had to mail all the cameras ahead, and have been kicking myself each time a situation or scene like yours presents itself. I hardly even stop for them anymore. I honestly don't have the space, or really honestly, the time or temperature for the cameras on this trip, but what the heck is a roadtrip without a camera?

I am thankful that fancy phones now have triple or more lenses to choose from to use, but it's not the same and I shoot accordingly. We'll see though.

 

[LittleDog]

The next morning didn't start out the best, if I remember correctly. My dumb frozen fingers kept dropping stuff, and when you're camping, things you drop tend to fall into places like mud or latrines. Even if you are over a table or ground sheet, your item will find a way to avoid safety and cleanliness to land in whatever it is you don't want it in the most.

Like I said, tidy campsite. Otherwise, that pot would have ended up in manure.

As usual, the dog was not amused by the morning or the cold:

Before I forget, this was at Rob Jagger Campground in New Mexico. In case you like horsing around, and want to go there too. I'll try to name the places I stay at, if they seem like they would be good for other people trying to camp out in their jeep too. I haven't been doing as much explicitly jeep-y stuff lately, so this is becoming something of just a regular travelogue.

In an effort to increase the jeep-centricity average, here's a thing I see other trip reports do, a short description of LittleDog the jeep, and gear she's carrying to help us along on this trip.

2020 Bright White Sahara, born 2019.
Stock AT tires
Cloth seats
Cold weather package, but no engine block heater, because the salesman asked in a slightly mocking tone if I really thought I needed that. The opposite of an upsell.
Tow package, because it includes the switches. Only #3 being used for GMRS and CB. The KC lamps are wired directly to battery with switches on A-pillar and floor.
Front hitch. There's a Skid Mark hitch skid in front right now. It looks a bit funny, but its collection of paint samples and hitch-shaped scratches show evidence of an unexpected bonus in parking lot protection.
Apex swaybar quick disconnects. Pretty great.
Air lift airbags, in an attempt to offset the rear suspension from the vast amount of stuff I brought with me.
Smittybilt 9.5K winch, mounted on top of plastic bumper. Questionably wired. Originally designed to be removable, I've only taken it off once.
Cascade 80W solar panal. Keeps the hungry battery-parasite gremlin fed, and lets the little Engel fridge run forever during the day in the summer.
Inno roof box.
Custom "upgraded" Slim Shady awning that I possibly don't remember how to operate.

Carrying:
Tools, kind of a lot of.
Approx. 10 gallon capacity fresh water.
A whole lot of calories.
2, 2 gallon Rotopax
Two folding traction aids.
Custom butchered 58.5" Hi-lift, carried disassembled in cabin.
Six-ton bottle jack, Safe Jack extensions, pads.
Various tow straps, soft shackles, and kinetic rope.
Viair inflator.
A 5-foot A-frame ladder, for some reason.
If two is one, and one is none: A "few" flashlights, headlamps, prybars, shovels, bits of rope/cordage, etc. Um, perhaps "several" stoves.

 

[Bill_BCNtoNY]

First, thanks for your thread - thoroughly enjoying it!
Question on your KCs: why did you opt to wire them to A-pillar and floor vs using your free aux switches?

keep up the cool write-ups and enjoy the trip with your little buddy!

 

[LittleDog]

First, thanks for your thread - thoroughly enjoying it!
Question on your KCs: why did you opt to wire them to A-pillar and floor vs using your free aux switches?

keep up the cool write-ups and enjoy the trip with your little buddy!

Glad to be of service.

I originally thought that I was going to have lots of use for the Aux switches; so far this has not been the case. I do have a Warn winch solenoid in a box that had travelled the country more than twice now that I'll put on a switch someday. Right now it has a big red marine switch under the hood.

For the KCs, they came with a red light-up switch, and I thought that it would be nice to be able to use them independent of the jeep's on/off state.

It is actually pretty useful. With the amber light covers on, they provide a nice diffuse area light, (they are LEDs, so the covers don't just melt) and I can just reach in through the window and flick them on.

As for the floor switch, as I was running the wires in through the door, I saw my dead pedal's "headlamp" holes could probably fit a switch.

That may or may not be speaker cable.

I remembered vintage ads for high-beam floor switches saying how useful they would be for curvy mountain roads, so I got an intermittent switch from the hardware store. They are wired independently, the pillar switch toggles always-on, and the floor switch turns them on when pressed, regardless of the pillar switch state.

The curvy road thing is true, it's pretty useful, and the jeep's automatic, so my left foot isn't doing anything anyway. Plus I get to confuse people when they can see both hands and the lights flash.

I'm enjoying the trip immensely. I think LittleDog is nervous about our dogfood levels.

 

[Tethmes]

I think LittleDog is nervous about our dogfood levels.

LittleDog might just be trying to tell you that he found a use for that block of cheese.

Following your thread. It made the last hour or so at work enjoyable.

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