Big Arizona Strip Adventure

[DirtyLarry]

Well, it is finally time to head out for this big Arizona Strip trip we have been planning for months. Follow us along as our SPOT GPS tracker plots our progress on Google maps. SPOT will ping every 10 minutes to Google maps as we progress on our 8 day trek through the desert in two 25+ year old trucks.

SPOT Shared Page: (SPOT will start pinging around 6 AM Monday, July 6th)

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/f...Mq2sJvB5nXop0N

Pictures will be uploaded here whenever we get internet connection.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/1188958...7620771534282/

Adios!

The vehicles for the trip...

[70rs/ss]

Yo Larry have a heck of a time!! I just got back from a vacation in Yellowstone, I am here in AZ if you need me!!

[vtblazer]

Subscribed!

Be safe & have a blast!

[DirtyLarry]

Well, if any of you are watching us on SPOT we are still out here although we had to come into Page, AZ this evening to lick our wounds, get supplies and perform a few minor repairs to the trucks. After two days in the dirt we needed a hotel so we are at the Marriott at Lake Powell. The Dodge ate a set of front hubs and I have lighting issues that we need to deal with tomorrow morning.

I must say the back roads of the Grand Canyon are absolutely amazing! There are several hundred pictures we uploaded tonight to Flickr and I have one more camera to pull pictures from that got burnt up. Apparently, the USB power port on the Black and Decker inverter pumps too much power as it seems to have let the smoke out of the wife's brand new Olympus Camera.

We saw Toroweap (Tuweep), which was awesome, and we just about made it to SB point but the Dodge ran into some issues where we had to tow it back to camp but we did see 100 canyon point by mistake by making a wrong turn someplace. It is fascinating to get on line and follow our SPOT tracks to see what it looks like from 50,000 ft. Towing another rig on these tight trails for a few miles is a real time consuming job.

The '78 is running great other than it doesn't like to transfer fuel from the RH tank to the LH tank in hot weather unless you pull the LH tank fuel cap off. Also broke an exhaust hanger and there is a nasty rattle developing under the dash that needs an inspection in the morning. The trailer lost an axle dust cap way the hell back there so the bearings needs some lovin too.

Here are a few pics.

Buddy Bill trying to figure out where in the heck were are and how to get to where we wanted to go. GPS sucks around here!


100 Mile Canyon


It is HOT, I don’t care who you are!




Roadside panhandlers and the way to Page. Got momma nice bracelet! Hopefully she forgives me for letting the smoke out of her camera!



The rest of the pictures are here (and more coming!)… http://www.flickr.com/photos/1188958...ted=3705445859

Adios for now.

......Planing on roaming around AZ and UT for a while longer then will probably camp one night in the CO mountains on the way home so there probably won't be any other updates until we get home.....unless we decide to get another hotel Sunday night.

[special-K]

What a place to explore.I bet you really do feel like explorers.No one around to argue that with.It`s prolly a good thing you had to got to Page and get a room.Ever try washing up in the river?That`s some painfully cold water right there!!I don`t care who ya are.
So,that windmill is on an old ranch site?Thanks for sharing all this...Have fun(duh?)

[dammitmitchell]

im still jealous!
give us a link to the flickr im blind and cant find it..

[DirtyLarry]

Flickr link is in first thread. Hope this works as Ia m posting from my blackberry

[Prerunner1982]

Glad to see you'll are on the move again Larry. Thought ya'll were spending the day in the hotel pool with a cold beverage.

[Kurt L]

thank for the ride along, sure is beautiful out there.sure would've liked to been there.you went where i'll probably never get to go.thanks again for the ride,sure was fun.

[DirtyLarry]

Well, we made it back into town late Sunday night and have been busy showing my buddy from Indiana around town. Got him off to the airport this afternoon so I finally have a bit of time to post up a few pictures.

I tell you, the back country of the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley are spectacular! It is no wonder why the Indians were so spiritual. This was definitely one of the best vacations I ever had as there were NO people around anywhere until we got into touristy areas such as the Lake Powell marinas and Monument Valley welcome center. The back country gave the feeling we were the only one around in the world other than the satellites we could see passing over us.

Monday night (July6th) stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Kanab. We needed a hotel after the long cut we took through CO to get down to the Four Corners area. Trip took 15 hours in stead of 9 but it was worth it just to see the scenery.

Tuesday night we camped right on a cliff edge at Tuweap right at the Grand Canyon. Tuweap is not visited by very many people other than serious hikers, off-roaders, etc. I have read they get less than 500 visitors a year. We saw nobody in that area the 24 hrs we area around. The road to Tuweap is over 60 miles of unimproved/primitive roads. (Pictures coming)

Wednesday night we camped pretty much in the middle of a trail as we got lost headed to SB Point and it was getting late.

Thursday night we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott in Page, AZ. We needed more ice, food, etc and the trucks and trailer needed a little TLC at that point.

Friday night we camped in the Valley of the Gods near Monument Valley in Utah. Now, this place is beautiful! You feel like you are the only guy in the world there!

Saturday night we camped on a trail called “Hole in the Wall” which is north of a marina on the North side of Lake Powell. Again, it got too late on us to reach the end of the trail that ends at the lake so we had to set up camp before we got to the water. This trail is like 30+ miles long and the last 15 or require some serious 4wd finesse to get in there especially pulling the trailer.

Sunday we broke camp around 8 am and reached the highway around 9:30 am. By the time we aired up tires and got going it was pushing 10:45 or so. We drove straight through to Pueblo and got in around 10 PM.

Carnage report:

My truck – broke the rear exhaust hangers on both sides and some severe desert pin striping going on. Other than that zero problems other than I am definitely ditching this MEFI-4 engine management system for the 8.1L as it pinged, jerked and ran like crap pulling the hills out there in 110 degree temps. The next big project for this truck is to convert it over to the production vehicle PCM-32 OBDII system and run a tweaked calibration from my 2001 Silverado in it. MEFI-4 sucks since it is apparent I will never get it programmed correctly on my own.

Dodge Ramcharger- Grenaded two sets of front hubs and one broken tail light where a tree limb slapped it in the rear as we squeezed through the thick brush near SB Point.

Here are a few pictures. I’ll post more of my favorites as I get time (many pictures are still loading to Flickr). Coming up soon is a trip summary on the SPOT adventure page I am working on.

[Billhilly]

Good to see you back in one piece.
I checked in on SPOT a couple of times to make sure you were still moving! Some outstanding real estate you were drivin round. Looks pretty cool from outa space as well. Sounds like an outstanding trip! Some great photos on Flickr as well.
Thanks for letting us come along. Kids thought it was a hoot as well!

Bill.

[dammitmitchell]

this thread depresses me..
im from there.. and you get to visit and play in my backyard.. waaaaa!>..

p.s. it's the only place in the world that looks like that.. it's great that you could go wheel in it..

and the brush marks are called "arizona pinstriping" he he he!

[DirtyLarry]

Glad you all are getting a kick out of this. I sure did!

As the pictures are finally all getting loaded on Flickr, I’ll post up a summary of each day with highlight pictures.

I also created a SPOT Adventures page which will save our trip indefinitely once the live tracker I posted in the first post of the tread expires in a few more days. I am still working on this page so it may not look complete for a while (very slow website to work with).

http://www.spotadventures.com/trip/view?trip_id=172579

Anyway, here are a few highlights from our first day on the road. The first day pretty much consisted of traveling from home to the hotel in Kanab, UT. We decided to take the scenic route through Ouray, Telluride, Silverton on into Durango then onto Hwy 160 which eventually circles back up to Kanab, UT. My engineer friend from work is originally from South Africa so this was a pretty cool trip for him to see so much of the west in one trip.

Leaving home at 6 am Monday morning. (Friends camera is set on eastern time)



First photo stop was in Gunnison, CO at the Blue Mesa Reservoir.







Ouray, CO

[DirtyLarry]

Still more from Monday, July 6th on the way to AZ.

Outside of Cortez, CO. Big change in scenery once you roll out of Cortez a short distance.


Entering the Navajo Nation. Look out for drunks on the highway!








Oh, man. This has to be the crappiest gas station in the world. I could wiz faster than their gas pumps pump. My friend first seemed scared of the Indians which I guess is why he took this odd picture. A few miles east of here is where I found the fuel transfer pump doesn’t like to work in 107 degree temperatures. Since I couldn’t transfer fuel, I had to buy some Navajo gas!


The Big Lake Trading Post. Shall we stop? Nah, let's keep rolling….


Lake Powell as we passed through Page, AZ Monday evening.


Pretty sunset as we neared our hotel in Kanab, UT.


More to come…….

[Igotachevyor2]

looks like a great trip

[DirtyLarry]

Tuesday, July 7th:

We headed out of Kanab, UT up to Colorado City, AZ to top off with fuel before catching the “Clayhole Route” road down to Turweep. Colorado City is where a large colony of polygamists lives. It was interesting to see so many large houses in various stages of disarray and/or construction. Many large full size vans were parked in the front of each house. Very odd scene. Didn't see any people around which was even more odd.


Airing down tires before starting the trek. It is a long, dusty, loney and slow ride to Tuweap.


64 miles of unimproved/primitive roads to reach Tuweep (Toroweap depending what sign you read)


The first neat antique was this old windmill near cattle watering hole.


60 some odd miles later we rolled into the Greater Tuweap metro area. The rangers have quite the sense of humor.


Rangers Station at Tuweap. The ranger wasn’t there as they travel around the area for days before they come back to their base station so we heard when we finally met the ranger the next day. Nice rangers too! Very friendly and happy to see visitors.


Hey, you got to get water anyway you take it right?


Check out this tire machine and floor jack.





Then there was this neat old relic lying out in the middle of nowhere.

[DirtyLarry]

….More from Tuesday

After passing the ranger’s station the road gets a bit rougher with large dust bogs. Dust bogs, you say? We though the same thing when we saw the warning sign of deep, often impassable dust bogs. This day the dust bogs were no big deal to pass through although I would imagine a bit of ran would make them much more challenging.





This is what awaits you once you reach the end of the road at Tuweap. Beautiful! But, watch that first step though, it is a dozy!







The scenery is unreal. Everything looks fake. Fake like a popup book.


I laid on my belly to get a few shots over the edge.



It is only like 3,000 ft down to the Colorado River. Should have brought a few more spools of fishing line.

[DirtyLarry]

….Even more from Tuesday

There was an interesting rock formation across the canyon that looked like a big pile of poo or something…..soft serve ice cream?



While we were up there we noticed a small poof of smoke across the canyon on the Indian reservation. Within an hour it grew into a very large plume of smoke. We never did hear anything more about this and when we met the ranger the next day it was news to him.







Couple of wize guys.


We dropped the trailer off at the campsite so we could go mosey around on the trail to Lava Falls that we had passed on the way up.



More dust bogs on the way to Lava Falls


The GPS lied to us. Lava Falls is a hiking trail, not a 4x4 trail. Still pretty cool though.


Funny, it didn’t feel that hot in that canyon

[DirtyLarry]

….still more from Tuesday


After the Lava Falls small journey we returned to the camp site to set up our home for the night. This was a sweet camp spot! We had bats flying over us all night and the coyotes howled all night. Kinda spooky but really cool. Just before dusk two deer came waltzing right by. It was also a full moon so we had plenty of light all night long as well.





Everybody got a blow job with the air hose and bath before dinner.


My buddy slept in the back of my truck and was worried the truck would roll off the cliff into the Grand Canyon so he placed a large boulder under the rear tire. Funny, how an automotive engineer has no faith in mechanical things...


Mmmm, shishkabobs and taters!




Once it got dark the creatures became more lively.


Pictures just don’t serve justice to the beauty of the moon coming up over the horizion.




Sunrise Wednesday morning.


More later…..

[62 short step]

Awesome pics!! Looks like a good time!

[DirtyLarry]

Wednesday morning we packed up with plans to head to SB Point which is one of the most remote and seldom visited overlooks. A bit hard to find I might add. But, first we wanted to cut across Mt. Trumbull to check out an old school house that we had read about.

5:53 AM at Tuweap. Beautiful sunrise



I keep forgetting to show a picture of the SPOT GPS tracker and where it was mounted inside the topper. It beams its signal through the fiberglass topper with ease.


Saw this coyote as we were making our way out of Tuweap. He didn’t seem to mind us one bit. We were bit slow with the camera though.


Alas, after a loooong dusty ride we finally approached the School House.








We also ran into Ranger Todd and two female medic Rangers that patrol this area of the Grand Canyon. I can’t say enough great things about these 3 rangers as they spend a lot of time answering questions, helping us with our maps and deciding where we wanted to go next, and of course, the most challenging way to get there. Todd wasn’t so sure we could get to SB Point with vehicles though as the brush is extremely thick.

One of the ladies was smoking hot too!


Todd had a pretty sweet Jeep Rubicon with a 2 inch lift, winch, radio equipment, satellite phone, etc. One of the neatest rigs I have seen to wear Gov license plates.

[DirtyLarry]

So after we said our good byes to our new Park Ranger friends, we headed on our journey to the SB point area which is a pretty good distance from the school house. In fact, we have to totally back track back to the Tuweap area and beyond. If you watched this unfold on the SPOT live tracker we looked totally lost, because we were!











Okay, where the hell are we and why doesn’t either of our GPS units jive with this map???


We were a bit nervous to cross this area as we were a long way from where we wanted to camp and even a much longer distance from civilization. Out here it can be hard to judge just how deep these mud holes are until you get into them. I ran through the mud whole first which was surprisingly easy to traverse. Both vehicles popped right through it with ease and minimal wheel spin. We have more videos of this spot than pictures.


We were running out of daylight real fast so we ended up setting up camp at the first clearing we came to, which was basically right on the trail. Pretty disappointing camping spot but still better than camping at a KOA!




It was really dark this night.

[DirtyLarry]

Thursday morning Bill made us a good breakfast while Terence and I pack up camp and tapped into our fuel reserve. I dumped 10 gallons in the Ram Charger and 5 gallons in my truck, saving 1 more 5 gallon container as a backup just in case….. and as it turned out, good thing I did. We also left the trailer at the camp site since we have to come back this way anyway.

The trail where we camped that should lead us to the illusive SB Point trail head.


5 miles later we hit the end of the trail at 100 Mile Canyon still have not found the SB Point trail. Bill looking at the map and GPS again wondering WTF.


100 Mile Canyon wasn’t in the plans but it was well worth the trip.













As it turned out we had passed the SB Point trail about 2 miles outside of camp. The SB Point trail is not marked and the actual trail head was covered with old timbers while a rerouted trail going to it was found up the road a ways which was heavily over grown and hard to find as well. This was a legal trail as Todd the Ranger told us we could drive to SB but it would be heavy with trees. No lie! We got on the trail and followed it for about 4 miles but the Ramcharger was having a hard time weselling in and out of the trees due to the aggressive front locker which makes the truck very hard to steer. After bending the heck out of a mirror and breaking a taillight with 5 more miles to go before the end of the SB Point trail end my buddy decided it would be best if we turned around. Just as we turned around the Ram Charger died! Out of GAS! Not good as we only have 1 more can of gas left at camp and a long way to go to the nearest gas station in Fredonia, AZ. Where did all that gas go?? I just dumped 10 gallons in it that morning. Something about going 12 miles in 4 low tends to burn some fuel. I was worried as well as I had less than half tank on the LH and 1/4 on the RH. If I have to pull the Ram Charger very far I might run out as well.

Towing the Ram Charger back to camp to get more gas.

[DirtyLarry]

After dragging the RamCharger a few miles back to camp we dumped our last can of gas into it and we’re all getting nervous about making it all the way back to the highway with only 5 gallons in it. My fuel situation wasn’t much better at that point.

Here is the view of the main dirt road to Fredonia once we got off the trail. 42 more miles to go to the highway then 7 more miles into Fredonia.



We were both running on major fuel conservation mode at this point….coasting down hills with the engine off, keeping the RPM’s low, etc.

Alas, we made it to the highway to air up tires before making the next 7 miles into Fredonia. At least, I still have ¼ in the RH tank if I needed to pull the Ram Charger but luckily we made to Fredonia just fine.



Were we just come from running on fumes.


Found broken exhaust hanger 1 at this point.


The ride from 100 Mile Canyon to where we stopped to air up was the last of my Olympus camera. Apparently, the Black and Decker inverter let the smoke out of the battery which I didn’t know until I got home and popped a spare battery in it. Whew…I was worried I ruined the wife’s camera.

After we fueled up in Fredonia we decided to pedal up to Page and grab a hotel for the night plus we needed to lick our wounds a bit. The trailer lost a greasable hub cap which the hub was already packed with dirt and needed a grease job badly. The Dodge ate a set of front locking hubs thanks to the Auburn front locker and both trucks needed the interiors blown out. We also needed ICE badly!

This is one of my favorite panoramic pictures as we approached the top of Marble Canyon on the way to Page. I took this from a top the trailer with a 5 year old HP camera.




More later…..

[62 short step]

Awesome! That would have sucked to run out of fuel!