The Stupidest Trip I’ve Thought of. So Far
What were you thinking?
Reading an off-road internet forum years ago while working on our suburban project, I came across information about an off pavement trail that went across the United States From Tennessee to the west coast in Oregon for dirt bikes. They called it the Trans-America Trail, and while it does use pavement in some sections (requiring you to be legal to drive on the street) it is largely a route using gravel and dirt roads, combined with mountain and desert trails.
Which is why I hadn’t heard about it before. This is not a government sanctioned trail, or something you would see on road maps, but rather, as I understand it, a patchwork of roads and trails put together by a man who just wanted to see if he could get from his home in TN, to the west coast, without using paved roads. It was an intriguing idea, and I even found a Jay Leno’s Garage episode where Land Rover did the trail in, well, Land Rovers obviously.
This would be so cool! We should totally do this!!! (I love how they show the shot of them crossing some twigs, plus what if Morgan Freeman narrated our trip?!)
Then I remembered that we have jobs, kids, and we are afraid of camping. And also, I’m not really a very good off-road driver which is why the Suburban is all smashed up, plus it is way too big and scary for the mountain trails so we’d need a different vehicle. If all that weren’t enough, Kari does not like riding with us off-road, and barely likes taking road trips on the road.
Oh well, it was fun to dream for a bit.
Fast forward several years to last fall. The kids and I have been riding dirt bikes for the past couple of years now and sometimes we ride at a friend’s house at Lake of the Ozarks. Considering getting myself a street legal dirt bike, but not really wanting to ride among traffic, or other vehicles in general, made me wonder if it would be possible to get from our house at the lake to theirs. Normally a 30 mile drive, the route I mapped out using mostly gravel roads, ended up at about 80 miles. However, I figured I could probably pull it off on my non legal dirt bike.
As a test, we ran 20 miles of it on dirt bikes and all was well. Then it got cold outside, and on a random trip to the lake after New Years, we decided to run the 80 mile route from our house to theirs in the Suburban. All was well, except it was 5 degrees outside, so we skipped the part where we would go over a one lane 90 year-old suspension bridge out of my fear that the cold might make it brittle.
It continued to be cold, and I was bored. Bored enough to map a gravel route all the way to the headwaters of the Osage River in Kansas. That would be totally cool to see right? A drainage in a Kansas farm field. Whatever, it could be cool.
It stayed cold. I usually spend some time in the winter planning a vacation, and thinking about warmer weather. For the past couple of years we’ve been going on spring break, and asking the kids teachers if missing an extra week would keep them out of college. That way we could go farther, having at least two weeks, without giving up our summer time at the lake.
Somehow this mapping, and dreaming, and planning an actual realistic vacation got all mixed up in my mind, and shit got real. After all, Kari and the kids liked Colorado, hiking, Yosemite, and the Utah road trip, so maybe they would like slowly bouncing through it all – off-road. Having time to take it all in.
Let me back up for a second. When I was finished mapping the route into Kansas to see the Osage River, it slowly occurred to me that no one was ever going to ride that with me, because it would take 3-4 days, and it was stupid. Whatever, it could be cool. Anyway, I realized that once I got into Kansas on gravel I could get just about anywhere in Kansas on gravel. It appears that the entire state is just a big grid of gravel roads, which means, I could get into Colorado. Wait a minute, where does the Trans-America Trail go into Colorado? Maybe I could pick up that trail and take it to Oregon.
Searching the internet for the Trans-America Trail again, I found the official site, which at the time said that it was not meant for 4×4 vehicles, and the directions needed to be purchased. Purchasing them wouldn’t have been a problem, but wouldn’t do me any good if it were for two wheels only. I found another site that had some routes visible on Google maps, and because right now I just wanted a general idea of where the damn trail went, these seemed fine. It looked like the trail weaved along the Kansas-Oklahoma border and then through the corner of New Mexico before crossing into Colorado.
Yes, we could totally do this. The only problem we had now was that we have jobs, kids, and we are afraid of camping. And also, I’m not really a very good off-road driver which is why the Suburban is smashed up even worse than before, plus it is way too big and scary for the mountain trails so we’d need a different vehicle.
A family discussion
It wasn’t actually planned this way, but ended up working out nonetheless. When Kari came home one cold night, not sure if I mentioned how f’ing cold it continued to be outside, I told her that we could get a four seat RZR, and take it from the Lake to the coast of Oregon. Now, if she hadn’t been with me for a while she would have probably thought I was kidding, but instead fear instantly set it.
What about the luggage? This is an entirely different story, but she could pack us a suitcase just to go to the park. Like seriously, not what about the kids, or rolling down the mountain, or getting lost in the desert, nope, none of that, where are we going to put our shit was the instant concern. And the weather, I’ll give her credit for that, the weather is a legit concern. Naturally, I was thinking of the wind in our hair, and the feeling of freedom, not the range of near freezing temperatures in the mountains to the 115 degree Utah and Nevada desserts.
OK, we’ll take a truck then. After that victory, she stopped thinking about it. Until I started actually planning the route. We aren’t doing this, she’d say, along with a bunch of other, clearly unpersuasive, words. Unlike the fire truck though, the kids were not on my side for this one. Well at least the vocal one wasn’t, I’m still not sure if Jake even understands what we are doing.
As the weeks went by, and I showed the family some of the cooler stuff, like the redwoods, wild horses, and the Oregon coast, they started to accept that it may not be so bad. Alli even started looking at some of the places we were staying, and found a place to rent surf boards in Manzanita, a horse ride that will let experienced riders gallop on the beach in Yachets, and several good hiking trails along the way.
Making a plan
Saving you the entire, boring evolution of the map that we are going to follow, it basically ended up a patchwork of mostly my own routes mixed with where I think the actual Trans-America Trail runs. Since we are not camping, and I’d like to avoid the worst looking hotels, the route changed. Looking at how pretty the coast of Oregon is, knowing we wanted to see our old neighbors in Seattle, hike on Mt. Rainier, see Crater Lake, see the Redwoods in Northern California, again the route changed.
Because of YouTube, for better or worse, I could see video’s of some of the most treacherous of the Colorado mountain passes. Seeing those I decided between my lack of skill, Kari’s fear of heights, and the possible crowds because of their popularity, we’d bypass Cinnamon, Imogene, Engineer, and especially Black Bear Pass on two lane pavement. As a plus, that will let us go see the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River.
I was torn on all of this for a while. How can I say that I am driving to the west coast off-road if half of it is on some kind of pavement? As it has worked out, I don’t care. There is no medal for doing it all off-road, we’d miss some cool stuff, and spend 4 extra days in Kansas and Oklahoma. As routed, we still have over a thousand miles off pavement, and if you really think about it, even that is pretty damn stupid. I mean, why not go all out, and do it in a wagon behind a horse, or walk for that matter. They made paved roads for a reason, hell we even paved the bit of road in front of the lake house because the gravel was too rough.
For each day’s travel, we have an alternate paved route in case of heavy rain, mud or rock slides, or some other thing I haven’t thought of. Even the paved routes are typically remote, two lane roads through towns I have never heard of, and won’t have a gas station or a McDonald’s.
Nonetheless, it took quite a while to map, but it was still cold outside. There was a lot of routing, then zooming in on google satellite to try and determine if I routed us through a gate onto private property, or if it’s just a cattle guard. I’m not entirely sure still on several of them.
We are also still missing soooo much. Specifically, Olympic National Park, the Columbia River Gorge, and of course the Silver State Rodeo in Elko, NV, but seriously, we could really use a year or two.
As far as normal life goes, my boss thought it was a great idea to take the family on this kind of trip, and asked that we talk every so often to keep work things on track. I already work from home, so the only big snag is the wide lack of cell service. Kari was ready to quit and find a new job anyway, so when the kids got out for the summer she’d be done, and find a new job in the fall.
Where to stay
There were reroutes around entire towns due to the lack of places to sleep. When I read a motel review that said “better than sleeping in my car, but only because it was winter” I figured that place will be pretty bad. That being said, that reroute means we are staying in a three room motel attached to a gas station, 2 hours from any other town. We did get the room with air conditioning though!
We have a tent and sleeping bags on the roof, but if we use them, that means something has gone wrong. Our first stay will be in a basement outside of Wichita, found on Airbnb, followed by a string of hotels, motels, and Airbnb rentals before ending up in our old neighbors house north of Seattle. Most of them are actually pretty nice, some of them are sketchy.
How we will get there
Finding a vehicle to take us on our trip was saved for last. The plan was to find something older, capable, reliable, and not completely beat up, buy it, and sell it after the trip. I searched Craigslist and internet forums for a while without finding any sort of deal that would work. So we did what any normal family would do, buy one-way tickets to the desert over spring break, creating a challenge to find a rust free vehicle to drive home before the kids have to be back at school.
Luckily I found a well cared for 2000 Lexus LX470 (Toyota Land Cruiser with wood grain) with 140k miles on it, and no rust in Phoenix, before we got there. The seller was nice enough to take it in and get appropriate tires on it and brought it to the airport for us. We enjoyed a little vacation in the warm Arizona sun before driving it home, where it was f’ing cold again.
It may not look like it, but the Land Cruiser is one of the most capable off-road vehicles in the world that you can buy right from the dealer. With some slightly oversize off-road tires, which are as important for their thickness as they are for the tread, and removal of the running boards, it should be able to get us where we are trying to go. We’ve took it most of the places that we have had our old CJ7 around the lake and it did fine.
We’ll have it shipped home from Seattle when we are done and probably sell it. Unless it gets destroyed.
What to pack
We will likely discover the true answer to this question while traveling. Being a normal family from the suburbs, we typically are within 10 minutes of a Walgreens, Wal-Mart or a McDonald’s. We have taken a few trips that put us some distance from normal conveniences and have been OK, mostly because Kari has a U-Haul follow behind us with our entire house packed inside, however the U-Haul won’t make it down a lot of the trails we’ll be on, so we’ll need to take some food, water, beer and spare gas.
The range of temperatures we are likely to encounter means we’ll need everything from shorts to winter coats and stocking hats. The size of vehicle, and things we need to take besides clothes means that Kari had to pare down the amount of clothes and shoes, and we’d have to pack duffel bags that can be stuffed in tight places better.
If we get stuck somewhere, we may have to sleep there, which means a tent and sleeping bags. To try to get unstuck so we don’t have to set up a tent, we are taking a tow strap, a recovery strap, some shackles, a come-a-long, and a shovel.
If we are really stuck and no one comes along to help unstick us, or we get hurt such that we can’t continue on, where there is no cell service, we have an InReach satellite communication device with an SOS button. We also took first aid classes with the kids. Hopefully Jake doesn’t have to save a choking infant, ever, since he broke the head off of the training baby. He does know how to make a tourniquet with a shirt and a stick, and what to do with a severed digit though.
We packed a tool box, spare air filters for Jethro (that’s what we named the car) a couple of spare ignition coils, jumper cables, code reader, flashlights, a spare front axle, duct tape, wire coat hangers, some rope, a tire plugging kit, and an air compressor.
The distances between places that have gas stations, unknown gas mileage loaded off-road, and possible backtracks means we’ll need some spare gas just in case so we have a 5 gallon can on the roof with a siphon. Also we have a five gallon water can in case we are stranded in the desert, and a Tupperware container full of basic first aid stuff.
In theory, one of the positives of this trip is that we will have time to stop and check things out, take some hikes, and let the kids play in creeks and rivers. Therefore we need a couple of chairs, a travel hammock, a cooler for lunches and drinks, a machete in case we see big foot and she doesn’t like us, and our normal hiking backpacks and such.
Most importantly, we’ll pack a map.
So with the roof top box packed, and the rear cargo area full of stuff, half of which I hope we don’t need, we’ll set off across the great plains and into the mountains on your normal, month and a half long, family (off) road trip.
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