A Guy A Girl and a Trail: Adventures in a 4Runner Limited

Whenever the parking brake pedal starts to fell like it has a lot of travel. It should be nice and firm and not go the floor when applied. The parking brake should also be able to hold the vehicle in place on hill. If you stop on a hill apply the parking brake and then shift to park (that’s technically the “correct” way to park - If you’ve ever parked on hill and then came back, started it up and it was kinda hard to get the trans out of park, or it shifted out of park with a loud clunk or bang noise, that’s the parking pawl in the trans not wanting release because the weight of the vehicle is pushing against it and kinda wedging it into place. You use the parking brake to avoid that.) and the vehicle slowly rolls an inch or two till the trans is testing against the parking pawl then it’s to loose and needs an adjustment.

 

Caught some chick (I think) eating a booger on dash cam lol

click for booger eater!

 

Gross AF!

 

It’s been a crazy handful of weeks. I was out of town for work, instead of flying home I flew out to Tennessee, my wife and son flew out there from Colorado as well. We were having a family reunion/party for my wife’s side of the family because her grandpa turned 90. After a weekend there we headed down to Orlando. My wife had a conference for a week so we went with. She works and my son and I did cool stuff. After the conference we spent a long weekend in a different hotel - massive high end place, 1500 rooms, water park, 5 acre indoor glass roofed atrium with all sorts of stuff. From there we went to Disney World for a week. We got back last Sunday and my best friend that came out for the hiking/camping/off-road trip a few months back came back for round 2 but winter came hard and fast so we winged it.

Wednesday we didn’t do much noteworthy stuff, ran some errands and did some productive stuff.



Thursday was Halloween, we threw on some micro spikes and started off with a snow hike.

 

After the hike we came back to my house. Mom took Captain America trick or treating for bit while my buddy and I stayed at the house. We setup the fire pit in the driveway, candy for the kids, and shots for adults. With the 4Runner right there in the garage, the panic button on the remote was good for scaring kids. We ended up hanging out in the driveway with a couple of the neighbors till about 1 am.







Click for Halloween

 

We slept in the hit the mountains Friday.

Skiing, beer, sushi, and your best friend of 35 years makes for a damn Good Friday.

 

great idea with the alarm on the truck lol

 

The Flat Irons..? Great pics

 

Hestra gloves are the absolute BEST! I have the exact same pair for the last 5 seasons, won't use anything else now.

 

literally never knew this until right now. i dont use my parking brake often tbh but still...good to know.

 

Wait till they are looking in the candy bowl deciding what they want and bam lol. Great way to give them a quick scare without actually terrifying them.

 

Yes, Royal Arch at Chitaqua (I’m not googling how to actually spell that) in Boulder.

 

They are fantastic, they are the only heavy gloves I use, I have some lighter waterproof ones I still use on the warmer days.

 

Has anyone been to the Canyonlands National Park in Utah?

My wife and I have been wanting to do a Utah National Park trip forever and we're finally going to make it happen. We always talked about spending a week there hitting up the 5 National Parks, but while staring to really dig into the details we decided not to go that route. Rather than a quick trip to each stopping at whatever is the most popular landmark, we choose to focus on Canyonlands and really dive in.

Canyonlands has, by far, the lowest number of annual visitors of all the Utah National Parks. It’s split into 3 districts: Island in the Sky, The Needles, and The Maze. The vast majority of visitors go to the Island in the Sky via the paved roads from the visitors center leading to some overlooks and some hikes. The White Rim portion of Island in the Sky is a more secluded 100 mile offroad trail. The Needles District is a lot rougher and a lot less accessible. The Maze District is even more remote. The National Park Service warns that “You’re 100 miles from nowhere” with no access to anything you didn't carry in with you. It's a half day drive from the closest ranger station that upon reaching, has no supplies besides a phone available. It's known for being inaccessible to all but the most prepared and its considered one of the most dangerous places to hike in the US. Only about ten thousand people visit The Maze every year. If you're familiar with the book/movie about Aron Ralston "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" / "127 Hours", the guy who got his arm caught under a boulder and had to cut it off with a pocket knife and make it back to civilization... that true story happened in The Maze District of Canyonlands National Park.

I’ve done quite a bit of research on where I wanted to go and where I wanted to stay but as I've found out, it's very hard to get some of the permits for the spring and fall months when the weather is nice. I really wanted the get the White Crack site but that didn't pan out. You can make a reservation for 24 hours from now up to 4 months from now. I logged in at midnight Mountain time, when the permit becomes available for exactly 4 months out, every day for a week and still didn't get White Crack. The permits were sold out by the time the page loaded. So I improvised a bit. I planned out a general route and then got online at midnight every day for another week in order to string together consecutive days in logical places along the route I wanted.

The first day we’ll leave Colorado and drive out to Utah and stay in a hotel near the park. The following day we hit Canyonlands. We’re going to start at the Island in the Sky and over the next 3 days and 2 nights we'll make a giant loop taking the Shafer Trail to White Rim to Horsethief.

From there the primary plan is to head into the Needles District for hiking and 2 nights of camping in the same location. After the Needles our next camp site is only 19 miles away as a crow flies, but there’s no direct route and the National Park Service advised me to expect at least a 9 hour drive to get between campsites. Instead of hurrying along, we’ll sightsee our way over towards the next site and spend a night outside the park somewhere (somewhere with a shower!) and resupply. In the morning we’ll make our way into The Maze where we’re going to hike and camp for the night.

If it’s a wet spring, mud and water has the potential to make the offroad trail to our Needles campsite impassable. If that’s the case we’ll leave the park after Island in the Sky, hit Arches National Park for a day, and camp somewhere dispersed for the night. The next day we’ll continue along as planned with the site seeing, hotel for a night, resupplying on the to the Maze but do we’ll do it a day ahead of schedule and spend 2 nights there.

Either way when we leave The Maze in the morning of day 8, we'll make our way to Horseshoe Canyon for some hiking, and then start towards Colorado. We’ll probably hit up the hot springs and get a hotel for the night shortly over the state border and finish the drive the next morning.

We have all the necessary backcountry permits in place for the general plan. Everything is reserved and paid for but we still have quite a bit of flexibility to make things up as we go and explore our way through the unknown. If you’ve been there before, I’m open to suggestions on specific things worth seeing or doing.

The last big decision we need to make is do we go solo, just my wife and I, or do we bring friends. I got the permits with my wife and I in mind, I planned the trip around what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go, but technically the permits are good for me take a group of up to 9 people and 3 vehicles with for my trip.

 

Wish I could and was closer. I’ve been to UT for work and always loved the area (around SLC and Tooele).

 

We were in Utah this past May. Canyonlands was the one park we didn’t visit. Zion was amazing, and a place you could spend a good 3 days in. Bryce was lovely and deserves a solid 2 days of hiking. Honestly one of the highlights of our trip was the drive from Bryce to Moab in Utah St Highway 12. It is mindblowingly amazing. Make sure to stop for a meal at Hells Backbone Grill.

 

We will have more trips in the future, we’ll do different trips for different parks. I looked up that Hells Backbone Grill, it looks fantastic but unfortunately we won’t be closer than like 3.5 hours from it. I added it to my list for places to get to at some point though.

 

Time to get this back on track a bit. I have a bunch of stuff to upload.









Ice cold parking lot beers after a day on the slopes are fantastic

 

Iced over sketchy cliff-side roads with no guard rails are great

 

Mini-Me has ski school every friday and plus he's gotten in 8 days on the mountain for the season.









And his last strider bike ride...


before getting this bad boy on Christmas morning. No joke after all the time on the strider the learning curve was 15 minutes for him to be starting, riding, and stopping on his own.

 

Winter in Boulder means skiing




or hiking

 

This was a pretty awesome day...

Skiing in the morning








Mountain biking in the afternoon

 

Little man inspecting new goodies

 

A few weeks before the apocalypse started we had our annual ski trip.

Day 1


Being the tallest maybe I shouldn't have been the most uphill, I look like I'm taking my students on a field trip lol
















My wife skiing some steep stuff




Photo of the trip, buddy 1 wipes out in the trees right next to buddy 2, I take pic not realizing until later buddy 2 is actually peeing in the trees at the time lol


Followed up with 2 skateboards of sushi

 

Day 2

It's weird to think I've known everyone in this picture for at least 20 years (my wife being the exception, she's only been around for like 11 years now).




















Heading to that face in the background

 

Day 2 continued





Eyeballing the chute from the bottom to see if there's a good line to hit


Selfie to send my coworkers








Parking lot beers


Then hot tub at our rental house

 

Is the new Z28 gonna be battery powered? It’s ok you can tell us? Nobody gets on this site.....

 

Your pics are absolutely beautiful....

 

Thanks. More coming tonight from the rest of the trip that I didn’t get to yesterday.