LA, Denver, Alaska, Inuvik and back - 5 months with a Land Cruiser FZJ80 (Pictures!)

[nosedive]

LA, Denver, Alaska, Inuvik and back - 5 months with a Land Cruiser FZJ80 *Updated*

Hey folks

It's already a while ago, but I thought I'll share my trip with you. A lot of people I met during my trip asked me about a blog or a trip report and I always enjoy reading trip reports on ExPo, so here it is.


Background:
My name is Neil, 24 years old and I'm living in Switzerland. I always had the dream to travel through the western US and north to Alaska Canada. But not with a rental Mustang on Highway 1 with all the mass tourism. No, I wanted to explore more remote places, going deeper into the land and nature.
I saved all my money for many years while shift working as a machine engineer/assembler and spent many hours in front of the computer, dreaming about my trip, doing research of roads, trails and places to visit. I was lurking around on ExPo most the time and checked the vehicles for sale section daily. I then found a very nice 96 Toyota Land Cruiser FZJ80 completely outfitted for overland traveling. It came with a nice Maggiolina Airtop roof top tent, second fuel tank, dual battery system, spare wheel carrier and many more nice things. So I contacted the owner and luckily, he was willing to sell me the car and even to store it at his warehouse until I arrive in the US, which was almost six months. At this point, thank you very much again, Mike!

For the most time of the trip I've been traveling by myself. My dad flew in a couple weeks after I arrived and joined me for about 5 weeks. That was probably the best time of the trip.
I took over 5000 pictures on my journey and I'm still trying sorting out and editing that mess. I'll upload them during the next weeks and do the write up, it will take some time..


On March 24th I finally flew from Zurich via London to San Francisco. On the next day Mike picked me up at my Motel and we drove to his warehouse where I received the Land Cruiser. First thing for me was driving it no Nevada to register it due no sale tax and cheaper license tags. The first drive was already an adventure. The truck is big, wide and heavy, at least for me. And it's definitely not a rocket. But the more miles we made the more I liked it and the more comfortable I got. I drove to Lake Tahoe, slept at a Motel and drove down to Carson City the next day to the DMV. I did some research in advance to register the car but it was waay easier as I thought.

 

[Doc Foster]

Looking forward to seeing and hearing more of your trip.

 

[calicamper]

Come back and do Highway 1 in a rented Miata in like Mid September through mid October no tourists and the Miata handles the 180 degree switch backs better than the Mustang anyway ;-) Just keep in mind you might return the car with it needing Tires ASAP! Hanging the tail out through the Highway 1 turns is just way too much fun especially in the non tourist season. Get stuck behind a rental RV and you'll want to hit one of the berms and see if you can hit the pacific without touching the cliff side.

 

[nosedive]

My Land Cruiser with the new Nevada License Plate.

I spent a couple days in Carson City and celebrated my 24th birthday with a delicious pizza and a big can of beer. Everything is bigger in America, right?

The next thing on my list was driving to Camarillo on the coast for picking up some camping gear and for shopping in the outlet village. I decided to drive down 395S for taking a look at Mammoth Lakes (I'm a passionate skier) and to check out Bodie, one of the nicest ghost towns in the west. I went on a gravel road somewhere near Bridgeport and entered the ghost town by coming from North.

I'm a big fan of those western ghost towns or old and abandoned mines. I spent about three hours in the town, walking around, taking and pictures

I personally find it amazing just looking at the old buildings, seeing all the old machinery, tools and so. It makes it way easier to imagine how people lived back then, It's history to touch. In Europe everything is so old you only can see a couple stones or poles of old buildings or pieces of tools they used to work with.

Some of the living houses.

I'm not sure if the church has been rebuilt once, it's in pretty good shape though.

Inside of a living house.

Unfortunately they didn't offer a guided tour to the mine itself when I was there. Entry only with a guided tour..

I then spent two days in Camarillo and checked out all the outlet stores. I found a lot of cheap clothes and shoes for my journey (you won't believe me what I would pay for that stuff in Switzerland).
After Camarillo I drove up the coast to Santa Barbara, one of my favourite cities in the US. It's already two years ago when I spent 3 months in Santa Barbara at EF, a language school for English. I had the time of my life back then. Super nice city, not too small not too big, nice and friendly people, perfect weather, nice girls and mind blowing parties in Isla Vista (some of you may have heard of it, or experienced).
I stayed for three days, met a friend from back then, chilled a day on the beach and walked up and down on State Street.

 

[jeepovich]

Subscribed !!!

 

[nosedive]

I wished I had more time to spend in Santa Barbara, but I made my way a little bit up the coast to the San Luis Obispo area where I met my friend Jack. He let me stay at his awesome property for doing some work on the Land Cruiser. My plan was to build a storage/sleeping platform to store all my stuff and equipment secured and having a place to sleep in bad weather or for some stealth camping. Jack offered me all his tools and machinery to work with and I even had nice spot outside the sop to do my work. I started with removing the second seat row, cleaning out the whole truck, made a couple trips to Walmart and Home Depot and started to build the platform.
I first laid a new carpet over the old one, mostly to save the factory carpet from scratches due the storage boxes.

I then made a simple sleeping platform with square poles, a wall in the middle so the boxes don't fly forward when braking, a cut out on the driver side where the door is for the fridge and some tie down hooks in case I'm having some stuff on the platform. It won't win a design prize, but it only has to be good for about six months.

It turned out pretty well and sturdy enough for me. I bough the storage boxes at Home Depot, three big container and two flat ones, but the same size as a big one when stacked together. They fit absolutely flush under the platform and they don't even move between the wall and the tailgate. The platform is simply tied down with a ratchet strap using the mounting brackets from the third row seats. No moving or bouncing at all. I was kinda surprised how well everything turned out for a first try.

 

[nosedive]

I was busy for a couple days with building my storage platform, drinking beer, sitting around the fire pit and enjoying the time with Jack and his girlfriend. Days just flew by and on April 11th it was time for picking up my dad at the airport in Los Angeles.
I grew up with my dad and we stay very close to each other, he loves to travel and camping, I was looking forward for a good time together! I assume I'm very blessed having the opportunity to travel in a country oversea for five weeks with my dad. Such a perfect father son-trip.
I barely made it to LAX due the terrible traffic, how can you live down there?? I arrived just in time and together we were back on the road. We decided to drive to Santa Monica and then along the coast up to Camarillo again. Bad decision. It took us almost two hours from just from Santa Monica to Malibu. But it was warm, sunny and we were both in a good mood and had a lot of time to talk.

We spent the night in Camarillo, went shopping for my dad in the outlet stores the next day and continued north back to Jack's place. I had to finish the sleeping platform and we had enough time for drinking cold ones, playing boccia and having good dinner and nights around the fire pit with Jack and his girlfriend. A big thank you again two this two amazing people, my dad and I had a blast!

It was time saying goodbye and hitting the road direction north to Big Sur. Jack highly recommended that curvy stretch of Highway 1 along the steep cliffs.

The view next to the road really was amazing and the road was nice to drive. It was amusing seeing the big rental RV's struggling with curves.

Sea Lions and Elephants all along the coast.

We tried finding a camp spot at one of National Forest campgrounds, but they all were already full. We ended up on a nice private one and spent a first and cold night camping. lets get up early in the morning to avoid the tourism traffic my dad said, just for being stuck behind this guys the next morning..

We were driving back south for a while and then turned onto Nacimiento Ferguson Road which brings you up the hills and more inland. It was a very nice and relaxed drive.

We drove all the way east to Bakersfield, spent the night there and moved on to Joshua Tree National Park.

This is the route we took from LA to Denver, more or less.

 

[nosedive]

The first thing we did at the park entrance was buying the Annual Pass for all National Parks. It's definitely worth the price.
I hoped getting a camp spot at the Jumbo Rocks Campgrounds but it was already full when we arrived. We then found a nice place on the Belle Campground, almost the last one. Belle was smaller as Jumbo Rocks and maybe more quiet, which was nice.

We had a quick lunch and started exploring some of the dirt roads.

We also did a short hike to an old mine. There wasn't much left from the mine but scenery was beautiful.

]

Everything was blooming around us.

And the bees were busy.

The first thing we heard when we got back to our camp spot was a girl from the neighbor site yelling "your chairs, bring them over!". Alright then, we moved our chairs and were chatting ad drinking beer with our neighbors.
My dad, focused on lighting up the fire.

We had a very fun evening with them and we started a small beer pong competition. Even my dad never played beer pong before and didn't really get the rules, we won the first round and made second place. I think you can assume that the evening got even more fun.

Chocolate-tortias-whatever for breakfast.

We again spent the days with driving and walking around in the park, checking out all the highlights of the park.

The Campground is absolutely beautiful with all the joshua trees and the boulders laying around. This park definitely ins one of my favourites. Enjoying the camp site at the evening.

Obviously rock climbing is a common thing in and around the park.

On the next day without headache we wanted to see the Colorado River and drove to Lake Havasu City. We watched the boats racing up and down the river at Buckskin Mountain State Park while having lunch.

Parker Dam along the Colorado River.

Next thing to accomplish was crossing the Mojave Desert on the old Mojave Road.

 

[Bushcoat]

I'm so interested, but can't see the pictures.

 

[upndown]

Same here!

 

[nosedive]

I'm very sorry for the confusion with the pictures! I'm uploading my pictures to my new Flickr account and I'm editing my posts.

Edit: Should be fine now, I hope it works!

 

[nosedive]

After getting groceries we tried finding the starting point of the Mojave Road on the eastern side. We bought the book Mojave Road Guide at a visitor centre and we had a GPS track on my dads handheld GPS. Even though, finding the beginning of the road was a bit tricky. It was already noon when we started on the road near the casino, which was too late as we realized later.

Coming from Switzerland where civilization is everywhere around you, driving on a dirt track through a remote desert with just one car was very special for us. We didn't really have an idea what to expect, we're just not familiar with situations like this. So we decided to at least inform our friend Jack with a text message that we're driving the Mojave Road for the next three days and we will get back to him after crossing the desert. We had a much better feeling then.
A long stretch of the road.

We soon made it to the "magic bus". I've seen that place before in other trip reports and was pretty excited to finally see it by myself.

Taking pictures and exploring the are was the next thin of course.

By the way. Does anyone know the story behind that bus? How did they make it that far into the desert with it?

Probably the biggest joshua tree we have seen so far.

Seems like some people are living there, must be nicely warm in the summer months.

My navigator on duty.

The sun already started setting down when we passed the Penny Can Tree.

We didn't leave without spending two pennies. It brings luck they say, and luck is always nice to have.

It was getting tight sometimes.

While the sun didn't stop setting even more down, we started getting worried a bit of finding a good place to camp. The sun was already down when turned into the wide Cedar Canyon Road. We decided to skip the steep hill into Rock Spring Canyon and went straight on to the Mid Hills Campground. It was already dark when we arrived, had some dinner and I had time to play around with the camera.

The campground was pretty nice as we realized the next morning.

We packed our stuff and went off to explore some trails in the area.

Some in open terrain and some more fun to drive.

We wanted to do a short hike and went to rancher station where the Hole in the Wall trail starts.

Getting the wrong trail is almost impossible, just walk further into the canyon.

And up it goes.

Nothing an old Swiss mountaineer couldn't handle.

The trail was fun and while driving back north to the Mojave Road, we took a brake next to big boulders. That would have been a nice camp spot for the night.

 

[nosedive]

After being back on the Mojave Road we reached a long whoop de doo section. My dad is famous for getting seasick real quick but we had fun, or at least I had.

Navigating on the road isn't very difficult. With the book and the GPS track we almost had zero problems. When we turned into a wrong track we saw ourself getting away from the GPS track and had to turn around. But with all the stone foundations along the road, getting lost is almost impossible. And my navigator did such a great job.

The scenery along the road is just stunning.

Aand we made it to the mailbox.

Signed the guest book.

And watched the frogs jumping around.

The weather was acting strange at this time and it looked like rain for the most time. We or particularly my dad were a bit concerned about the weather situation. We had no idea how fast the weather could change in this area or what happens when it starts raining.

While checking out the Lava tube the sky was covered by dark clouds.

We made the decision to not camp in the desert due the weather situation and drove over the paved Kelbaker Road to Baker. There wasn't anything going on in Baker but we found a motel (probably the only one) and had dinner at Denny's.

The next morning we drove back to the point we left the day before and had breakfast at an old cattle ranch.

We followed the Mojave Road and landscape got wider and flat while approaching the salt lake.

Driving on a salt lake was an absolutely unique experience for us. The track was dry and no problem to drive on it at all.

Since we're from a small country, we only brought two small stones with us for the travelers monument. What an amazing and unique place out there!

Driving in the wash was a lot of fun but also tricky on finding the right track. I wished I had a Baja Bug!

We made a couple stops along the railroad tracks in the hope seeing a train passing by.

No luck for us but we got recompensed with some wildlife next to the tracks.

The water crossing was one of the best parts of the road. No problem for the Land Cruiser.

I wanted some pictures of the Land Cruiser in the water, so I kicked out my dad with the camera and drove back through the river.

We tried following the wash after Afton Canyon when it started raining. We turned around, drove back to Afton Canyon and went to the Interstate.

Crossing the Mojave Desert was a full success and we left a great chapter of our trip behind us and drove north, to Death Valley.

 

[lumpskie]

This thread is awesome. Also, it's great to see the U.S. from the perspective of someone from Europe. I can't wait to see what you thought of Colorado! (my home)

Subb'd for more.

 

[nosedive]

We started our Death Valley trip from the north near Big Pine. We found the start of Saline Valley Road and followed the gravel road.

The first stretch of the road was pretty nice with lot of little valleys and some mines near the road.

The Bat Pole which marks the turnoff to the Hot Springs.

The Hot Springs is just a surreal place. Palm trees, plants, green grass and a couple hippies with very cool homebuilt campers.

We had absolutely no clue what the aircraft was doing out there. Maybe delivering pot supplies for the hippies, who knows.

Back on the Saline Valley Road we had a very shaky ride due all the washboard on the road. It was already late noon when we took the turnoff to the Lippincott Road. Maybe it was a good thing driving up Lippincott Road late in the day, the chance of oncoming traffic might be small.

The road was quite challenging but fun to drive.

Luckily we were the only one on the road.

And we made it.

It was already dark when we set up camp on the Homestake Dry Camp. The next morning we had one of our delicious egg-bacon-ketchup-toast breakfast.

Now it was time checking out the moving rocks on racetrack playa! I've seen that place before in other trip reports and it was right as I imagined it. Absolutely stunning seeing the rocks and the spur. It's still unknown how or why they actually move on the playa.

Some of them are really big and heavy.

My dad doing what he can do best, goofing around.