Voyager3
Active member
Hello all,
I've been lurking here for a couple months, but I feel I now have reason to join. Before you knew me, I grew up in south Florida, loved biking, catching critters, shooting pool with the guys, and my family took me and my sister on plenty of adventures. They love to travel, and passed that on to us at a very young age. The passion was ignited when I was just 6 on my first trip overseas: France, Egypt, Kenya, and Tanzania. We would take a month long trip every summer before I went to camp in Colorado. For winter and spring breaks, we would find shorter trips to go on. By age 9, Christmas 1998, we had made it to all 7 continents. And so it went.
Fast forward to a little over a month ago. I'm 26 now, the country count is I think at 51, and for a couple years now I've been eager for my buddy to say the words “I think I'm going to sell the Jeep.” The vehicle in question: a blue '98 XJ Cherokee. At only 265k miles, it felt plenty strong and we put it straight to work. Three days after bringing it home to the Mopar barn we call home for now, we took it and the dogs up to Argentine Pass, which if I remember correctly was 13,207 feet. Even on these worn out old tires, it clawed its way up to the top with no problems. We* were hooked.
*The girl is Sam. The dogs are Titus (Big brown dog) and Jenson (Black and white dog). Sam is a traveler as well, and a product of an international union to begin with. Spanish mother, Irish father. Born in Ireland, made it to Colorado via growing up in NYC. She and her dad loved chasing the northern lights, and had a dream to see them in every country above the arctic circle. Sadly, he passed away from Cancer in May. She is a delightful adventure companion, and we have fun in all we do.
Late last month considering how difficult the last few months have been, we decided to take a vacation. We were going to head into the Northwest, but it was all on fire. So we went southwest. Plenty to see out there. I've driven through the southwest numerous times, and I always wondered from the Interstate what it was really like when I didn't have to just get from here to the coast, or vice versa. So exploring was in order. Now we wanted to take a few weeks with no distractions, so we managed a few weeks with one distraction. Sam had to come back to Frisco to work one day. ONE DAY. Sam is working on her photography business, has worked for almost a decade as a motocross medic, and still works sometimes at a family practice....which is where she had to go that day. So partway through the trip we booked it back to the mountains for a day, and headed out again immediately after.
Here's what I'm going to do to kick this off, I'm going to share pictures of our trip up Argentine Pass, then I'm going to spend the next few days organizing the thousands of photos we took from our Southwest trip and write up a report. To keep you guys interested the log reads something like this:
Denver (Frederick really), Moab, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, White Pocket, Zion, Arches, back to Leadville, Denver again, Leadville again again, Goblin Valley, Lake Mead, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, San Diego, San Felipe, Lake Havasu, Sedona, North Rim Grand Canyon, Frederick. 6100 miles in all, in just about 3 weeks. If you would like to see how all that turned out, stick around, and I'll fill you in. Every day felt like a week, and we will be doing more of this.
My name is Travis, and on behalf of Sam and the boys I'd like to say it's good to be here. We are excited to outfit the rig to do more for longer, and we look forward to the opportunity to meet all you. I'll have to grab an Expedition Portal sticker to balance out the In-N-Out sticker we picked up along the way.
Here's our first Jeep outing, and a teaser from the bigger trip. Corona Arch in the evening with the whole family.
I've been lurking here for a couple months, but I feel I now have reason to join. Before you knew me, I grew up in south Florida, loved biking, catching critters, shooting pool with the guys, and my family took me and my sister on plenty of adventures. They love to travel, and passed that on to us at a very young age. The passion was ignited when I was just 6 on my first trip overseas: France, Egypt, Kenya, and Tanzania. We would take a month long trip every summer before I went to camp in Colorado. For winter and spring breaks, we would find shorter trips to go on. By age 9, Christmas 1998, we had made it to all 7 continents. And so it went.
Fast forward to a little over a month ago. I'm 26 now, the country count is I think at 51, and for a couple years now I've been eager for my buddy to say the words “I think I'm going to sell the Jeep.” The vehicle in question: a blue '98 XJ Cherokee. At only 265k miles, it felt plenty strong and we put it straight to work. Three days after bringing it home to the Mopar barn we call home for now, we took it and the dogs up to Argentine Pass, which if I remember correctly was 13,207 feet. Even on these worn out old tires, it clawed its way up to the top with no problems. We* were hooked.
*The girl is Sam. The dogs are Titus (Big brown dog) and Jenson (Black and white dog). Sam is a traveler as well, and a product of an international union to begin with. Spanish mother, Irish father. Born in Ireland, made it to Colorado via growing up in NYC. She and her dad loved chasing the northern lights, and had a dream to see them in every country above the arctic circle. Sadly, he passed away from Cancer in May. She is a delightful adventure companion, and we have fun in all we do.
Late last month considering how difficult the last few months have been, we decided to take a vacation. We were going to head into the Northwest, but it was all on fire. So we went southwest. Plenty to see out there. I've driven through the southwest numerous times, and I always wondered from the Interstate what it was really like when I didn't have to just get from here to the coast, or vice versa. So exploring was in order. Now we wanted to take a few weeks with no distractions, so we managed a few weeks with one distraction. Sam had to come back to Frisco to work one day. ONE DAY. Sam is working on her photography business, has worked for almost a decade as a motocross medic, and still works sometimes at a family practice....which is where she had to go that day. So partway through the trip we booked it back to the mountains for a day, and headed out again immediately after.
Here's what I'm going to do to kick this off, I'm going to share pictures of our trip up Argentine Pass, then I'm going to spend the next few days organizing the thousands of photos we took from our Southwest trip and write up a report. To keep you guys interested the log reads something like this:
Denver (Frederick really), Moab, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, White Pocket, Zion, Arches, back to Leadville, Denver again, Leadville again again, Goblin Valley, Lake Mead, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, San Diego, San Felipe, Lake Havasu, Sedona, North Rim Grand Canyon, Frederick. 6100 miles in all, in just about 3 weeks. If you would like to see how all that turned out, stick around, and I'll fill you in. Every day felt like a week, and we will be doing more of this.
My name is Travis, and on behalf of Sam and the boys I'd like to say it's good to be here. We are excited to outfit the rig to do more for longer, and we look forward to the opportunity to meet all you. I'll have to grab an Expedition Portal sticker to balance out the In-N-Out sticker we picked up along the way.
Here's our first Jeep outing, and a teaser from the bigger trip. Corona Arch in the evening with the whole family.