“Daddy! Those motorcycle guys are giving us the thumbs-up!” my 5-year-old said. We were only an hour into the first off-road adventure of our new Land Rover Defender, and I knew it was going to be a good trip.
The Mojave Desert has always been a favorite area of mine in Southern California. I spend lots of time off-roading in the Mojave National Preserve because it doesn’t have the crowds of Joshua Tree National Park, is just as beautiful, and has tons of old mining roads to explore. There are other areas of the Mojave Desert on BLM land that see even less traffic. They are not marked with trails on any popular map websites and don’t have loads of geotagged photos—these are my kind of areas to travel.
When I was a teenager in Boy Scouts, my geologist father took our troop out to a fossil site with a collecting area in the California Marble Mountains off the old Route 66. I still have a 4-inch trilobite fossil (500 million years old!) in my rock collection from that trip. With two boys of my own now, we recently tracked down that same spot, and they found their own trilobites. While on this trip, I started eyeing the unmarked areas to the south and east of this location and knew I had to return.
After loads of research through old USGS maps and desert and rock hounding magazines from the ’60s and ’70s, as well as a bunch of time flying through the area in Google Earth with VR goggles, I had a good idea of where I wanted to go.
When our school shut down for a week due to Omicron, and I simultaneously finished a project at work, giving me a few days off, I knew we had the perfect window to take my brand-new Land Rover Defender on its maiden voyage.
In 2019, the long-awaited photos from the release of the new Defender design did not leave me impressed; it was too much of a departure from the classic, boxy, utilitarian design. Last year, though, when my aging Nissan Xterra was due to be replaced, the Defender surfaced as an option. I took a fresh look at it—not from the eyes of a classic Defender fan, but as somebody who was looking for a great off-road SUV. I wanted something that could not only handle the trail without effort but could get me to and from in comfort. It would also be my daily driver around town, so I didn’t want something that made every trip outside the house feel like an adventure.
I knew that with most Defenders being sold as luxury vehicles, never to see dirt, I’d have to equip mine carefully. Getting the base engine allowed me to get the smaller 18-inch wheels and avoid the pitfalls of the lower profile tires being sold on the majority of Defenders. I configured all of the off-road features without any of the luxury ones and sent off my order. Seven months later, it arrived!
I quickly swapped out the stock tires for BFGoodrich KO2s, installed the Front Runner rack system to the factory rails, filled up the 10 gallons of fuel and 5 gallons of water on the rack, and installed a Goal Zero battery system under the rear deck lid to run my fridge. Add this to the capabilities of my Turtleback Expedition trailer, and we were set.
We hit the highway and made it out to the desert. I took it slow, working my way through the off-road modes and configurations when we got to the rocky spur road up to camp. I wanted to feel things out on the advanced traction control and off-road system. My previous vehicles have always had manual transmissions, and the Xterra also had a locking rear diff with minimal traction controls. Even with this big shift of driving and vehicle styles, the Defender felt stable and planted. I could get used to this.
After a calm evening around camp, we hit up an area renowned for opal. It was quite picked through, and even with the energy and eyes of my two boys helping, we got skunked. There were some nice agate pieces, though, so we took a few that we liked and left the rest for the next person. A second trip to the trilobite area also didn’t find us with much to show. Much like fishing, rockhounding is more about adventure and getting outside than what you find.
This second night made me grateful that I had gotten rid of the rooftop tent from the trailer and switched to a canvas ground tent. The winds were gusting at least 40 mph, if not more. I hooked up a few extra guy lines and double secured the stakes with big rocks. There is no way I could have slept on top of a trailer with everything flapping about.
The rest of the trip took us to the east around the Old Woman Mountains Wilderness. The road was generally graded, but we got a chance to test low-range rock crawl mode many times in some pretty tricky washed-out sections. One other section had some deep sand, and I have finally witnessed firsthand what many say about the Defender’s traction control system: it can often find traction out of nothing. With the trailer attached, there’s no way we should have made it out of that area without using MaxTrax. But we did.
We wrapped the trip up camping amongst some amazing rock formations that were fun to explore. This campsite had quite a bit of litter, so the boys took to one of their favorite camping activities: campsite cleanup with grabber arms. They spent two hours filling up a trash bag with 22 shells, broken glass, cans, plastic wrappers, and even some Cheetos that seemed to be immune to decomposition.
Overall, the trip was a success. I gained much more familiarity with and respect for the off-road systems of the Defender and have a list of tweaks and changes to my setup to make things better and more efficient on the next time out. Best of all, I’ve earned my desert pinstriping merit badge and got the truck dirty. I can’t wait for the next time out.
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