Anza Borrego Froading
Last year some time I bought a ‘93 Toyota Land Cruiser, and I’ve spent the greater part of this year falling in love with the darn thing. For me its the perfect setup of size, comfort, durability, and off-road capability. It came from the factory with electric lockers all around, and is overbuilt in so many areas, that it does much better in stock form than most anything else. And it has AC, leather seats and cruise control, gotta love it.
Anyhow, I have been searching for a medium to get out and do some moderate ‘froading for a while, and the opportunity presented itself when a bunch of us guy’s got together for a climbing weekend in Joshua Tree for Dean’s Batchelor’s deal. Sunday meeting was with the Cadby’s, and I saw their trucks first hand, built Toyota’s! So, I harassed Becky Swenson into putting something together for all of us to do, that wouldn’t cause too much damage to my truck.
Becky did a great job of wrangling up a group of people! We had Becky and her folks in their FJ40, Matt Cadby drove his FJ40, the Hough’s drove their old school military Jeep, and Nikki Cadby was in her built 4-runner. Willie and Julie trailed us on their dirt bikes. Great crew!
We rendevou’d out in the desert. The directions I was given went something like this:
“When you get to the bend in the road, drive off into the desert on the left, and head out past some cacti towards an open spot. Listen for some thumping Mariachi Dance music. You’ll see the trucks.”
Keep in mind this is after a 5hr drive through the desert, at 2AM. Strangely enough, there was a Mexican Dance party with a full light show and a bar going on, out in the middle of no-where, which just happened to be next to our campsite. Convienent…unless you intended to sleep.
The next morning came early, but we were in good spirits. Borrego is gorgous, and the weather was perfect. We headed out for a good morning of driving down scenic washes. Willie and Julie buzzed around us as we drove, which was awesome to see.
The badlands of Borrego - not a place to get lost without some water….
We stopped for lunch in a shady spot, then headed for something a little more ‘challenging’. With Don leading the way, we climbed up a rocky tight (for my big ole’ truck) wash. I quickly found out that the limiting factor for my truck is my driving ability as I proceeded to slam my differentials into rock after rock. After a couple swings, I started to figure out how to drive ‘around’ rocks instead of ‘through’ them. Oh well…no major damage done.
After a long day of driving on dirt and rock, Mollie and I opted to head back to Vegas to catch a Sunday at home. Thanks for everything guys! We had a great time, and it inspires me to put some work into my truck to get it more ‘froad worthy. I have a feeling its going to get bigger soon….
(Pictures were stolen from Lane Carlson, Thanks man! Visit his webshots site!)