Have you been to Tacoma in your Tacoma?

Numerous times.

Think everyone should visit Rainer national park at least once. It’s impressive. There’s some cool finds around town and the surrounding area depending on your interests.

That said, I wouldn’t reside there personally.

 

@4x4Runner

Good morning!

I drove from Dover, DE to Alamogordo, NM (Holloman AFB) to work with the QF16 testing team for Boeing back in 2013.

Not the same I know but still a 2K+ mile trek.

That was a once in a lifetime trip that I won't be replicating again any time soon. lol

I appreciate the dialogue.

 

I just bought a Tacoma in Tacoma!

 

I try to break up the long drives these days. Last August, I drove Barcelona Red to Auburn, WA, spent the night at Super 8 with a short walk to Applebee's for some dinner, and the next day Team Garmin Dave directed me to I-5 North (instead of South) so (after a short wait) I took the ferry to Bainbridge Island and my destination, the Olympic Gateway Super 8 at Port Angeles. After visiting my kids and first grandson (6 weeks old) over the weekend, I made the longer drive and shorter time route to Gig Harbor, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Tacoma, and since I was at Auburn at 11:30, I couldn't see waiting until 3 to check in for the night so I kept rolling to fuel in Ellensburg (Half the Tesla Super Chargers were DNF and who knows when those would be fixed), took a 2-hour break for food, water and a nap at a rest area, before arriving home in late afternoon.
It was beautiful to spend some time in Olympic National Park, noting more cedar than the Sitka spruce and Coastal hemlock I was used to during the 1980s while working out of remote camps with the USFS and ADF&G in the north temperate rainforest. Warmer rainforest... My eldest graduated from PLU, considered grad school at UPS (I had to ask and "No, they don't wear brown uniforms."), the University of Puget Sound. I may have taken some photos in late December 2018 of the Tacoma area, but in 2022, I was busy driving the Tacoma back through Tacoma and NE to I-90. In 2018, I spent most of my time from the day after Christmas in Renton (daughter's wedding rehearsal), the Point Defiance Park (wedding photos the next morning, and buying the party's coffee orders from a somewhat nearby shop, since it was still raining a bit so they'd be cold despite wearing XtraTufs with weding garb), and in Parkland for the wedding. 2013: most of a week in Tukwila, waiting for rain and thunderstorms to cease so we could fly from Boeing Field tp home with the Collings Foundation. Spent quite a bit of time at the Museum of Flight, too. Ballard in the 1980s... with my first new vehicle from a Spokane Toyota dealer, the 1984 Toyota Longbed Deluxe dark blue pearl, as I recall. Commuting between the Missoula, MT area to the Alaska Marine Highway System terminal at Prince Rupert, BC with a 4x2 22R (carbureted) 5-speed manual was never a problem even in winter, since I always carried a spare fuel filter to change when losing power up long grades. Less than five minutes to change, very simple, very easy.

 

When I bought my 1st gen in 2000 I was researching Tacomas I remember thinking, hmm, Toyotas are quality. Tacoma, WA is a shithole. Something isn't adding up. Luckily there is zero correlation between the location and the vehicle. Perhaps the person who worked on the naming the Toyota truck a Tacoma also worked on the Bud Light ad campaign debacle.

 

Live here. Like most big cities some parts are good some not.

 

Every Day. But that’s not hard when you live there…or close by anyway. Rainier from the Tacoma tide flats.

 

Lived here in Tacoma 23 years, I've seen it get better here in that time, and then it's gotten worse... doesn't really hold a candle to Seattle or Portland, but it's working on it... I shall not soapbox as to the reasons.

 

When the new Toyota Stout arrives, should a "rite of passage" be to drink a stout, visit University of Wisconsin-Stout, Stout, Ohio or Stout, Iowa? Stout, Colorado was a town that is now located under Horsetooth Reservoir in Colorado. Toyota's reincarnated Stout is aimed at the Ford Maverick, and looks to have better payload and off-road capability than the Maverick's off road trim level.