AdventureTaco - turbodb's build and adventures

To elaborate on what @m3bassman wrote, the ability to stop and “camp” anywhere is a game changer. And not just highway rest stops. When I first took our van into Saline Valley from the south, by the time I got to Lee Flat I was thinking it was a mistake compared to the Tacoma, with all the jostling around. But by the time I got to the Springs, found a level spot in a minute, parked, swiveled the seats and cracked a beer, I was done. Even if I’d gotten there 30 minutes sooner with the Tacoma, I’d have still been messing around with my ground tent, etc. On the other hand, no Lippencott for my Transit. At least not for me. Though I did just watch a YouTube of a couple of Sprinters going over Mengel. Nope, that’s what the Taco is for.

 

Lippincott would be too much for a transit, unless you had serious balls. The OG SM's I feel could do it no problem, just small road and big van but clearances and traction wouldn't be an issue. You made the right choice. Mengal would be interesting depending on what rocks have moved.

You brought up one other point that is worth reiterating, the jostling. If you can't tolerate the rattles and sounds of things moving around in your cabinets, you won't enjoy driving a van down a dirt road. You hear everything, EVERYTHING.

 

I wanna see a SM do Mengal... it felt tight in the land cruiser which can at least put wheels up on a rock if need be to cut a corner.

 

I think a E series SM would be easier than these Sprinters. They did do some moving and stacking, and it seems more stacked and smoothed than I remember from my one time there in my Tacoma in 2022.
https://youtu.be/CZLm4fYKa9c?si=H4znByULgLgNzUjH

 

I don't remember it being tighter than Devils Pocket on Elephant hill. EB SM's like mine have made it through that squeeze albeit removing the ladder was required. I imagine RB vans would be better off in both cases. (EB=extended body, RB = regular body)

 

Extras Along the Way | EMHT Segment 4
Part of the Wrapping up the EMHT (Jan 2024) trip.

I could have included this stuff in the main East Mojave Heritage Trail stories - and usually I would have - but they were already getting long. Plus, I know that most would prefer YouTube videos anyway. Not that there will be any YouTube videos here, if I just got your hopes up. Anyway, this is a mishmash story of a few things that weren't explicitly part of EMHT Segment 4, but that I experienced during that same span of time.


The Copper Glint Mine
As I was leaving Las Vegas - my body and the Tacoma both resupplied after my flight south - it was only slightly after 2:00pm. This is earlier than I usually get out of town - the pilot on my flight must have needed to use the bathroom or fallen asleep with his foot on the accelerator or something - but still late enough that by the time I got to the starting point for Segment 4 a few miles south of Fenner, it was going to be dark. At 4:30pm. Yuk.

To salvage a bit of the day, I convinced myself that I could make a quick pit stop on the southeastern flank of the Clark Mountains for a quick hike to a mine site that I've passed several times, but never taken the opportunity to explore - the Copper Glint Mine.

Exiting I-15 at Valley Wells, I soon had the waste pile of the mine in sight.​

Just opening the door to take a few photos of the mine from a distance, the overwhelming aroma of gasoline filled my nostrils. Luckily, I'd just finished lunch; on an empty stomach, I'd have been high as a kite as I worked my way to the back of the Tacoma to find one of my Scepter jerry cans leaking a bit as it was jostled over the rocky terrain.

Close inspection showed that something was amiss with the threads on the jerry can side of the equation, causing the lid to not seal completely. Making a mental note to empty the can when I got to camp, and then pick up a new one when I got home - these are by far the most trouble-free jerry cans I've ever seen on any rig - I climbed back into the Tacoma and drive another couple of miles to what seemed to have been the scrapyard for the Copper Glint.

Some sort of separator or concentrator?​

The scrapyard also happened to be the end of the road - or at least, as far as it is passable in a vehicle these days - so with less than an hour until sunset, I gathered up a few LED puck lights and my tripod and headed up the mountain. I was sure that this was going to be a fantastic place to poke around - probably well into dark.

Naturally then, I forgot any sort of flashlight.

Soon, I'd gained a good amount of elevation, Mountain Pass and the Ivanpah Mountains stretched out before me.​

I wasn't expecting the cold white powder that I found on the ground.​

Rounding a bend in the shelf road, I stumbled on the first digging. Small and shallow, I thought this might have been a shelter, but the lack of rusty cans and other trash probably meant that it was just an unsuccessful prospect.

The face of the opening was pretty neat - a crisp line between white and orange - even if there was nothing to show for it.​

Time for the final push to the top.​

By the time I reached the main adit, 45 minutes had passed, and I was keenly aware that I'd neglected any sort of light - with the exception of LED pucks - to get me back down the mountain. Smarter me might have headed down with the last of the light, but I forgot smarter me at the bottom with my flashlight, so I carried on with my exploration.

Sunstar through the old rail dump.​

A steel anchor loop, wedged into the rock with a wooden wedge. Top notch work, guys.​

It was nice to find a pair of old rails leading out into the open air.​

Satisfied that I'd snapped a photo of anything that would need daylight, I turned my attention to the "definitely safe" interior of the adit. "Definitely safe" might have been generous in this case however, as I soon noticed the lack of any sort of wooden supports, several collapsed metal ladders, and a black soot covering the walls and ceiling of the adit.

Yep, everything that'd been supporting the mountain around me had - at some point - burned up! It hadn't happened in the last day though, and everything was still standing, so I figured that I'd probably be "totally safe" for a few more minutes while I bumbled around setting up lights and snapping a photo or two.

Never mind the fallen rock, that probably happened during the fire. Totally. Safe.​

With all the fallen material, it was a tedious process getting the puck lights positioned, and by the time I was done, I'd burned another hour before I stumbled back down to the Tacoma. It wasn't all that late, but with no moon, it was sure dark!


The Goldome Mine
Normally to get to Fenner from the Copper Glint Mine, I'd have taken Cima Rd. Unfortunately, it's closed this winter as NPS makes major repairs, so Google Maps suggested I work myself all the way back to over Mountain Pass to US-95 and head south from there.

That's dumb. Ivanpah Road is a perfectly good dirt road through the Mojave Preserve - and would cut many miles off that journey - but no matter how many waypoints I set along the length of the road, Google wouldn't map it. Turns out, Google won't map any dirt roads in the Mojave anymore, after some bozo's blindly followed some directions onto a sandy road and promptly got stuck. Because why would you ever question turning onto a sandy dirt two-track in your Tesla? Surely it could never be their fault.

Throwing all caution to the wind - could I even make it without some dumb little computer telling me to "continue straight for 47 miles"? - I turned onto the route that I've travelled many times and would save me nearly an hour. Plus - I realized - going this way, I wouldn't have to deal with traffic at all, and could cruise along at 50mph and my sun-like SS5 light pods blasting away.

Only as I passed the turn did it even register that I was in the vicinity of the Goldome Mine. We'd visited on our second, "redemption" trip to the Mojave Preserve, but since then, Mike @mk5 had toured the place at night - just before meeting me in Death Valley for a Loosely Planned Meetup - and I couldn't get him to shut up about how creepy the Goldome was at night.

Ready to prove that he was a complete wuss, I slowed down, threw the Tacoma in reverse, and soon I was making my way along the old rail grade and past the once-locked entrance gate. My plan was to put a few of the puck LEDs that he'd so graciously given me to good use. I'd show him - and the world - just how much more macho I was and come away with some cool photos at the same time. You know, win-win, for me!

My plan started going sideways even as I was positioning the Tacoma for my first photo.

It took more fiddling around to get this than I expected. Lots of experimentation with the correct truck lights and camera exposure to get it "still not quite right."​

As I moved on to the main structure, the wind really started to pick up. All the corrugated steel was rattling. Barrels were rolling around on the desert gravel. Birds - sleeping soundly until my arrival - began divebombing me as I placed the LED lights around the creaking structure.

Damn, I realized, Mike was right. This place was f@#$#$ creepy.

Even after trying to lighten the mood with a splash of rainbow, I wasn't any fonder of INDECLINE. Those assholes have done a lot of damage in the Mojave.​

This was some new creep-ffiti since we'd last visited.​

I enjoyed how this shot came out - a 30-second exposure where I walked in front of the building, manually changing the LED puck color as I illuminated the wall. (You can see the trail of the puck light.)​

After jumping at a dozen or more noises in the span of the 60 minutes that I suffered through the Goldome Mine, I was ready to go. Even putting my camera equipment away was an exercise in nerves, stray reflections from my headlamp and gusty winds nearly convincing me that I was not alone.

I was glad to be back in the truck and headed to Camp Clipper.


The Blueprint Petroglyph

One of the reasons I'd been looking forward to the fourth segment of the East Mojave Heritage Trail was because it travels through the Turtle Mountains, a place that @mrs.turbodb and I had searched for - but never found - a petroglyph that is reasonably unknown. I wasn't sure that I would have time to search again on this trip - and in fact, I'd resigned myself to the fact that I would not - but when I ended up in the area with only an hour of light remaining in the day, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to cross my fingers and give it another go.

Heading into the Turtle Mountains, I had high hopes, but low expectations.​

For a bit of variety, I decided to take a different route than the one we'd hiked previously. Where we'd gone counter-clockwise, I decided to head the opposite direction, perhaps spotting a rock face that would have been facing away from us on our previous visit.

I was thoroughly impressed with the rock-lined trail. There was even care taken to work in a cactus here and there.​

The view as I climbed to a saddle that would allow me to drop down and search for the petroglyph was a nice enough reward on its own.​

I reached the saddle with only a few more minutes of sunlight on the hillsides. There to my left - and surely not new - was an arch! Perhaps this was the arch that the nearby Lost Arch Inn was named for. Regardless, it was an exciting discovery as I continued along my loop.

The Lost Arch?​

Unlike my hike to the Copper Glint Mine, I'd remembered to bring both my flashlight and headlamp on this little excursion, so as the sun dropped below the horizon, I continued to look on every rock face I could find for the Blueprint Petroglyph. Alas, as with the previous search, I came up empty in the rock art department. Or - at least - of the human-created variety; nature's rock art was on full display!

This peak towers high above the others, a fantastic, jagged crack running down its face.​

This conglomerate caught my eye. After hundreds of years of erosion, some of the rocks looked as though they could be plucked off ...but they were still firmly cemented to the boulder!​

With only reflected light, Mexican Hat stood majestic, in profile, from Mohawk Spring.​

Working my way back to camp, I recalled @mrs.turbodb saying - the last time that we'd done this hike - that the hike was so nice that she didn't mind that we never found the petroglyph. At the time - though I agreed that the hike was nice - I'd been disappointed. This time - since I'd gone into the hike knowing that I'd probably not see the glyph - was just the opposite: with the light and rocks playing so nicely together, it was one of the more pleasurable hikes I've taken in a long time!

And it wasn't without a bit of rock art. I did find a few newer specimens as I worked my way down the old miner's trail.

The marks of men who worked this land many decades ago.​

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Im not catching up because...yeah.

But saw a post about your drone flying skills sucking. (lol btw)

Does your drone not have the auto piolt features? There are tons of tracking and other things you should be able to make the drone do to fly while you work the camera. Or you let it do both. Otherwise yeah, you need to log a TON of hours to do it all manually and get smooth results.

Buy you should be able to get it follow you in the truck or walking easily. Or pivot around you on a mountain top. Or fly a custom path. Lots more these days.

 

It does have autopilot - all the follow, track, etc. stuff. For me, I've found the following as I've used it:

* The top speed of the drone is 26mph or so. That's fast, but I really wish it were faster to keep up with the Tacoma. I think I could get some cool shots of dust trails and stuff, but those don't really look good until speeds hit 40+, I've discovered. Also,it'd be nice for the drone to be able to "fly around" the Taco when the truck is doing 25 or 30, but there's just no way to do it. This isn't something I even thought of as being an issue originally, but really underscores for me how slow everyone must be traveling when they are doing those "dramatic drone shots" in YouTube videos. I always thought it was slow motion, and I'm sure it is to an extent, but not as much as I envisioned.

* The autopilot stuff is only "ok." I mean really, it's amazing what it can do all on its own, but it's still nowhere as good as someone who knows what they are doing. There's lots of little corrections to distance, angle, etc. that are being applied all the time by the drone, and while the gimble makes the center of the picture remain steady, you can really see it in the edges, etc. I'm sure this could be edited out with the appropriate cropping, etc. and is probably what a lot of people do.

* The autopilot stuff doesn't understand framing. What I mean by that is that it will follow a thing (or zoom around it or whatever), and keep that thing in a consistent place/position in the frame, but it doesn't understand the concept of adjusting angle to keep some horizon (or other anchor/scaling elements) in frame.

* It's hard to fly and drive at the same time. Or even just drive and control one of the camera/flight path. Props to those guys who can drone and drive.


Nothing to do with flying, but

* I do not look forward to the video editing (should that ever become a thing for me). I've done a bit of Premiere about a decade ago and was OK at it, but I don't remember any of it now (and I'm sure much has changed). Photo editing is already time consuming, and I know video is order(s) of magnitude more-so.

* The cameras are only 12MP, and even with the gimbal and whatever amazing stabilization they have in these things, the images (RAW) are no match for what I get out of the Canon. To be expected with such a smaller system, and way less of an issue with video of course.

* Setup/takeoff/landing/teardown take a lot of time (10m or more combined), so I really try to minimize the number of times I pull it out during the day.


With all that, I've mostly been using the drone for stills; mostly in camp (mornings/evenings). In those situations it's really nice b/c I can get angles, etc. reasonably quickly that might otherwise be impossible or require a long-distance hike/climb. Like, it would have been awesome at the Dome Plateau camp site, to get a shot from out in thin air, or from the other direction showing us "on the edge."

Maybe someday I'll get into the videos, and if I do, I'll probably practice by taking up some computer gaming to get a hang of the "dual" controls ("body" movement + "head" movement), which is the same for the drone - "device" and "gimble" movements.

God, that's so long you probably didn't ready it. hahahaha.

 

Which one do you have? I've only used bigger drones, this thing sounds like a toy haha

 

Air 3

 

ah. Yeah shoulda got the mavic man.

 

No way man, this thing is already huge. With a Mavic I'd have to get a full-size truck to lug that thing around. And there'd be no way at all to ever take it on a hike. (this one is marginal on a hike).

I did look into it after I posted the max speed that I've seen in flight, and it seems like there's some way to get it into "sport" mode (which I've never used), and get it to go 47mph. So I'll have to find that setting - might make it better for me in certain cases. Still, I'm not really a video guy yet, so I don't know that I really care (except when I'm flying 5-10 miles away for a shot - would be nice to do that faster).

I will say, having the 24mm and 70mm lens options is pretty cool/nice for some of the background compression it offers.

 

the Mavic is barely bigger than the air? 200g more weight for the pro and slightly longer folded up but slimmer.

And a much better camera.

https://www.djistore.co.nz/drone-comparison

Now if you had the mini, that would be the one to hike with likely. Looking at specs, I don't see the point of the air actually. Other than cost I suppose.



Either way. Video is a BIG ocean to wade into to do well. It would ruin the trips for you in a hurry. Especially the pace. A clip or two, sure. But a full on video...never. not worth it. Or maybe my standards re too high(probably).

 

The point of the Air, really, is the dual cameras. The 70mm is *way* nicer for still photography (and maybe video, if you know how to use it) than the 24mm. And that 240g difference between the Air and Mavic is pretty big when you're holding both side by side. It's like an entire "Mini" difference, hahaha.

Anyway, it's a really nice device, and gives some cool new perspectives, but comes with tradeoffs. I'd certainly not recommend it for folks on a budget, since I use it so little compared to the camera.

And I have the same feelings as you regarding the video ocean and my standards for what would be acceptable output. Would 100% ruin trips at this point. I want to enjoy the outdoors and take some photos along the way. I don't want to make a 15-minute video and feel like I was just flying/managing batteries all day.

 

The mavic has 3 cameras 24, 70, and 166

 

I know. You should get one!

 

Would love too. I love flying. Haven't in a long time though. Keep trying to get one at Tippet Rise but never makes the budget.

If i had the money I would for sure. Be fun to just fly around my property haha

 

Fantastic! You got more guts than I do -- that place is just so damn creepy. Very much unlike charging into abandoned mines alone at night, which as we both agree is a reasonable and safe thing to do. I've climbed around many abandoned structures in darkness too, without ever getting quite so spooked. The vandalism, the howling wind, the eerie silence, the bats, the darkness... it really all comes together there.

Screw it though, I'll try my nerves again when I get the chance. Maybe also check out that copper mine too, it looks awesome. How long was the hike?

Edit: Nevermind. Reading is hard for some of us.

It should go a fair amount faster. On mine, there is a switch on the remote. Something like "sport" mode. Turns off all that stupid crash protection stuff, and ignores the gimbal limits when pitching. Probably not very fast compared to other drones, but definitely very fast when you think about how much it cost and how little skill or confidence you have in operating it. Best not to think about that.

Mine will typically keep up with driving around 45, and I've paced close to 60 with a tailwind. (I've also nearly lost it to wind several times, so this is not always the best idea.) Yours should be a bit faster.

A reliably fun shot for long straight roads is to fly it backwards at full speed ahead of you, give it a head start, then mash the gas and try to catch up. This flight direction avoids hitting the gimbal limits at max pitch, and you can keep an eye on the thing without looking at the screen... you know, safety or whatever. Not too hard to overtake it at 80 with a reasonably close and well-framed shot. Or whatever a safe and legal speed would be. I do not recall.

Agreed, although mine is a 5-6 year older model -- the auto features are mind-blowing when you first use them, but are not actually that useful. I don't think I've bothered with any of the auto modes since the first year of ownership. Then again I'm not an aspiring instagrammer. Nor have I even put together a video in years... I still shoot a fair amount of footage on trips, but usually just to post an occasional frame-grab or gif on TW.

Crash protection is surprisingly useless as well, for that matter. Unless other folks are around, I guess -- definitely don't want to crash into people. But at all other times I have it disabled, because there's either no risk of crash, or if there is, then the protection is wildly too timid and won't let me anywhere near where I want to be for the shot. The downside is that I crash it a lot though, especially as it gets older and I care less about destroying it.

I would hope the protection is more useful on newer models -- for example by considering its speed, and allowing closer approach to missed obstacles. The older model has basically a fixed radius, in a forest for example it will freak out just the same whether you are leisurely passing between trees or careening straight at them.

So, I realize that I crashed my drone 100% of the times I tried flying it while we were driving around last year... and then it took me like half an hour to find it. But don't let that discourage you from trying yourself!

You're right, a spare set of props is a good idea.

Also, only an idiot would fly a drone while driving.

Okay, now I see you already read the specs. But I'm not deleting my insightful comment above.

Actually I'm only here to brag about how much better my drone is, even though it's objectively worse and many years older... and currently needs a new set of props. But, it's just so much smaller than the newer lineup. When folded, that is. Being able to throw it in a daypack has turned out to be a game changer, not because I'm some kind of serious drone person or content creator, but just for route-finding. Obviously not in national parks and such. But so nice to be able to fly half a mile up the hillside to see if a hike is worth the effort, for example. Or to see if a route is going to ledge out. Or even just to figure out where the hell I parked.

If I do ever finally kill this one, or upgrade to a better one for photography... I would definitely consider picking up say an older Mini, just to have something for this purpose on hikes.

 

Have you seen the drone they built to keep up with the F1 car? Not just straight line but corners as well.

 

Not this one specifically, but will check it out! The FPV/racing world is mind-blowing to me. On one of my past projects, a professional drone pilot was brought in for a video shoot. He brought a ... I dunno, souped-up RC helicopter of sorts, and put on a show for us between sessions. It was absolutely, violently insane... never seen anything like it.