Diet Taco... trying to keep things light

Welcome!

Thanks! Out of curiosity how do you find the 4 cyl when loaded for camping? The V6 seems to have more power than necessary so I'd expect the 4 cyl is fine, but maybe that's because I was coming from a 22RE that could only do some passes at 45 mph...

 

Happy 2nd Birthday Diet Taco!

Well, I'm a few days late, but been two years since I picked up the truck from the dealer.

Been a good two years with 16 camping trips so far and another coming in just two weeks. Build is about 90% done at this point I think. It will of course never be completely done...

So far the truck and the build has gone as good as or better than expected. I was pretty confident I was doing the right thing going with a Tacoma and Flip-Pac and two years of use has proved that my confidence was well founded so far.

What was unexpected was the huge bonus that came with the Tacoma - namely all the great folks here on TW. Seriously, thanks everyone for all the help along the way and sharing in the adventures!

 

Thank-you DVexile (Ken) for this most insightful thread and birthday greetings (a little belated) to Diet Taco . I purchased a 2016 Tacoma last September and over the last few months have been researching options available to outfit it for short camping excursions. I don't expect I'll be making any firm decisions in the near-term but perhaps a couple of years down the road, once finances allow, I'll be able to begin kitting the Taco out.

In the meantime, there is much learning and self-assessment of needs/wants to be done. At this point, I do know I'm old enough that "roughing it" on the ground in a tent has lost its appeal. I also know that towing a small trailer around behind me doesn't hold much appeal either. So that invariably leads to the numerous options available for making use of the Taco's bed as a camping habitat: caps (hard or soft), RTTs, slide-in campers, flip-top habitats, etc. all having their advantages/disadvantages.

At first blush, from a convenience perspective, I'm attracted to light-weight pop-up slide-in campers offered from the likes of Four Wheel Campers (FWC), Phoenix Pop-Up Campers, etc. Setting price aside, my main concern in going this route is their weight. With their dry weight for base accessorized units (not just shells) being in the 900+ pound range, by the time you add the weight of two adults, supplies, water, propane, etc., one will be pushing if not exceeding the GVWR of the Taco.

From reading your thread (and its title ), it seems to me this is something you likely have wrestled with as well and, as such, I'm especially appreciative of the thoughts you've posted already (and interested in those you've indicated you may post in the future) regarding the operation of the Tacoma at or somewhat above its GVWR. Indeed, I came across your thread while "Google'ing" for thoughts/opinions on this very topic.

So I just wanted to say hi and, like others before me, express my appreciation for your efforts in compiling this thread to date and, hopefully, into the future. Many thanks and continued happy travels

 

I am a big fan of the 2trfe the addition of vvti makes it a much better performing engine than previous attempts. When loaded up for a trip I down find I'm down on power partially cause I had a 3.0 auto 4runner lol and because I've regeared it to 4.88 to deal with mainly the tires but also the weight to a certain degree. Yes there are some mountain roads here where I was in 3rd gear at 4k rpm for 10 minutes, and I spend far more time in 4lo than v6 trucks would but I also still get 20mpg so there are definitely trade offs for sure

 

Easter in the Desert
April 2017

This will be a quicker than usual report with fewer photos since most of this trip was about entertaining a four year old rather than any serious exploring.

My daughter had a few days around Easter weekend off from her school and my wife was out of town. Rather than being stuck in the house for five days straight alone with a four year old I took her camping. She hadn't been camping since August so she was really excited though I was apprehensive about so many days on the road solo.

Thursday morning we headed off to the airport to fly out to the truck. Got provisioned and had lunch in Vegas before heading out. Friday forecast was rather cool (88F at Badwater) so we headed to DV for the first night so we could do a hike I thought she'd enjoy. We camped a few miles south of Badwater Road along Harry Wade Road. It was extremely windy that evening so initial plan was to not put up the Flip-Pac and camp with it closed instead. It blew all through dinner but then at about eight the wind just stopped. Was forecast to last most of the night but fortunately stopped early and so we opened up the Flip-Pac for more space.

Friday morning we headed up Badwater Road to get to Sidewinder Canyon. Somehow I have not managed to do this well known canyon yet. It has about six extremely narrow side canyons and since my daughter really enjoyed slot canyons last year I figured this would be a hit. We got started early before it got warm and she did a great job getting up the wash to the first slot (about 0.6 miles and 300 ft). At this point I discovered she is now apparently terrified of slot canyons. She managed the first one grudgingly and then started screaming as I tried to lead her into the second. So much for that plan. Ah the joyous fickleness of youth.

Back in the main canyon we had a pleasant early lunch and headed back down the wash. She actually did thoroughly enjoy the main canyon and I couldn't keep up with her as she ran down the wash.

Leaving Sidewinder Canyon
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Given this was the Friday before Easter I expected a crowd at a canyon the NPS has handouts about in the visitor center but actually when we parked there was just one other vehicle and when we got back there were just two other families that had showed up after us. Driving up Badwater there were just a few vehicles - for a bit. At Badwater that changed and the expected hordes were there. Apparently few people drive past Badwater unless there are flowers somewhere to the south.

We eventually made our way to the Visitors Center - I needed a new NP pass. The goal of this trip was mostly to kill time so my daughter ran around the museum filling out a workbook of questions so she could become a Junior Ranger. After getting her badge they actually had the meeting room setup with kids activities since this is a high visitation weekend and she spend a lot of time coloring desert animals. After a couple of hours we finally left and had a snack by the date palms south of the VC. I had originally thought we might kill time at Dante's View in the afternoon to escape the heat but the VC activities were such a hit with her we had already killed plenty of time.

The temps were forecast to increase by about 10F the next day so the plan was now to head south into higher country in Mojave National Preserve. We left DV via 190 and 127 and stopped in Baker to have dinner. From there we headed south on Kelbaker Road and I hoped to find a spot to camp near Kelso.

I avoided all the "usual" camping spots as this was a holiday weekend and a trip report from the previous weekend by @inv3ctiv3 forewarned me that things could be crowded. Well crowded by MNP standards, it is a relatively low visitation park. One of the things I love about the Flip-Pac is that pretty much anywhere can be a camping spot as long as you aren't blocking the road. Checking the topo I saw two roads leaving the Kelso Depot to the SE both of which crossed large washes multiple times. Washes (when the weather is guaranteed dry) make good pullouts for minimum footprint sites.

This worked out perfectly, just as twilight was ending we found a spot right where I expected from the topos. A nice private, quiet spot just over a mile away from the Visitor Center itself on a holiday weekend.

Come morning I let my daughter goof around in the Flip-Pac. We got moving early the first day and she hadn't had a chance to do all the silliness a little kid wants to do. I let her kill time until almost eleven! Then we headed over to the Kelso Dunes since she really wanted to walk on some dunes. We checked that box.

Kelso Dunes
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Desert tortoises were out in force. A baby was crossing the access road to the dunes and a helpful person had stopped to slow traffic while it crossed. We saw a few more over the coming days crossing the roads, each with a protector pulled over to flag down traffic.

We stopped by the Visitors Center and had lunch on a cool shady bench. Two trains came by during our visit which was a hit with my daughter. If you have not been to the MNP Visitors Center and love desert history then you really need to go. It is in the restored Kelso train station and is packed with great history. I need to stop again with a few hours dedicated to digging through it all. Be sure to stop in the library upstairs where they have maps of the region going back to about 1860.

By about two we were ready to leave and with it getting a little warm we headed up to the Mid Hills area to gain some elevation. Up there we came across a vehicle (4Runner I think) that had clearly rolled on the dirt road and been righted by some helpful folks with winches. Driver side roof, A pillar and windshield took the brunt. Looked to me like too much speed and then caught the high dirt berm on the road if I had to guess. Stopped to check if they needed more assistance and they didn't. We had a long late afternoon snack at a view point near Eagle Rocks.

I wanted to keep sleeping temps pleasant so we dropped back down to near Kelso for the night. A different site this time on another dirt road off of Cima Road. Again, just found a low utilization spur road and pulled off in a tiny wash for the night. No one around and quiet except for the sound of distant trains lumbering along. I was quite pleased that on a spring holiday weekend we could still find the appearance at least of solitude right in the middle of NPS land.

Third night camp
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My daughter had been thoroughly exhausted each night and she woke pretty late on Sunday - which was fine by me. I let her go through her lazy morning routine, again my main goal for the trip was to kill time, until I finally reminded her it was Easter morning. That meant it was time for an Easter egg hunt!

KO2 treads hold eggs well
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She had been asking about mines since they were featured in both the DVNP and MNP visitors centers so we decided to go check one out. A bit of a drive up Cima Road and we reached the impressive Evening Star Mine. We talked a bit about rocks and minerals which she has learned a bit about from some of her books and TV shows. She was impressed with the various apparently bottomless shafts at the mine. The mine has a huge head work which absolutely dwarfed her. She quickly cottoned on to the fact that all the wood for the structures must have come from somewhere other than the desert. We talked about how none of the mines in the desert were very successful because of the lack of water and fuel for ore processing. And then we had an early lunch as the temps were quite nice here around 4000 ft.

Evening Star Mine (four year old for scale)
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We continued on up the road to just north of I-15 which is the site of Valley Wells (see November trip report for some photos) and explored a few of the dugouts there. After that it was time for the activity she had been anticipating and asking about the whole trip - getting off of NPS land so she could collect some rocks! We found a little wash near some colorful hills and she quickly built a multi-hued collection of stones.

We were flying out the next day (Monday) and so it was now time to starting heading back to Vegas to get cleaned up (both the truck and us) and spend a night in a hotel.

So nothing really exciting at all from a trip report perspective, but a great way to kill five days. The truck performed wonderfully as usual. I demonstrated that a multi-day trip solo with her works fine (if a bit exhausting for me) and the logistics of flying and getting the truck both provisioned and then put away works fine even with a four year old in tow. It should only get easier as she gets older!

 

Great job exposing her to the outdoors! I do the same with my kids. They will remember these times the rest of her life.

 

What a wonderful experience for both of you. My daughter never took to camping and trust me I tried. They grow up fast so take every one of these opportunities to make these great memories.

 

I think I just missed you. I was headed home through Panimint and DV on Sunday as well. Stopped to check out the old husk of the U2 Joshua Tree and the place my Great Aunt and Uncle lived in Panimint.



My parents used to play horseshoes at 10pm here when they visited since it was "cool" enough by then.



Sorry the pics aren't as thread-worthy

 

Title is gold

 

Anymore history from your family living there? Looks like it was an amazing place.

 

Neat! Would love to hear more details. The more time I spend out in the desert the more interested I've become in both the distant and more recent human history out there.

Forgot you were Vegas based, hopefully can cross paths one day - when I'm not saddled with a little kid.

 

Yeah, there is only so much you control - kids are their own person with their own tastes. Going to keep on the camping thing as long as we can with her while she still loves it. Hopefully that will be a lifetime passion for her, but who really knows?

 

I still owe the thread a bunch of content, including more GVWR posts that I have notes for but still haven't written up! Work spinning up and other things taking up time.

Anywho, interesting New Yorker article on the whole #vanlife trend and its social media monetization. I'm one of those odd-balls who doesn't watch TV nor has a single social media account so I don't see these things as they develop but I can clearly see that some of these trends apply to the "Expedition Travel" community too based on the forums I do visit. Interesting read.

Since I kid myself that one of the reasons people read this thread is the photography I thought this particular part of the article was interesting:

It’s true that the same vanlife pictures get taken over and over: the van’s back doors opening onto an ocean vista; a long-exposure nighttime shot of the van, cozy and lit from within, against a backdrop of stars; a woman on the van’s roof, in the middle of a sun salutation. (There are so many images of vans parked in improbably beautiful places—the middle of a lake, the edge of a cliff—that there’s an Instagram account called You Did Not Sleep There, devoted to collecting the least believable ones.) One vanlife trope, a middle-distance shot of a van on an empty, winding road, seems more self-consciously artificial than most: someone clearly had to hop out and run back to get the shot. The ideal vanlife image has something of the hazy impersonality of a photograph in an upscale catalogue, depicting a scene that’s both attractive and unspecific enough that viewers can imagine themselves into it.
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And similarly this:

On another rainy morning in Ventura, the air smelled like salt and R.V. exhaust. King checked Instagram on her phone; her most recent post, a shot of a storm building over the Pacific, had been something of an aesthetic departure—most Where’s My Office Now images include King, the van, or Penny; the most popular tend to include all three—and it was underperforming. “I don’t think people are even reading this post, because it’s a picture of the ocean and apparently people don’t want to look at that,” she said testily.

King and Smith have posted more than thirteen hundred photographs to their account. Scrolling through the feed in chronological order, you can see King, who shoots most of the photos, become better at composing and editing images, and at tailoring them to what the audience wants to see. In the early days, she took pictures of flowers and sunsets. “I’d never post something like that now,” she said, looking at a closeup of ripening blackberries, from four years ago. As I thumbed toward the top of the screen, I had the disconcerting sense of watching a life become a life-style brand.​

This really cuts to something I've been working and struggling with in the past few years with my photography. I'm not a professional and don't attempt to make any money with my photos. At the same time I've found that considering an "audience" for a photo during the creative process is really important even when just shooting as a hobby. Over the past years I've been better able to produce images that are both "my" favorites as well as the "audience" favorites - my "audience" being a tiny sub-section of the web but still much larger than just myself. Before I often found my favorites weren't at all liked by others and I'd get more positive comments on images that didn't connect with me as much.

The above from the article points out the challenges for folks who actually have to make a living from their photography. Eventually the specifically targeted audience preference has to dominate and for the social media audience that typically means repetitively hitting the same tropes over and over again and producing something that quickly grabs the eye and the mind in a fleeting scroll rather than something that demands more reflection or analysis. That can be the pitfall of creating for an "audience" - some "audiences" are incredibly boring and banal which doesn't make the photography very fun (to me at least). I have a lot of respect for actual professional photographers who have to swoop into an assignment that may be of very little interest to them personally but still produce a quality image targeted to a specific audience with a consistently high success rate. Very challenging and I suspect under-appreciated skill.

Anyway, does someone know of a company that makes an artisanal organic vital aluminum thermos mug (insulated with Tibetan spiritual vacuum) that will sponsor my build thread? I promise to place it with a subtle prominence in my photos!

 

Some...my Great A&U also used to live in Darwin. The part that's a ghost town now. I'm trying to drag a buddy out to trek through some old history and ruins in DVNP and maybe camp out in the Alabama Hills sometime before it gets too hot but it's already in the 100s now so maybe in fall.

Edit: whoa run-on sentence!

 

*taking notes*

 

In the mid to late 90s there was a Darwin website written by a resident that was one the funniest things I've seen on the web. Sadly it went offline before the wayback machine/web archive existed and is now lost to the ether. Wish I had wget'd the whole thing back in the day.

Felt lucky we squeaked in a trip before temps got murderous. Give us a trip report whenever you manage your history trip!

 

So a shout out, or perhaps an FU, to @adadandhistruck and @scocar - thanks to you guys I now have these:

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I ended up getting a deal from a TW vendor that made them less painful. Honestly I'm still a bit torn on them before trying but they are a super easy install and so I figure I will try them and if I think unnecessary sell used at a small loss. It will be summer before they ever get installed but I was able to test them out just to ensure functionality and expected light pattern with a 12V power supply.

Two things I'm hoping for from them (which seems to be a reasonable expectation based on photos from other users):

• More wide angle light up high. The factory fogs of course have a low cutoff because they are suppose to. Off-road I want more off angle light up high. These should do that.
• More spot light both high but from a low angle. This will help show nasty road features further out.

I decided I really won't know how much of a difference these things will make until I just try them. One thing that tipped the balance was on my Owlshead trip having a family of burros seemingly pop up out of no where right next to the road at a distance I'd never stop successfully in. Dark burros on a black night are hard to see. I also wonder if brighter lights will reduce fatigue on the long night run into Saline I seem to do at least once a year.

Honestly I think something like a CaliRaised light bar would do the same - perhaps even a bit better - but I have weird aesthetic tastes and like the super easy install and no new wiring of this approach. Probably 99% of other folks would be better served by the light bar.

And I'm sure @inv3ctiv3 especially will say I'm burning money with these BD lights but I'm like...

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1. I'm getting flashbacks to my black cows on the shoulder in Utah.

2. If by weird aesthetic you mean you don't want a high-drag, high-priced, medicocre-quality bro bar that would pair well with some 18-inch Rockstars with low-profile mud terrains, then join me over here on the weirdo bench.

 

Dibs if you sell them.