FL to WA and back! An “in progress” 6 week Camping and trails adventure with my wife.

Ok, sorry about that. I left the computer open and the site up and my wife "helped" me wrap up the Grand Mesa segment. She's fantastic...but back to the Truck stuff! We woke up to a flat tire in the AM and after swapping out for the spare drove through Delta and on to Montrose where we got the tire fixed and had a great Bar-B-Q lunch before heading to the Ouray KOA. We made it there in time to make a fast run to Yankee Boy Basin and it was better than expected. Light rain and very little traffic in the early evening. Temps in the low 60's. FINALLY more off road trails!!

 

That last pic is coming back into Ouray. We had dinner at the Outlaw Saloon and walked around Ouray. Touristy for sure but really nice. Outlaw Saloon was great too. Very good saloon piano player, good whisky, fast service and tolerably good food.

The next day we set out to do the Alpine Loop! pretty much the high point (literally too, LOL)of the trip. We started at 7:30 AM and went to Engineer Pass to access Cinnamon Pass to California Gulch to Hurricane Pass and out via Corkscrew Gulch and back to Ouray. 12-13K feet for a good part of the day. Hit Lake City for lunch. Travelled about 80 miles overall in 10 hours. We ran into the Adventure Motors crew towards the start of the climb up Engineer Pass and is was VERY COOL to see a well set up group of TOYOTAS in the Jeep Country we had been immersed in since arriving in Ouray. I had peeled off the million dollar highway with a group of about 25 jeeps and had been hopscotching along in between pee breaks with them for about an hour when we met Michael and his group coming down from a side trail. Fantastic trucks and a great family company! We bought our Trail Kitchen Camp Box set up from them two years ago at Expo East. They have a vehicle sales and outfitting operation just SE of Kansas City MO. Check them out here: https://adventure-motors.com/

 

So after completing a version of the Alpine Loop and spending our last night in the Ouray KOA we packed up in the AM and spent some time with a super nice Tacoma overlanding family. Overland bound #253, (could have been a lower number but the 253 is an important and personal #to Damian. Damianoverlander, his wife and two sons had been in Moab and traveling for about a month and were driving a few trails in the Ouray area on their return trip to NYC. Check out his videos on YouTube. Very cool family. He built a really nice off road trailer with double roof top tents and everything you could want for extended off road travel. Nice taco too. It was great to spend a little time with another Toyota team since we were so outnumbered by the Jeep crowd! Ouray KOA has a great breakfast and is close to the trails compared to other places. Make reservations early! We couldn’t add a day because they were fully booked. They book out about a year ahead.

So today we drove more trails after moving camp to another great place, Webber’s RV Park. Great folks and really nice relaxing atmosphere with great pasture and mountain veiws from the back row.

We started for Imogene Pass and Teluride. Light rain made the additional entrance trail from Bird mine ....pretty interesting.


Webber’s

 

The dots on the trail are runners and hikers! There was a 100K marathon being run on a collection of trails including many that make up the Loop. An added challenge for sure. Everyone was great and very friendly.

Summit!

 

Looks like an amazing trip so far.

 

So on the way down from the top of Imogene, we ran across a motorcyclist who had crashed his bike and injured his leg pretty badly. He was hurt badly enough to require evac and paramedic/emergency services. A Land Cruiser was in front of us and agreed to take the injured rider and we were able to haul the gear that needed to be moved to accommodate the injured rider in the Land Cruiser. Medivac was at least 1.5 hours minimum to dispatch and we could get him down in about 45 minutes to an hour. The "team evac" in a light drizzle made the faster decent more purposeful than normal..... but everything worked out fine. The four guys with the injured rider passed us on the way down so they could double back up to get the downed bike. We met the Emergency Services team at the base of the trail upon arrival in Telluride and they gave us a lighted escort to the ER. We returned the gear to the Land Cruiser after they off loaded the injured rider. It was great to work together with like minded folks and help a someone who needed it. It was a nice contrast to the tone of SOME of the "trail community" attitudes and "not so polite" behavior we had experienced during parts of the last few days rides.

 

Really enjoying you sharing this trip with all of us

 

Beautiful photos !

 

Wow awesome trip, enjoying hearing and seeing photos. Thanks for sharing. Great job helping that injured rider!

 

Thanks Don, Silverbullet II, and Mark. It’s been cool to process the experience into this thread. I love Tacoma world! I’ve been frustrated I haven’t been able to get everything entered and updated. Between the things needing attention upon returning home, and my dad having a very mild stroke...things got complicated. I hope to wrap things up before October gets here.

 

Sorry to hear about your dad.

 

Thanks Mark. We finally got him into In Patient Rehab locally on Friday. It's a work in progress.

 

Great pictures

 

Thanks Nick!