mk5 adventures

Colorado 2020: Family Pandemic Adventure!



Last year’s Colorado adventure began as a socially distanced family road trip to the Midwest, with each family in their own vehicle, and the largest in a rented RV. And although the RV looked super nice when I toured it, I was pretty sure we would be enjoying more peaceful travels and more restful nights in our modest little pickup truck, in light of the fact that there were two babies and a 4-year old riding in the RV!


North of Williams, AZ.

I was in charge of picking the camping locations, so the first night I directed us to easily-accessed BLM lands outside of Williams, AZ. But perhaps I should have picked something less remote… because I was quickly demoted from camp-site-picker for the rest of the trip, and the remaining nights were spent at KOAs… which was an entirely new type of camp experience for me.


Along the way we encountered an implausibly dense and diverse population of animals near Williams… what were the odds?



Here we’re camped just a stone’s throw from I-40 at the Albuquerque KOA… We actually had a great time hanging out in the pleasant weather, and the bathrooms were quite nicer than I’m accustomed to in the back country. As an added bonus, the drone of freeway traffic helped drown out the occasional nearby gunfire.



I didn’t manage to snap any photos from our next night’s camp, located on a freshly mowed plot of grass adjoining a casino parking lot somewhere in Oklahoma. But here’s a shot of a friendly cicada that dropped onto my arm during breakfast. What a cool bug! KOA camping isn’t really my thing, but I met a lot of people here who seem to enjoy it, and it was fun talking with them.

Travelling cross-country with small children made for slow overall progress, so along the way, my wife and I were able to sneak off from the caravan to pursue several side trips along the Route 66 corridor:



Apache death cave


Diablo canyon bridge




Two Guns, AZ



I made a point of putting on “Beavis and Butthead Do America” as we approached this park, so that I could laugh uncontrollably the entire time. It helped drown out my wife’s sighs.


“You may wonder, how can wood get so hard?” Huh huh huh… wood…



But seriously, I had no idea how surreally beautiful this park would be. Pictures don’t do it justice. Especially my shitty cellphone pictures, sorry about that, but here they are anyway…




Yeah, I like bridges... Here’s a historic one: Querino Canyon bridge in NM.



Finally, we reached our destination in the Midwest, just as isolation periods elapsed and negative test results arrived, and for that moment in time, we got to enjoy each other’s company as we had done in the before times. It was awesome… but probably not of much interest on a truck forum! So in the next post we’ll cut forward to the following week as we ditched the family and headed for our former home state: Colorado.

 

Colorado 2020: Part 1

Our goals this year were to visit and go camping with our friends up and down the front range, then to attempt summiting Mt. Bross in our truck—a recently discovered (to me) opportunity to drive to 14k feet elevation (See my post in the highest elevation Tacoma thread). I also had a long list of passes I wanted to explore heading westward across the state, including several I hadn’t yet visited including Red Cone, Williams, and Pearl.



But right on cue, 2020 stepped in to crush our plans once again. A few days before our departure, an early-season snowstorm blanketed the Rockies with snow, burying the high-country passes we had hoped to explore, and plunging temperatures well below what we or our friends were willing to endure for the sake of camping. Cruising around the Denver metro area, we enjoyed catching up with a few of our old friends as best we could, shouting at each other through half-down car windows, or squinting at each other through mask-fogged glasses in their back yards. Or in one case, simply honking obnoxiously in front of their house after concluding they had already gone to sleep. Ultimately, we would not be camping in the Front Range in 2020, nor would any of our friends be joining us on previously planned hikes and adventures. It was time to adapt, to improvise, and to book a god-damned hotel room, because overnight lows were dipping into the 20s. Fuck that--this was supposed to be a summer vacation!



We wound up in Georgetown for the night, then drove over Guanella the next morning towards our first high-country destination -- Red Cone -- a trail that had thwarted me on three occasions in the past. Not ever because I had actually gotten stuck or broke down, but because all three travel companions I had attempted to bring up the trail in the full-size F150 I drove back then had vehemently insisted I turn back within a few hundred yards of the trailhead. In fact, the very first passenger to do so was my wife! Yet many years later, here she was charging up the trail with me in 2020 -- in a more-nimble and better-equipped Tacoma, and with a lot more experience under our belts. And I’m pleased to report that we had a great time working our way up to the summit, despite the trail being in even worse shape than I remember from prior visits.


This was supposed to be a video take, but my phone shut off in the snow bank before I even got back to the truck!

The recent snowfall made for some muddy challenges near the trailhead, becoming slushy challenges as we approached the tree line. Thereafter, we faced increasing patches of snow all the way to the top, with the trail eventually becoming a wet snow-packed double track. We encountered dozens of jeeps in several groups heading down, which on this trail, means they had doubled back from the summit rather than to continue down the notoriously steep ridgeline to reach Webster Pass (which is a one-way trail in the downhill direction). I asked a few of them if the trail was passable, and the general consensus was that it was too sketchy for most drivers’ taste, but a handful had successfully driven down to Webster pass.


Approaching the summit



Soon I had reached the summit – my first time doing so by vehicle! Digging out the binoculars, I spotted a group of ATVs struggling valiantly to shovel, winch, and throttle their way up the final segment of Handcart Gulch. Above them, a group of perhaps half a dozen Jeeps had collected at Webster Pass, presumably having reached it from the north. Far beyond them, I spotted an even larger party of 4x4 vehicles atop Radical Hill – which I had originally planned to climb next after coming down Red Cone. Unfortunately, the trail below them appeared entirely snowed-in through the binoculars. I tried unsuccessfully to hail any of these groups on CB, VHF, or FRS/GMRS radio, hoping to learn conditions of the trails ahead. In the process, however, I managed to make my first QSO (?) with a scout master who was DXing atop Pikes Peak some 80 miles to our south. I’m not much of a ham, but this was a fun event to stumble upon!


Downhill either way

So the decision loomed: To continue down the steep snowy ridgeline to Webster Pass towards Radical Hill, or to give up and retreat back to the 285 corridor. I wanted to press forward, but my wife was far less convinced, and everyone else arriving at the summit was turning back as well.


A jeep descends while we watch from the peak beyond…

Finally, a Jeep we had been chatting with decided to proceed down the trail, and we watched them in suspense via the flying camera to see if they slid to their death. They did not, and in fact appeared to have no trouble getting down to the pass. And despite the vast differences between our vehicles’ weight and tires, their success helped me finally convince my wife (and myself) that it would be reasonable to proceed, and I assured her that the descent would probably be safe – and definitely not completely terrifying.



Soon we were sliding down the trail in terror, slowly gaining speed, bouncing around within its ruts like a twenty-four-pound bowling ball being hurled down the wrong bumper lane by a blackout-drunk uncle at some poor kid’s birthday party. And just like Uncle Bud belligerently shouts that he meant to do that while Junior cries nearby, I did my best to pretend I was in control of the vehicle as we slid haphazardly down each patch of snow, too focused on the trail ahead to glance towards my wife to watch the trust and confidence fade from her eyes. It was a bit of a shit show. To be clear, there was no risk of departing the trail or spinning out, owing to the well-established ruts that kept us firmly centered and pointed downhill like rails beneath a train. Nor were we at risk of accelerating to dangerous speeds, as the snow was frequently broken by patches of protruding rocks that provided just enough traction to slow down. But I had promised my wife that our descent wouldn’t involve sliding uncontrollably down the hillside, and on that front, I had betrayed her trust. And that was a shitty thing to do.


It’s steeper than it looks…

So after descending the first grade, I stopped to chain up. Thereafter we slid no more, even as we encountered steeper terrain. I guess I should have done this in the first place, but it’s always such a pain to chain up.



Our new friends from the summit were waiting for us at the pass, perhaps wondering what the heck was taking so long. But everyone seemed pretty happy that we made it down safely, even if it took us forever to do so. And finally, I could say that I had driven Red Cone! My wife was a bit less enthusiastic about the ordeal, and in fact I was once again demoted from my position of route planning. I was informed of our new plan, which would not involve any more sketchy mountain trails that day, and would instead take us directly to Keystone to find a hotel room, then we’d go out to dinner. And it was a great plan -- soon we were dining at our favorite restaurant in Keystone… our first indoor dining experience in over six months (and in fact the only one for the rest of the year!)

 

Colorado 2020: Part 2

Arising late the next morning, gazing upon the snow-capped peaks towering in every direction from the parking lot, it was time to face the facts. My intricate plan to crisscross the state via its highest 4x4 mountain passes was utterly infeasible in light of the recent snowfall. Certainly, I would still mount a quixotic attempt to summit Mt. Bross later that day—I had my heart set on it for months. And if we didn’t die on that attempt, I’d probably still try to cross into Leadville via Mosquito pass, but I wasn’t holding out much hope I’d get through, much less hold our schedule for reaching Ashcroft by nightfall. We had already let ourselves sleep in, knowing that the high 4x4 routes were essentially impassible, and would remain so for the remainder of our trip. It was time to come up with a new plan for our remaining vacation time… something we could enjoy at lower elevations… and something I could embrace with the same degree of delusional enthusiasm as every other failure-bound plan I’ve ever hatched.



Suddenly it came to me: I would go fishing instead! I still had my fishing pole stashed in the truck from our Utah trip earlier that year. I quickly purchased a fishing license online, headed to the nearest body of water, the Dillon reservoir, stumbled down to the shore line, then cast a spinner lure into a nearby tree, where it presumably remains to this day.

By mid-morning, the only thing I had caught was a sunburn. But just as I was thinking about moving on, a nice rainbow trout suddenly took the lure. And at that moment, feeling its tug on the line, I realized... shit, what the hell am I going to do with a fish?! We were staying in hotels, not camping, and I had no way to cook up a fish. Even if we were camping, a state-wide fire ban was in effect, and we couldn’t operate so much as a propane camp stove! So after reeling in my first-ever catch in the state of Colorado, I immediately unhooked him at the waterline and watched him disappear back into the depths of the lake. You’ll have to take my word that he was probably a good three to four feet long.



Next up was Mt. Bross, a 14er with a jeep trail running all the way to the top. After checking out a mill undergoing restoration at its base, we charged up its generally-south-facing slope with just the slightest lingering hope we’d make it to the summit, as the sun was already making quick work of the snow at lower elevations.



Sadly, we were stopped by a deep drift at 12,400 feet. Others had proceeded further, but not without driving well off the trail. The heights above weren’t worth sinking so low as to drive off-trail, plus the flying camera revealed impenetrable snowbanks not far beyond. We’d just have to come back some other year!





The drive was quite beautiful, and brought us to one of the most impressive specimen of krummholz I’ve ever seen.





Next, I figured I’d try my luck at Mosquito Pass, which is my favorite route into the Leadville area. We didn’t honestly expect to get through, but we had plenty of time on our hands, and the scenery was too beautiful not to try it.



We made it all the way to the London Mine before we encountered any snow on the road, at which point my wife decided she would hop out and enjoy reading her book in the afternoon sunlight while I foolishly charged towards the summit. She was done with snowy mountain trails, and apparently this book was quite good. We had learned from descending motorists that the far side was completely snowed shut, but that the pass was reachable albeit “sketch af.” I left her with a radio and pressed onwards.





The ascent was indeed sketchy in spots, but I never felt like I was about to die. I guess that’s the driving experience I’ve come to enjoy these days.


Overlooking Leadville…

The view from the top was amazing!



Mosquito Pass is Colorado’s highest through-route pass for vehicles, and is always a pleasure to visit. The recent cold snap had vanquished its namesake pest from the alpine tundra, so I spent quite some time up there just taking in the beauty. And let’s not forget… also checking in on TW! Soon the radio crackled to life—it was getting chilly down at the London Mine, and it was time for me to head back.



As we aired up on the South Park side of the range, we started figuring out plans for a hotel and dinner for the night. The obvious choice was Buena Vista, one of my favorite towns in the whole world. We got to town just as the sun was setting over the collegiates.



And this night, we decided to splurge – booking ourselves a room at the fancy hotel right by the river. This place was still under construction last time I was in town! We enjoyed a night on the town, at least to the degree possible in 2020, hitting a few outdoor establishments before calling it a night.

 

Colorado 2020: Part 3

I arose super early that morning to try my luck fishing the Arkansas, starting just a few yards from our hotel.



It took me a while to get the hang of casting into the current, but by mid-morning, I started pulling up these little brown trout, one after another! It was a splendid day in Buena Vista.



By the time my wife called me back to the hotel, I was nearly a mile upstream. I sauntered back and we packed up the truck, stopped for lunch in town, then headed out to explore the river a bit upstream of town. Along the way we encountered the Colorado Midland tunnels, which are always fun to drive through, so we did it a few times.



The Midland route is long gone, but the valley still carried traffic on the Rio Grande tracks until somewhat recently. The rails are in pretty poor shape today, but I hope to someday see trains roll over Tennessee Pass again.





We stopped nearby to go play in the river.



No luck with the fishing rod here, but some folks across the stream were having a good time prospecting. Wish I had brought my pan! (Or more generally, knew how to prospect in the first place… the only time I’ve ever found even a flake of gold in my pan is at the museum in Idaho Springs, standing next to my six-year-old godson who was a lot better at it than I was.)



With the sun now descending from its apex, we sat down to plan the next night’s accommodations. The western slope had been slowly warming, so we could finally entertain the thought of camping at a lower elevation on this, the final night of our trip. Do to the fire ban, which prohibited so much as a propane stove at back-country or distributed camp areas, we set our sights on a developed campground, where we would be exempted from the ban. This would also let me attempt to catch that night’s dinner along the way. So with that it was decided, we would head to Curecanti NRA via Cottonwood pass.



The drive was beautiful, and the road is even paved now, but I was just a bit disappointed to be skipping out on the higher, more exciting passes in this area. But this subdued disappointment gave way to childish exuberance when we got to Taylor Park Reservoir and I was able to try my luck at fishing “for real.”



We set up at the upper shores of the lake, where I explored its knee-deep waters while my wife read away near the truck. I didn’t have any luck fishing the shallows, but this place was just so serene and tranquil, we hung out for a while anyway, enjoying the calm breeze and the constantly changing skies.



Eventually we headed towards the shores of deeper waters, where I could at least see the occasional fish jumping in pursuit of a snack. Here I eventually hooked the night’s dinner, to great relief and excitement, because the backup plan would probably have been a drive-thru in Gunnison.


I simply cannot overstate how excited I was to have caught this fish!

I discreetly cleaned the catch in the Safeway parking lot while my better half gathered up the rest of the meal’s ingredients therein. We made it to the camp ground well into dusk and got to work. Here’s a photo of the meal I nabbed from her phone, I guess I was too busy being pleased with myself to take my own shot.



There were only a handful of other campers in the park, so it seemed we had the place to ourselves. It was a peaceful, restful night, and it was great to finally be sleeping beneath the stars in the Rockies.

 

Colorado 2020: Part 4

There was no shade at camp, so we woke up not long after sunrise. Today was our drive home, so we made quick work of breaking camp, then stopped to pay our dues before hitting the road.



Despite the long drive looming before us, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve as we descended along the Gunnison. The first was to check out some of the infrastructure, new and old, as the river enters its narrows.


Morrow Point Dam – hope it holds!


Talk about a bridge to nowhere…



Then we diverted up the steep grade to visit the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, another gem of the Rockies. I wish we had time to camp up here, I think it might be my favorite developed campground in the national park system (that I’ve yet found.) My wife hadn’t yet seen the place, so I made sure to talk it down as we approached the abyss…



Which is of course breathtaking. If you haven’t been here, put it on your radar. It’s not the Grand Canyon or the Royal Gorge… it’s the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and like those other places, it’s unlike anything else on earth. And photos can’t do it justice.



On the way back down from the plateau, I snapped this particularly terrible shot of the San Juans towering to our distant south… my favorite place on earth. I so wish we had been able to visit them this year. But fuck, there’s always next year... hopefully?

The rest of the drive home was uneventful, save for a quick stop to check out the damage from the Dome Fire in the Mojave. I’ll close by requoting my photos and thoughts from that experience:

 

Tailgate latch fix for 2nd gens

So this is a first for me, posting about a fix as I'm making it instead of like 2 years later. But i haven't seen this one on TW yet so I just had to share it with the vast readership of this thread.

To set the stage, I decided to go start packing up for an upcoming trip today, instead of saving that for 30 seconds before we're supposed to hit the road like usual. Things were going so well by late morning that I decided to slam the tailgate shut and take a break to go huff paint for a while.

But when I stumbled back to finish the job, I found my tailgate firmly latched shut, with the handle unable to free it. Shit! This had happened before and I knew what was wrong.

So I said a quick haiku of four-letter words and started unpacking. I first had to completely unload the bed so I could remove the top surface of my drawer setup. That way I could pull out my Jerry cans to gain access to the tailgate liner panel, which I then unscrewed.



Then I could slide out the tailgate panel to pry the defective latch free with a flathead screwdriver. And that gets us to the problem: my latch has become so deformed through its life of abuse, that sometimes pulling the latch handle will cause the cam lever to override the latch lever, binding it in place. There's no way to reset it without getting in there with a pry bar.



Here you can see the problem. That upper part that pivots is supposed to engage the latch lever from above, or behind it in the photo above, but instead it has slipped over and bound against the outer (top) side of the lever.

This is what I'd characterize as a poor design on Toyota's part. The latch housing comprises two simple stamped parts held together by two press fit studs. The stamped ears are supposed to constrain the spacing between the stamped brackets, but over time they can spread apart. The worst part is the inherently weak design of the pivot cam support, which only has about a half inch of stsmped steel to keep it from bending away from the latch. Pulling too hard on the tailgate latch, e.g. if you have too much shit in the bed, will eventually cause it to bend apart and override/jam the latch lever. Here you can see how the upper stamped piece is bent:



The design is super weak, for example there's a stupid relief cut right where the part should be strengthened to avoid bending apart.

The first time around I tried to fix it by slipping a snap ring beneath the stud head, to force the two halves closer together. But that failed because it didn't stop the continued bending, and also because I used the wrong size ring and it eventually fell out. You can see I bent one of the ears just to get the ring to fit under the stud head. It would probably have worked if the ring stuck around.

So this time we're going to fix it differently, maybe not right, but at least differently. We're going to weld the two halves together at the two points they should have been attached to prevent bending in the first place.


Look at that gap beneath the stud head... that's our problem!

I'm a terrible welder but it's not like this has to support much force. So I ground off the plating, hooked everything up, and pooped hot metal onto the parts like a stoned sixth grader with a hot glue gun half-assing his way through remedial summer school art project.



I'd give it a C-, which is good enough to finally graduate to middle school, and still better than I did in math that summer.

All that's left now is to rattle can over the welds and dunk them in grease. But for whatever reason none of my spray paint has any propellant left.



Sweet, found one with some spritz and few good huffs left, now just gotta pack up the truck again. Sounds like a mission for Tomorrow Man!

 

Nice. Ill have to keep that in mind. I've got myself into the habit of leaning into the tailgate before unlatching it, so hopefully that helps haha

 

Fix: e-locker skid

This was a simple fix but I took pictures, so here it is.


E-locker lower left, gas tank upper right.

It started when I slid under the truck to grease the driveshafts before a big trip, and noticed the problem shown above. Actually, it probably started over a year ago when I installed a metal gas tank skid--my plastic one was cracked and falling apart. Well, I didn't realize it at the time, but apparently my e-locker guard thing (probably aftermarket?) had been striking the gas tank skid ever since. I could see the well worn area of interference on both parts. Nothing major, but probably not a good thing to have the axle striking the gas tank every time I hit a speed bump...



So I pulled off the locker skid thing for modifications. Finally, the laser crosshairs on my drill press find a purpose: helping me mark a planar cut on this somewhat complex shape...



Then I lopped off the offending region of metal and prepared its replacement...



I almost did an okay job welding this time. (Almost.)



Here is the final result... just as much useless armor as before, but no more scraping between the axle assembly and the gas tank skid!



Kind of a boring writeup I guess. Cheers from camp with one bar of service!

 

I will eventually get around to posting the story, so you'll see this again (maybe, if you can wade through all the boring text), but figured this was too much up your alley to not show you now. There are at least three or four of these double crossings in a 30 mile stretch. Some of them, the highway is above the train; others, it's below.

​

 

Nice Dan! And thanks, now I'll see if I can figure out where this is before you write it up. I love the civil engineering (and often contentious fighting) that went into routing multiple rights of way in narrow canyons! I was definitely hoping to spend more time on the Deschutes gorge on our last trip...

Here are a couple photos from where I'm currently exploring... probably won't ever write it up, but it's been a fun trip!





Didn't have much luck with the clouds, but had a steady stream of A-10s contributing to the night skies.

 

Project: Door speakers

I wrote this in response to another thread, but decided to post it here instead because of how much I wrote. I replaced my door speakers along with installing a new Android head unit as a Christmas project. Here's how the speakers went:


Photo of prior front door speakers. 6x9 OEMs, but with tweeters apparently added by a prior owner. They were not functional.

One thing I'll say about OEM door speakers, across all brands of vehicles I've owned, is that they always sound pretty great for how cheaply they're made. They are highly efficient too. Every time I replace OEM speakers with aftermarket ones, even from mid-grade brands (think in the $150-300 range), I am always disappointed with the results. Substantially less bass in all cases, and sometimes, obnoxious peaks or dips in the frequency response vs. OEM.

So the only reason I'd ever suggest replacing OEM speakers is if they're blown out, or you are installing an amplifier to drive them!

Unfortunately I'm bad at following my own advice, and I enjoy working on my car, so I keep finding new projects even if I'm not optimistic that improvements will result.

For those not invested in reading 5 pages of photo-ladden build thread, this is an '05 access cab with little remaining of the OEM radio system except for the wiring and the door speakers. My door speakers are powered by an Alpine 4-channel "power pack" (compact) amplifier, so basically just a head unit in terms of power. Hopefully a good one, but maybe not: One of the rear channels started cutting out around 2 years after I installed it, and I haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet. It's not the head unit, because I just replaced that, this time going with a new Joying 10" model (prior was an older Android unit), and am still getting intermittent sound from the back. Anyway I also have a custom 10" subwoofer setup under the passenger seat. Oh, and the cab is pretty thoroughly sound deadened too. The sound is pretty okay already, and I had no good reason to replace the speakers, other than that I enjoy such projects.



In the back, I went with Kicker 46CSC674 6-3/4" coaxial 2-ways, which are on the cheaper end of the spectrum, but I usually have the rears turned down pretty low anyway. Whatever.



Up front I went with JL C1-690 component 2-ways. I guess this is really why I was doing the project -- I was hoping the component tweeters would give a hint of proper sound staging in a car (ha!).

I've learned to always buy this stuff from Crutchfield because they make sure to include all the right parts for the install, and have over-the-top customer service. Once I hated a pair of door speakers so much I wrote them to see how much it would cost me to return them for a different brand. They took them back for a full credit, even though I had already installed them, and they cross-shipped me the replacements, with free shipping all around! I don't know how they manage to stay in business, but damn, they sure take care of their customers.

So the box arrived in short order, and included all the necessary mounting plates and wiring adapters. I did have to source a few screws for a proper fit, but only because I wound up making my own speaker mounting plates. I also used a roll of foam leftover from prior projects to gasket around the speakers, and to seal them up to the door grilles.

The rears were totally straightforward, but up front, I was concerned about the lack of a drip shield around the drivers. The interior of the front doors gets rain dripping down from the windows. That's why the OEM speakers integrate drip shields in their construction:


OEM speakers w/ integrated drip shields

So I wound up printing my own mounting plates for up front, used in conjunction with the Metra adapters Crutchfield provided, to position the speakers snugly against the door grilles, and fend off the scary rain drops.


3D printed drip shields/spacers I designed for these speakers

I did the left side first, then with all the door liners still removed, sat in the cab for a while comparing the new speakers on that side to the OEMs on the other. Once again I wasn't super impressed. The kicker in back sounded on par with the opposing OEM speaker; different, but not dramatically better or worse. The JL Audio component speaker up front unfortunately sounded really underwhelming compared to the OEM on the other side. A lot less bass. And I wasn't swept off my feet anywhere else, although I did appreciate that I could hear the tweeter higher in the door. (I'm pretty sure my prior tweeters were non-functional, although they were indeed wired in.)

After swapping the other side and reinstalling the door panels, I sat down for even longer with a frequency generator and a microphone to tune in the EQ on the head unit. The JL Audio components really came to life, and turned out to be really smooth after mild adjustments. The bass is subdued but deep and accurate down to like 40 or 50 Hz, and the stereo imaging is quite nice thanks to the tweeters. I really do like these speakers, and perhaps for the first time ever, feel like I've actually improved the sound vs. OEM speakers!

The Kickers in back turned out to be tougher to tame, there are some obnoxious peaks in the mid-range, and there's a huge dip around 90-120 Hz which I can't fix via the head unit EQ. If I were to do it again, I'd just leave the OEMs alone here.


This was the best I could do for the rears (ignore the "front" on the display, I crossed the channels accidentally). The sound is still not that great...

Anyway, that's my experience. I would say that replacing the OEM speakers provided a mild but noticeable improvement in sound, at least up front. But it is nowhere near the level of enjoyment you'll get by installing a subwoofer or a nice head unit, both of which I'd recommend as upgrades before messing with the door speakers!

 

Nice build!

 

One year with a camera

Well guys, it doesn't look like I have the bandwidth to finish and post many of my trip reports these days. The trick is, when I get home, I fervently process the best photos and spam them randomly across other threads, then write the first half of a detailed report for this thread. Then, the work week starts, and usually some random thing in my house or car breaks, and suddenly I have to figure out how to fix it, or meet a sudden deadline, or at least convincingly blame others for my inability to stay on top of it all. Finally, just before the next adventure, I'll open up the trip report again hoping to post it, knowing it's then-or-never, but working just hard enough that I neither finish it nor allow time to properly pack or plan for next trip. Once I'm several hours behind schedule, I finally give up on the report, randomly throw gear back into the truck, making sure to leave one or two critical items behind, then speed off towards my destination knowing that I'll arrive at camp lost and in total darkness. What can I say... the system works!

But just today one of the behavior manipulation apps on my mobile privacy invasion device beeped at me to remind me of my "memories from one year ago." Sure enough, it's been just about a year since I bought a proper digital camera and took it on its first camping adventure.

So, I figured, why not just make a post here with just some photos from the past year? They don't even have to be good ones. Just a bunch of random pictures. How could I possibly screw that up?

Well, if you're reading this, I guess I actually finished what I started for a change. Which probably means I decided to break it into multiple parts, lol. But I have to say, I've really enjoyed my first year of amateur photography. So here are a bunch of mediocre photos I've probably already posted elsewhere. Cheers!

Part 1: Night photography

This is really what motivated me to get a proper camera. My cellphone camera just couldn't do the night sky justice. It wasn't terrible, but it couldn't pick up any detail that wasn't visible to the eye, and fell pretty short of fully dark-adapted eyesight. On the other hand, a full-frame digital camera can pick up so much more detail than meets the eye... (And a few clicks in photoshop can bring out any other detail you want!) I just love night photography.



The first adventure didn't offer particularly interesting skies due to light pollution and the winter season, but it was at least moonless, and the trip brought me to some of my favorite places with plenty of beautiful things to point the lens at. Oh and also an old pickup truck.





The next few trips were awesome, but not well timed for dark sky photography, with the moon looming stubbornly overhead longer than I could keep myself awake.



Our summer trips lined up a bit better with the moon, taking us up to a high Sierra lake...



Then down to the Owens Valley...



And up again to the heights of the Inyos for a particularly awesome session...







A month or two later, we were headed back north on the 395, stopping in the Alabama Hills for a late-night camp after hitting unexpectedly dense rain en route. The clouds broke just as the moon started rising over the Inyos, but between my little LEDs and a passing vehicle's lights I didn't feel like the night's photography efforts weren't a waste. Well, at least not until the next morning when my alarm went off some three hours after I had finally passed out. That part sucked.





By day 2 we were already off-script after puncturing a tire on the way to Bodie. Luckily, we stumbled upon a pretty epic camping spot for the night, and although intermittent rain and lingering clouds blocked out the heavens just long enough for the ass-hole moon to rise and wash out the glory of our universe above, my little LED lights helped me put together what I thought were some passable exposures for the night.







Soon we were in Oregon.


No idea what that reddish wisp is in the sky... but it was in all the exposures so I think it was real. Aliens???

Oregon was epic, but also pretty smoky, and with intermittent rain, so I didn't spend much time out with the camera at night until we were back in CA several days later.


Apparently, it rains a lot in the pacific rainforests. Which for us meant... MOVIE NIGHT!


Not sure which state, but definitely near the border...

Sometimes a bit of light pollution brings welcome color to the horizon:


And even better, sometimes a phone call brings friends to the campfire...

jk we texted them lol

It turned out I wouldn't get any more shutter time with truly dark skies until the end of the year, but along the way, I did have some fun taking photos at night in other conditions...


Tall ouch-plant


Tall buildings


Tall antennas


Two telescopes.


The larger of the two...


I just held at 35mm lens to the eyepiece for this one. We think that's a starlink trail in the upper right; wasn't there in the other exposures. But I only took a single bracket, and this one was exposed right.


A big city beneath fog... This isn't shopped as much as it looks, it was surreal up there!


The 2 isn't a racetrack, kids...


Wait that's not LA.... Nor is it particularly well framed. Oh well.


OK, back to home turf. But I have yet to drive this road in daylight!


A delightful place!


Planes, trains, and glowing most obnoxiously, a little pickup truck.


Finally, I got one more weekend of epic skies and fascinating subjects in Death Valley just the other weekend. I think it's my finest work yet. Or perhaps the most pointlessly redundant. You can decide, but fuck it, I had fun.









And I think I finally got one worthy of printing out for the wall:


It's been a fun year... and I've still got a ton of photos to post! (Like, someday?)

 

great photos!

 

Fantastic.

I feel like I should offer a tip on writing trip reports. You touch on it actually, but it seems that you've not yet stumbled on the secret solution. As you may suspect, it's regarding that pesky work week and "deadlines."

So, here goes. I should probably redact some of this or at the very least put it in a PM so that some influencer doesn't steal my idea and take it mainstream, but who am I kidding, really - I'm on so many TW ignore lists, and TW is really just an internet ignore list, so no one will have a chance to read this anyway.

OK. You've got it right up until the point where you get home and write the first half, except you really shouldn't rush to get that first half written. Maybe just come up with the name for the trip report. Or something. Probably not even that. Just try to remember that you have a trip report to write. Yeah, that's good enough.

Now, here's the important part. When the work week starts, head into the office like usual. Well, almost like usual. Smuggle in your SD card. NOT YOUR WHOLE CAMERA (!!!) Just the SD card, you're want to start on the down-low, and bringing in a camera will draw too much attention right near the beginning.

Throw that SD card into your work computer. Brew, open, or pour yourself whatever beverage makes you happy. Load up the photos and start processing. As you do, you're likely to get notifications of new emails and even pesky alerts of "in-person" gatherings known as meetings. If COVID has taught you anything, you'll know that all those are unnecessary, and can simply be ignored. Call in, but don't turn on your camera. Technical issues. Wait 15 minutes and then turn on your camera, but turn off your microphone. So close.

In the meantime, process photos. Then, leisurely write your trip report. You'll be amazed at how long this can take, but it totally doesn't matter. Stay late in the office; remark to your coworkers how it's funny that you're always there. Wonder out loud if you deserve a raise.

You'll have the report written in a week. Don't worry, you have the whole weekend to relax. Head back in early Monday morning.

After greeting your coworkers when they come in - maybe offering them their favorite beverage - and then, use the second week for planning the next trip. Again, you can do this in a leisurely manner. It's about how long you're in that chair, working.

That gives you a planned trip and trip report every two weeks. After a while, your managers may complain, but there's a solution for that as well. It's a staged solution that beings with working from home. That'll only work for so long, but you'll feel even more liberated, and can write your reports and do your planning in your pajamas. Then, take your sick time. They won't even expect you to work when you're sick.

This can go on for months. Eventually though, you'll have to take the final step. It might not be your choice when you take it, since the little red slip of paper can show up any time. Just remember, they're doing you a favor - now you get to cash out your paid vacation!

Not only that, but now you have all the time in the world for trips and trip reports!

You're welcome.

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Bravo!!!

 

Came over here from the link in @turbodb ’s thread. Great trip reports! Who cares if they’re late, you get extra points for using the word “krummholz”: a quick search showed your post as the only use of that word on the entire TW site. And you even spelled it right.

 

A Bunch of Pictures - Part 2: Bridges. (Oh and Tunnels and Dams.) (And not particularly good photography either.)

Okay, I just really like bridges. Deal with it. Our tour starts at the same place:


Selfie time!



Fun to see by day as well...



For whatever reason this is one of my favorite desert places to visit. It's honestly not that impressive of a bridge even, nor is it a particularly historic one. But I just cherish driving out there to marvel at it. Will probably be back again sometime soon.




And now for a change of scenery...


This one seems totally different than the one further above... taller, further from home, plus there are literally two of them (just a few miles apart). But it's also a gigantic steel structure that was built for a now-defunct railroad to harvest natural resources at a previously unprecedented scale, during the height of American industrial might. So in some ways these green arch bridges are similar to my favorite abandoned bridge back home after all. Glad they're still standing -- especially for the moments I spent walking and later driving across one of them. That one was the highest railroad bridge ever built in the U.S. prior to being converted to road use after the decline of logging in the Olympic Peninsula. So I guess it's no longer the highest railroad bridge in the country, but it's definitely still a pretty damn high!


The other span is closed to even foot traffic. They've removed the approaches and put up barbed wire to keep people off of it. But I guess a lot of folks trespass, including the two hikers on the far side in this shot. (This is a flying camera shot for the record, I'm not much of a rule-breaker these days.)

In fact I'm such a goody two-shoes, I even figured out how to get "clearance" for this next shot. Some sort of ridiculous app we have to use now to use a flying camera near airports. Whatever, I figured it out.

A nice pair of suspension spans not too far from the steel arches above. And one particularly suited for posting on Tacoma World. Sorry, this is clearly a shitty frame grab rather than a photo, but I was shooting video at the time. Will I ever edit anything together? Probably not, but I'm okay with lying to myself that I might.

Okay... I guess at this point, this has become more of a "cool bridges" post rather than a "photography" post. I'm going to post photos from all the bridges I've visited in the past year, with no concern for how terrible the photography often is. Deal with it.

Fun fact: the above twin bridges are actually the second and third bridges to span the waterway here. The first one didn't do as well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqqyAZDpV6c

I have to say, the original was quite beautiful, and I sure as hell would have liked to drive across it while it stood! Well... except maybe on Nov 7th.

Anyway, speaking of dual spans in the PNW...


This one's not as photogenic, but I caught it at a good time for photography. It carries the most traffic of any span crossing this mighty river. There is also good beer and BBQ nearby.







Further upstream is a more intriguing and historic span. This one was built in 1926, then raised in 1938 to accommodate the completion of a gigantic dam slightly downstream, whose pool inundated and obviated the historic locks at which I'm parked in the above photo.



It's a really neat piece of history to drive across, but the ride isn't free. Better bring some quarters.

Bonus photo -- said dam:

Who let a damn dam onto this post about bridges???

Continuing upstream, here's perhaps the least spectacular of the spans I visited on this river, but I took a photo and some video, so here you go:



The river's definitely pretty wide here. To windy to fly all the way out to the lift span!



OK, enough of the Columbia. What else is around here?



Well, up the Deschutes, there's a neat bit of history, as this valley once carried two competing railroads that were hastily built over 100 years ago, each seeking to be the first to connect from the bustling transportation corridor of the Columbia River to the resource-rich plains of central Oregon. I can't embed it, but here's a good video on the subject. The two railroads' construction crews raced each other up the valley, each seeking to outpace or undermine the other, or lay claim to the more favorable rights of way further up the valley, leading to frequent clashes at construction camps and courtrooms alike.

The grades generally ran on opposite sides of the river, but the topology (or perhaps spite) forced both to the same bank at the above-photographed location. Here, both routes tunneled through a bluff at a particularly tight meander, with one of them crossing the river on both sides of its tunnel. And I happen to like bridges and tunnels.

Today, only one one set of tracks remain in the valley, and I believe the route is still generally called the Oregon Trunk (the name of one of the two original railroads). It comprises the more favorable segments of the two original routes, which were eventually merged after the pointless redundancy of their coexistence became apparent. This was realized before either had even reached Bend, although construction and operation of separate routes continued for some time despite agreements having been reached to share trackage through certain portions along the way. Perhaps ironically, despite the massive consolidation of US railroads through mergers in recent decades, the lineage of the two railroads that once battled their way up this canyon has kept the route shared by two separate companies to the present day: The BNSF and the UP. Which of course are the only two major railroads left in the western US.

The abandoned segments of the original routes no longer carry rails, but still largely exist today throughout most of the valley, consisting of disjoint segments of public access roads or foot trails, but frequently broken by private property, landslides, collapsed tunnels, or gates erected by ass holes that don't think the public deserves access to public lands. And of course some portions are already lost to history. Sadly that leaves only a couple short segments of the abandoned right-of-way viable for through-route driving. And unfortunately, our trip began with a flat tire which deprived us of the time with which we were hoping to explore the first, which would have taken us beneath an impressive BNSF trestle at Madras to visit the remains of two nearby tunnels, which were demolished for practice during WWII. (Supposedly my wife caught a glimpse of the trestle it as we rushed through Madras on the highway, but I never got to see it at all. Will definitely have to come back!)

The above photographed spot above isn't far past the endpoint of the second through-route drivable portion of the old railroad route, and it seemed worthy of a side trip to visit. My understanding is that trains typically only run at night along this corridor, so I didn't expect to see one, but was still holding out a bit of hope. We drove to this point via the abandoned railroad grade along the east (right in photo) side of the river. The former railroad originally passed through a tunnel beneath the saddle atop which I'm parked. At some point that tunnel either collapsed or was dynamited, and the modern BLM road was routed up and over the saddle, erasing the original rail grade at this location. But I think you can see the spoils from the original tunnel in the above photo -- just above the large stand of trees in right center.


The other side of the meander. That's me up in the corner.

I tried to summons a train by making train noises up at the saddle, from which point I could see down the valley in either direction.


Choo choo!

Sadly there were no trains.

Not far from here is another somewhat impressive bridge, although you won't be able to appreciate it unless you pull off the highway to look. Unfortunately I wasn't able to do much photography here due to my arrival concurring with that of a thunder cell, which produced intermittent downpours and howling (unflyable) wind gusts punctuated by frequent lightning strikes. I hopped out for a quick photo, but almost immediately a nearby lightning strike sent me cowering back to the truck.



This one is a "cantilevered Warren deck truss bridge," and it looks quite similar to one we'll see later on the trip!


Between the apocalyptic hue of the smoke-laden skies, the billowing thunderclouds overhead, and the towering stratovolcano in the distance... things felt a bit ominous here!

Continuing up the general route of the Oregon Trunk, we encounter a preserved tunnel. Looks like we're adding tunnels to the post theme too, so... bridges, dams, and tunnels. But that's it, I promise!



Apparently after it was abandoned, a farmer used it as an improvised barn. The tattered remains of the barn doors were swinging around in the wind.


Hiding in plain sight...

The two routes diverge heading south towards Madras, and sadly I didn't have time to explore the abandoned grade save for a quick excursion to check out one of the larger dams on this river:



We can see the former railbed along the power lines in the upper right of the photo below, already climbing towards its exit at Willow Creek towards Madras. Unfortunately this portion is gated off.



The above dam is managed primarily for hydro power generation (110 MW installed capacity), whereas a smaller dam just downstream is used to regulate river flow. Generators were later added to this one as well.



Continuing towards Bend, eventually we encounter the natural barrier that finally forced the two railroads into agreement to start sharing trackage: The canyon of the Crooked River. A massive steel arch bridge was constructed here at the narrowest point in the canyon.



With rail access only to one side of the canyon, and sheer drops precluding easy crossing for miles in either direction, they had to lower all the materials for construction of the far side down to the canyon floor, lug it across the river, and haul it back up the other side. But they built a damn good bridge, still in service today with few modifications.

But wait, there's more!



That's right: Three. Fucking. Bridges.



The middle one is set up for bungee jumping. No thanks for me... This is the original 1926 highway bridge, designed by Conde McCullough, who we'll talk about more in a bit.

The original highway bridge became inadequate as traffic grew, so a modern bridge was built in 2000. I don't find it quite as architecturally interesting, but it's definitely better suited to carrying traffic on this major highway.




Well, we're not done with bridges, but I'm out of time, and I don't want to lose the effort of uploading this much already. I'll post the rest "sometime soon!"

 

This is utterly fantastic. Made my week.

But who has time to relax on the weekends? That's my only chance to fix the damn truck! Or more often than not, catch up on work from another week of procrastination ... sigh.

Anyway, thanks to your suggestions, I'm currently looking into something called a "retirement account," to potentially supplement my primary post-career income strategy of hoping to win the powerball.

 

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