Off-Roading and the Oregon Trail

Today I loaded up the boys, packed a cooler with snacks and drinks, strapped it to the rack on the Jeep and set off to find a place to play with the Jeep and have a picnic.

We wandered our way to Gowen Road where there is a Oregon Trail observation point where the wagon ruts of the actual Oregon Trail still reside.

As I am making the way up the hill I notice the sign that shows who is doing the trash pickup on this stretch of road.  It says that a local 4x4 group has sponsored this section.  I put 2 and 2 together and remember that there is some dirt trails off the road a half mile up the way.

We spent 10-15 mins tooling around in the dirt roads going through mud puddles and up some steep approaches.  I am very pleased with the clearance my Jeep has.  It can do more than I am willing to try, which is a very good thing.

We stopped off at the Oregon Trail observation and had some lunch, just after we went down the paved highway kicking up chunks of mud for a quarter mile.  The boys liked that.  We all liked that.

My First Jeep!

May 2011, I finally succumbed to my perennial springtime Jeep lust.  In years past, I'd see a beautiful spring day in the 60s with clear skies and totally jones for a Jeep with the top-down.  I live in Boise, Idaho where we have something like 200+ rain free days a year.  It does get rather hot but the heat is dry and the summer nights are some of the best top-down weather there is.

I am a father and husband so a Jeep was beyond impractical for a few years while my boys were small.  Now that they can sit in boosters and buckle themselves up, the Jeep idea became more of a possibility.

When choosing a Jeep I looked at several factors:  price, ease of maintenance, safety(rollcage design), and last but not least, round headlights.  This led me to the TJ.  Built from '97 to '06 it would definitely be reasonably priced, the rollcage fully covered the rear seats(not so with the older CJ models, YJ's have square headlights but have an improved rollcage from the CJ).  The TJ was also old enough to possibly still allow a weekend warrior to to his own maintenance.

I did not expect to do a lot of off-roading.  This was to be my daily driver.  I don't need anything flashy, just a jeep with maybe a 2-3 inch lift and a little larger tire purely for looks.   This is what I bought:

I had gone and bought a full-on rock crawler.

It's got a cold-air intake, front and back rock crawler warn bumpers, 33 inch mudders, and a 4-ton winch!  It's a Rubicon!  The beefiest Jeep you can buy off the assembly line:  upgraded axles, upgraded transfer case, ARB air-lockers for climbing and I planned on taking it to work everyday on pavement!

I have had this Jeep for several weeks now and what I am finding is that I love the fact that this thing is over-engineered for the way I drive it.  Now I have been getting more and more brave with it as the weeks go on and who is to say how far I will go?  I'd be a shame not to try out the lockers to make sure they work....