Overland Southwest Roadtrip

We made an admirable effort to get out of Sacramento on time, sped along by the AirBnB owner who showed up right at check-out time. I felt bad about that, but we were out within the next fifteen minutes. We drove across the street to the church parking lot to review the route this morning, pick a lunch point, and confirm all the pieces were working.

We pulled out of the church headed out of town and before we’d even made it to the corner, George radioed that he needed to stop because of a “Check Gauges” light an an oil pressure warning. Turned out to be that his oil pressure sensor was failing and had leaked a bit, but it was still pretty minor.

We bought a replacement sensor and decided to replace it later; he’d just had an oil change, the pressure was fine.

From there, we hopped back on US50 into the Eldorado National Forest toward South Lake Tahoe. I don’t know about the others, but it didn’t take long for me to learn that Red has no freeway hill climbing power, in just about any gear. I fell embarrassingly behind at all the mountain passes today, but I made up for it with what happened next.

We’d planed this to be a beautiful drive day, with some forest roads and a few off-the-highway detours, but no trails or offroading today. That’s not how it went.

It wasn’t what any of us were expecting, since Geroge’s lying atlas called this “Other Paved Road.” There was mud, leaves, pinecones the size of traffic cones, rocks, washed out dirt path. Then it got much worse.

Deep into the forest, we hit two major snowy areas. One time we had to dig the Rover out and clear it a path. The second time, I had to use Red to yank the Rover out and we had to dig away what seemed like the remains of an avalanche.

Then we turned a corner and hit a major problem. The road was snow-covered as far out as we could see with 4 to 5 foot high, powdery snow-drifts that no one had tried to pass through yet. It was quickly evident we’d spend the next two days trying to get through it, and we weren’t even half-way to the top of the pass we were climbing. So we ended up turning around and heading back to the highway.

Heading down was much faster, and just about as fun as the trip in. We did have a couple major bounces that caused an explosive unpacking of all the luggage and supplies in the back, but the cars appear no worse for the wear, and I’m so proud of all three. (But espcially that Jeep…)

The descent over the US50 pass into South Lake Tahoe was stunning in every way, and our lunch place ended up still being open when we arrived at 8pm. After dinner it was another hour to the cabin on Lake Topaz. We arrived in total darkness, had a toast to the day, watched a little dash-cam craziness, and went to bed.

Is this a bad time to point out that yesterday was the first day in my life to put a vehicle in 4WD?