El Camino del Diablo
I had an incredible time on ECD with 1leglance and son, FJCarrie and friend, and homedad and son on what is without question the greatest run I have experienced to date.
That's an interesting claim to make since we did no wheeling to speak of, in fact there was no location in which even 4HI was required. This run is done in a totally different spirit - it's just about getting out there.
This sums up the trip pretty well: if you are here, you are going to die. Unless you have an FJ that is!
Unless you're TRDjonnie, pictures generally don't do any off road trip justice. In this case, pictures are completely worthless at expressing the ridiculous coolness of being in such a place.
There's just something about it, about the remoteness of it. The same cactus you've seen a million times looks cooler, the same easy dirt road that generally serves as the boring entrance to the 'real stuff' is exhilarating, and you don't think about how on the other side of the mountain they're building a new subdivision... because it just isn't there. There's an epic feeling to the place that I've felt before, but never in quite the this way. Maybe it was the good company I had, maybe it was the nice weather... whatever it was, this trip KICKED ASS.
Many thanks to Kurt, who set up me up with an awesome flag! Here, Kurt demonstrates that although my flag is bigger he still dominates the 4x4 arena by surmounting an obstacle of untold treachery.
The trail goes through a lava-y area... changes in scenery are frequent and dramatic.
Down a ways you can see the lava rock transition all the sudden to soft, light colored sand.
There the trail was cut a few feet into the ground which was interesting. I figured this was so you could go any speed, since if you lost control you'd just get bumper back on course... but I didn't try it.
We took a little detour to 'Christmas Pass' to look around. Everything just feels so expansive... you almost have to have some kind of object in the image to put sizes in perspective it's so huge and empty out there.
This is how I felt about it...
For dinner and breakfast on each night, I got to try out my new RIDICULOUS kitchen I got from Cabelas. It was great fun! This is also a good shot of the ridiculous extent of my flag...
Speaking of the campsite... Kurt brought out a 20'x30' tarp which turned our FJ's into a giant structure of supreme cool-factor. Here, the trucks are arranged in a "Box", an elite and difficult to achieve expedition-only parking arrangement.
The pic below was an optional route we took for fun through a valley. It was tight to the point that a cactus/tree thing ate Kurt's flag. Of course it could not eat my flag since it flied hundreds of feet above the ground.
Day II campsite: the "box" again... scenery speaks for itself. See that over there? Yea, it's nothing.
More pics can be found in the gallery...
El Camino del Diablo Gallery
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I admit I was hoping to run into a few immigrants just for the adventure, but with the number of times we saw Border Patrol, it would have been very unlikely anyway.
