In August 2013, two fortyish suburbanite dads decided a guys-only road trip was needed. My Jeep was only a month old, but I knew the only place that road trip could be was Colorado. I had been there two years before in my Jeep Patriot (gag), and knew I could have 10 times as much fun in a "real" Jeep.
The plan was to camp for a full week, fairly high to acclimatize, hit as many Jeep trails as we could, and successfully summit at least one 14er (shooting for two).
After 11 months, a dozen trips to REI, countless miles on elliptical trainers and stair climbers, weekly hikes (and 25 pounds for me), it finally happened.
Getting there: 13 1/2 hours from Eureka MO, to Lakeview Campground near Twin Lakes, CO, about half way in between Leadville and Buena Vista on Hwy 24 in the San Isabel National forest.
A little on my Wrangler: It's embarrassingly stock. Ace sliders are the only non-cosmetic upgrade I've made. 2014 Rubicon in Commando. With a kid in college we're paying cash for, and two more in private grade school, the mods will come, but painfully slow.
It's July 12th, the Jeep is loaded at my house, let's hit the road!
A 2 mile drive to my buddy Vince's house, load up his stuff, and we're ready to go!
On the last trip in my Patriot, two guys and camping gear had us sitting woefully low, even with everything loaded as close the the middle as we could.
Oh, what a difference a couple of years makes!
It's now about 4pm, we have about 15 hours of driving ahead of us. I apologize I don't have many pics of the drive there (I may get some from my buddy later), but if you've never driven across MO or KS, there isn't much to see. Also, we were driving at night. The most fun spot was about 40 miles of construction on I-70 in KS. A heavy thunderstorm hit right as one side of the highway was closed, and we were on single lane traffic.
We switched off driving once, and just talked and listened to the radio the whole time. We hit the Colorado border around 4am, and decided to stop at the first rest stop/welcome center for a few hours of shuteye.
We saw our first glimpse of Colorado as we hit the road around 7am, but it was hard to tell Colorado from Kansas here.
Vince: "I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this."
Me: "I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver's full of crap, man."
About three hours of driving later, we finally got a glimpse of some mountains:
More to come!