Friday, August 16, 2019

To boldly go where no Prius has gone before

We have decided to go all in on our new way of exploring public lands.

Six months ago we bought a Toyota 4Runner TRD Off Road.  It has everything one needs for getting anywhere a Jeep Rubicon could go, except a Rubicon looks ridiculous going to the grocery store.........and it's a Jeep.

We decided on the Toyota because of the obvious--Toyota quality.

We have taken two camping trips in it, both times getting to places where our Desert Turtle (i.e., our Ford 350 Dually 4WD) couldn't get to.  One was the back roads of Death Valley.

The two trips we took last spring really whetted our appetites for more, and for more rugged places to go to camp and hike.

So, we beefed up the 4Runner by having a winch installed.  Now it will be near impossible to get stuck.  The winch can haul us out of anywhere.

And to get it we had to get a special front bumper installed that looks just plain aggressive.

The guys at the shop loved it.  They also liked the fact that although we don't seem like the type (we are, ahem, old and need I say that one of us looks like a very girly woman?), already our 4Runner has scratches (the term is "desert pinstripes:) and dents on the skid plates....from running over rocks.  As the guy said, most people get these high-end off-road vehicles and then just take the kids to soccer practice in them.

When we had our oil change last week the mechanic said that it looked like we had been out in the sand because one of the filters was getting clogged with it (as designed).  We said "more than once."

Doesn't our new winch look awesome?  We can't wait to get stuck!


So, we sold our Prius.  It got great gas mileage.  In addition, it got great gas mileage.  And when you drove it to the grocery store, it got great gas mileage.

After all, great gas mileage is a ton of fun!  Not like a Desert Rat with a winch that will take you to impossible-to-reach places in the desert where you can have adventure after adventure. 

Boy, do we ever miss "great gas mileage."

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