Overlanding Kit on the Way (Post #569) 1/22/2017

I bought a second aluminum medical transport chest. I read an article on Overland Bound about having a three trunk system. Pack 3 Cases describes a system where you have three cases ready to go at all times. Adjusting your kit to have the optimal amount of gear for getting out and getting on the trail.

If you have the cases pre-packed you can get home, get your kit on you rig, and get on the road more quickly and efficiently. It’s a solid idea, so I went to some effort to find and purchase 2 additional GI Aluminum Medical Transport Cases. They come in basically three sizes I prefer the Medium size.
Medium – 11½. H x 19½ in. W x 31½ in. L
Large – 17 in. H x 19½ in. W x .31½ in. L
X-Large Chest – 22 in. H x 19½ in. W x 31½ in. L

A quick search of eBay may find you some used ones. I found some at Coleman’s for a reasonable price 79.99$(US). I’ve seen the for as much as 130$(US) and weren’t as nice. Coleman’s often runs out of stock so be prepared for that eventuality. I bought on from a gentleman on eBay. It came with a lot of additional stuff which I thought was awesome. In addition to the case, I got a sleeping bag bivy cover, a very large ditty bag, and a large ammo can. So shop around you don’t know what you’ll get.

If you read my Organizing the Boot post you will see my first medical case there in the pictures. In that case I pack all my tools, spare parts, and straps both recovery and packing. I recommend you read that post as well as it outlines how I pack all the gear needed to keep me on the road and prepared for most issues.

I have packed the camp kitchen in one of my other cases. I still have a little room left for more items if necessary. The third case I think will be my sleeping gear like sleeping bag and sleeping pad. My cot will still need to go in the back along with camp chairs. My friend Erik recently purchased a set of the upgraded heavy duty plastic storage cases.

The thing with either of these solutions is that the cases are water tight and very sturdy. I don’t expect that I’ll have to replace them any time soon. After Erik posted this picture on the Oklahoma Land Rover Owner’s Facebook page I thought of doing a similar picture. However that was the first week my shoulder was really acting up and I couldn’t lift anything over my head. The thought of emptying the cases to make them lighter didn’t appeal to me either as I had just got them loaded with gear.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

 

Capulin Volcano and the Northwest Passage 2016, Part Two (Post #565) 1/19/2017

Day Two

This is part two of the Capulin Volcano Northwest Passage. We went to meet Fall and were not disappointed. She was in full force on the Volcano with a North wind putting a chill on things.

Warning this is a huge post with tons of pictures.

We drove to the Volcano. We stopped and took the obligatory picture with the National Park sign for Capulin Volcano. We headed on to the visitor center and paid the admission fee to the cute Park Ranger. We then drove to the parking lot near the top.

We hiked to the top. You can see a mountain range in Colorado and Black Mesa from the top. There are well marked signs that explain the lay of the land. We were woefully unready for the active Cougar area. It was a relief to find out they were warning us about the big cats and not 60 plus year old women.

We left the volcano and headed to Folsom, New Mexico. We stopped for some pictures at the Folsom Hotel and felt the call of the old west in the sleepy little town. A picture in the hotel window alerted us to the fact the Hole in the Wall Gang once frequented the area.

We headed toward Des Moines, New Mexico to pick up our gravel road to the state intersection. I feel like now is a good point to caution you about the availability of gasoline in these remote towns. We knew there would be few options and keeping a full tank was a priority. We even brought extra Gerry cans and filled them when we thought the chance to fill up might be in doubt. If you are planning this trip keep in mind how many miles you have planned to drive. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to know what kind of range you can get on a tank of fuel when you are driving 20-40 miles per hour. This is where I learned the fuel gauge on the BWB is not very indicative of the amount of fuel in the tank. It is weighted a little heavily toward the lower end. That will need to be investigated again.

We stopped for a pit stop in Des Moines and then out on to the plain to see what we could see. What we learned about electronic maps and how they are incredibly incorrect. There were several times where a road was named wrong or didn’t even exist.

Erik remembered there was a more scenic route and we made our way to find it. Turned out to be a very beautiful canyon to drive through. The roads were labelled like highways but were made of gravel. The driving was not technical. If it had rained the night before it might have been much more challenging.

We made Oklahoma and turned toward the corner of the state’s monument. We found it up the road from the Black Mesa trail-head. We hung out a while and took pictures. We also planned our next stop. In lieu of Black Mesa State Park we opted for Picture Canyon in Colorado. I’m so glad we did.

We left out of the Black Mesa area turned North at the “dinosaur bone” and headed toward Picture Canyon. On the way we stopped to see a rather large tarantula. He became very friendly and crawled up the leg of one of Erik’s friends. Whole lotta NO in that for me.

We also turned back to see where another apparent overlander had taken an unmarked trail. By the time we got back to him he was already headed back to the road. He said there was nothing to see up there except a windmill. I didn’t want to seem like we were following him or wanted him to feel uncomfortable so we kept it short and went in different directions.

If there hadn’t been signs telling us there was a canyon we may have never found it. It is literally a canyon in the middle of the Comanche National Grassland. You drive on rolling hills and out of nowhere there’s a canyon.

Panoramic view of the top
A panoramic view above the canyon.
We then took the hiking trail around the inside of the canyon. The history is awesome with several petroglyphs and an abandoned settlement. Pre-historic man used the canyon probably as a kill site for the millions of herd animals. They also most likely lived there. In the early 1900’s settlers tried to make a go of it by living in the canyon. Their rock house and most likely barn are still visible.

There are also caves. The caves are now caged off. The bats in the area are struggling to survive. The white-nosed fungus is basically Ebola for bats and scientist are trying to figure out what the cause is. Humans are one of the first culprits thus the cages at the entrances to caves throughout America.

We saw all the petroglyphs listed on the displays at the trailhead. It was a nice walk. We returned to camp and started dinner (seasoned chicken tenders, potatoes, rolls with honey butter). We ate and had some beers waiting for the big show. The big show was a completely dark sky with no light pollution. We could see the Milky Way and a bazillion stars. The meteor shower did not disappoint as well. We saw so many satellites we stopped even mentioning them.

We settled in for some much needed sleep after a long day on the trail.

I hope you enjoyed the galleries and I’ll post up the third day soon. Thanks for the retweets and forwarding the post.

Capulin Volcano Part One Here

Capulin Volcano Part Three Here

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering

Capulin Volcano and the Northwest Passage 2016, Part One (Post #564) 1/17/2017

Load Out

I really wanted to get out on the trail this fall and I felt like it was my turn to plan and lead a trip. I looked for a non-OU-Football weekend and found two one in September and one in November. The initial inspiration for the Capulin Volcano trip was seeing a similar trip in OutdoorX4 magazine. We had some interest in the trip from several people in the Oklahoma Land Rover Owners group but in the end only two of us made the commitment to the overland adventure.

Day One

Mr. Fisher and I got the Big White Bus loaded and started out on a pleasant Saturday morning and headed to our rendezvous with Erik O’Neal and his Discovery 2 in Okarche, Oklahoma. Continue reading “Capulin Volcano and the Northwest Passage 2016, Part One (Post #564) 1/17/2017”

Osage Adventure (Post #554) 1/30/2016

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I got together with some fellow Oklahoma Land Rovers Owner members and went on a tour of the Oklahoma Adventure Trail. If you haven’t looked this up on the internet yet, you should. It will be the source of several trips for the Big White Bus in the coming year.

Oklahoma Adventure Trail Facebook.

Oklahoma Adventure Trail Website.

Nathan brought his “new” Range Rover. I was in my Range Rover Classic. John and Jayden were in their Discovery. And Erik and David were in the Defender.

John planned our trip and did a great job of mapping out some fun places to see and giving us a great tour of the back roads of Logan, Lincoln, Creek, Payne, and Osage counties. You will find the links to the map used to guide us. There were deviations from these maps but once you are out there you’ll realize why. Fair warning this is a picture heavy post.

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One of many trestle bridges we encountered.

We drove along the Cimarron River for a good stretch.

Supports for a bridge that is no longer present.
Supports for a bridge that is no longer present.
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Along the Cimarron River

This is where we learned Erik lost his gas cap on his Defender. He made a “field expedient” cap out of some duct tape.

We detoured as suggest up to the town of Ingalls, Oklahoma. The town was the scene of what is called the “Battle of Ingalls”. The fight was between U.S. Marshalls and the Doolin-Dalton gang. You can read more about it on Wikipedia or on Legends of America. We stopped and took pictures of some seemingly old buildings, one of which seemed original to the time. We went down the street and to the site of the fight. None of the original buildings exist today.

We headed down the road and eventually turned North toward Osage County. The Oklahoma Adventure Trail lists the roads and the detours. Those detours were often buried in posts and therefore sometimes we didn’t know of a bridge out. Of course when you are driving a Land Rover a detour is not always a detour. In this case it was, the bridge was out over a very deep creek.

There were no shortage of bridges to cross. This one was a Works Project Administration job from 1940. They provide a nice break water that had a waterfall.

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We stopped in Cleveland for lunch and fuel. We pulled into town on Hwy 64 and stopped at the Dollar General next to the McDonald’s. There was no way I was eating McDonald’s unless there was nothing else. Thankfully we saw Rosie’s Tacos when we crossed the lake south of town on Hwy 64. Yes, that’s a car port. Yes, that’s a trailer parked under it. Trust us. Erik made the first suggestion that he was going to take the gastronomic adventure and get some chow there.

That was all the suggestion I needed. I didn’t have tacos. I had tamales. Delicious. Their verde’ sauce was just the right amount of hot with flavor. I’d drive back there again just to eat the tamales.

Rosie's Tacos
Rosie’s Tacos. Yummo.

My odometer rounded out to 237,000 as we pulled up for petrol.

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My plastic needs a clean and a new coat of paint.

So with both our tanks and our bellies full of goodness we headed for the Osage Tallgrass.

We got to Barnsdall, Oklahoma where we encountered the only oil well in the world located on a city street. You can see it if you navigate here. 36°33′41.93″N96°9′56.57″W

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I was a little surprised it didn’t get rammed by cars more often.

We knocked around a few more locations. Coming out of the Hulah Wildlife Refuge, at least I think it was the Hulah WR, John and his Discovery started having death wobble. We limped along until we got back to the highway going into Bartlesville.

Once stopped, we tried to sort out the issue. At one point John explained how we could deviate our path and call it a night.

John, “We can stay on the black top roads.”

David, the single gentleman of color in our group, interjected, “Why do they have to be ‘black’?”

I couldn’t help myself and had to add, “Because black top roads matter.”

Everyone laughed. It was the levity the trip needed after a long day on the dusty back roads and an unfortunate break down.

Death wobble west of Bartlesville
Death wobble west of Bartlesville

We tried swapping John’s spare when I noticed that one of the balancing weights was missing from the last stop. Getting the tires balanced is the first thing done to solve an issue with death wobble. Unfortunately that didn’t work.

With the daylight quickly waning, we decided to get the Disco into town. John knew of a grocery store at the bottom of the last hill going into Bartlesville. Once he hit the hill he put the Disco in neutral and coasted her down. We did some additional investigating which did not result in a solution to the problem.

Field repair in a grocery parking lot
Field repair in a grocery parking lot

We decided to head for the camp site as it began to get dark. When John was planning the trip he remembered a Boy Scout camp and lined us up with one of the cabins. Camp McClintock BSA.

Camp McClintock "Cubs" Cabin. They even provide cots for those of who didn't bring one.
Camp McClintock “Cubs” Cabin. They even provide cots for those of who didn’t bring one.

Once we got the fireplace glowing it took the edge off the night and made for a very tolerable sleeping experience. David was the man when it came to getting the fire going, well done sir. Each person was responsible for their dinner and those who were cooking got started and we had a great discussion.

We spent the evening discussing cars we’ve owned, some sea stories from serving the Marine Corps, and even politics. That may have been the most civil political discussion I’ve ever been a part of. I pretty sure both ends of the political spectrum were represented. One theme emerged, no one was happy with how the country is being governed by the legislative and executive branches.

The next morning we cleaned up the cabin and went for a short hike to the suspended cable bridge. Very interesting.

We went across the creek to a pond on the other side. It was partially frozen. It didn’t take us long to start skipping rocks and sticks across. The ice and the debris we tossed across it made one of the coolest sounds you’ll ever hear in nature. You can read about it here and see a video about why you get that sound.

We hiked back to the cabin where we decided to part company. Erik and Nathan would take off for OKC and I would take John back to his Disco and get it up on the trailer his dad had left that morning to assist in recovery. After we got her up on the trailer we decided to take in a bit more of the OAT on our way home. we weren’t to adventurous being as we were alone and had no hope of a timely recovery if we got stuck.

We took a detour off the OAT to see “Frog Rock”. It over looks a nice valley and was in a very remote location. When I climbed up behind the rock to take a picture of the valley I accidentally found a Geocache. We left a note that we were there for the next person to find. We didn’t take anything and we didn’t leave anything either.

I’ll leave you with a gallery of the better shots. Click for full size.

If you are interested in driving where we drove John provided the following maps. We must say we didn’t follow them “exactly”. We took the roads that interested us the most and if there was water crossing we took it.

Osage County Eastern Loop 1

Osage County Eastern Loop 2

Osage County Eastern Loop 3

Osage County Eastern Loop 4

Once again and as always, thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Organizing the Boot (Post #543) 9/18/2015

The boot of the Big White Bus is a mishmash of bags and lose gear. You can see from this picture that I carry around quite a bit of kit.

Quite a bit of kit.

In no particular order, mostly because there isn’t really any order in the rear of the vehicle right now, you may find…

  • Jumper cables
  • Fluids and grease
  • Various bits of recovery gear
  • Electric air pump
  • Bag of tools
  • Tire repair kit (won at SCARR 2015)
  • Box with toilet paper and sunscreen and bug spray
  • Rags
  • Blanket
  • Spare T-shirt
  • Table/package shelf
  • Machette
  • Spetznaz shovel

Continue reading “Organizing the Boot (Post #543) 9/18/2015”

Too Hot to Land Rover (Post #542) 8/12/2015

Blasphemy! you might say. So I’ll qualify that to it’s too hot to wrench. It is the height of summer here in Oklahoma. Temperatures while they haven’t been anywhere near the lovely year of 100’s, they have been close. Our exiting of the drought in such a dramatic way this year (2015) has the humidity up to the levels I remember it from before the drought.

So your greasy fingered blogger has not put much effort into much of anything Land Rover. That is not to say I don’t have a handful of project to do, I do.

Continue reading “Too Hot to Land Rover (Post #542) 8/12/2015”