Thanks! That was the nice thing about doing all this in December, there weren't many other people around, and the weather was really nice for us as well for most of the trip. Thanks for reading, hopefully I get some more of it posted today.

Thanks! Not any tips I can really think of. I assume they are busier this time of year than in December, so you might want to get there earlier to make sure you get a good campspot. Other than that it's all just simple dirt roads unless you choose a rougher trail kinda off the regular path, there aren't many though. There were regular cars down there so it's not much wheeling, but a beautiful and unique place for sure.

Nice thread.With good information.

Day 5 - Pismo and Pacific Coast Highway

When we woke up this morning things looked much different. The wind must have been blowing to the north, which blew the smoke along with it. It made for some very interesting photography, and an interesting way to really see the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

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Sunset mode on my camera turned it into Mars.

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As we cooked breakfast, we noticed small white particles almost like snow falling from the sky. They began to fall faster and faster, and eventually packed up as quickly as we could to get out of it and try to keep it out of the 4Runner. It was kinda wild, and the lighting was only getting stranger as well.

We drove all the way to the end of the sand highway, but decided not to go play in the dunes. I wanted to, but with the ash falling from the sky, there didn’t seem to be too many people around and I didn’t want to go out by myself and get stuck. Instead we stayed on the highway, but I dipped my tires in the Pacific Ocean before leaving.

These pictures are with no sunset mode, it was a very eerie setting.

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We left Pismo, and I immediately went to a pay and spray to get the salt/sand off the truck. $5 it was good enough for now, when I got home I hosed off the underside for a long time and flushed the frame rails to make sure it was all gone.

Our next stop was going to be the Pacific Coast Highway, something I had wanted to drive for a long time. We got on Highway 101 and headed north, eventually intersecting with Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway.

We drove a little ways along the southern end of the highway, taking in the views. I saw a pulloff and we decided to stop here and have lunch. While we’re making sandwiches this lady comes up to us and asks “Have you seen the zebras?” I look at her puzzled, and a little concerned for her and say “No, we haven’t seen any zebras.” She proceeds to say “Sometimes if you’re lucky you can look over towards those hills there and there will be zebras in the field.” Alright, this lady is crazy is what I’m thinking. There are no Zebras here… She tells us she’s been looking for awhile and hasn’t seen them yet. She goes about her way, and we continue with our lunch with a view.

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We decided we’d climb down onto the shore since the weather was nice, and we had finally escaped the snow from the wildfire smoke. As we were walking, we say some amazing wildlife. A California Beaver!!!

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We climbed down the bank, and watched the waves crash on the rocks, while the little birds run towards the ocean as the tide went in, and run away from it as the tide pushed back onto the shore. It was very nice, calming, and relaxing.

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Some of the smoke still lingered to the south.

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We climbed back up the bank, which was more challenging because I was still wearing my 7 year old Nike’s that are totally flat on the bottom at this point instead of my hiking boots… We made it up without injury though, got in the truck and pulled off.

Half a mile down the highway we’re back up to highway speed, she’s closing up a chip bag or something and I slam on the brakes. “LOOK A HEARD OF ZEBRAS!!!” I couldn’t believe it. There were several zebras standing almost right next to the highway, in California. Apparently that lady wasn’t crazy…

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While we were standing there admiring the stripped horses a man and his young son walked up. He asked if we’d seen the elephant seals yet. We told him no, and he said to drive a couple more miles up the road, and on the left there will be a sign for it. He said don’t stop where everyone is standing, keep walking down the trail and you’ll get a much better less crowded view.

We left the zebras, this time not doubting the man who told us about the elephant seals. We were discussing the Zebras, and the elephant seals we were hoping we would see. We both assumed there would be one or two at most, if we even get to see one. We parked at the place, and walked down the trail just like the man instructed us to do. Boy were we wrong again. We didn’t see one or two elephant seals, we saw probably a hundred elephant seals…

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They were just laying around on the shore, laying on top of each other, fighting each other, doing everything. We were stunned once again.

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They’re kinda cute. Like a shapeless dog.

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From here we continued north, making it to Ragged Point. This was as far north as we could go, the highway was closed ahead for rockslide repairs. We got gas here, because I didn’t think we would see another gas station for a long time. I knew about this road closure, so I had planned a route to get us around it using dirt roads and such through the mountains. It looked like it would be a great and fun shortcut. So I gassed up here, at $5.00 a gallon. I splurged for premium, as it was only 10 cents more than regular… We turned around, and headed for our shortcut.

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We got to our turn off, turned off, and it’s a gated road across private land… “Well that wasn’t expected.” Everything I saw indicated these were public roads we could access. I checked the map, and it looked like we had one more option just a short ways up the road. Nope, that one was gated too. Well, there goes the hours I spent planning that route… We pulled off the highway again to come up with a game plan, and watch the cows fight the zebras. These guys were not getting along.

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After looking all over the map, it looked like our only option was to backtrack a long ways, get on Highway 46 and take that over to Highway 101. I was bummed, but that was really our only option. We headed south, and eventually go on Highway 46 and headed East, away from the ocean. This turned out to be a beautiful drive though, winding through the large rolling hills reminded me of Italy. It was a great drive.

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Eventually we got on 101, which also provided some great views as the sun set.

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The way were headed involved some of the Coastal Ridge Trail, Prewitt Ridge Road, and Nacimiento Ferguson Road. The drive was pretty normal when we got off of 101, just some good back highways that were little traveled. Then the roads started to get smaller, and things got darker. We stayed on the same route you would go to see some old Mission for a while. We passed through a small town, and the road kept getting smaller. It was very dark now, and we came across signs that said “Entering US Military Installation”.
Ugghhh, alright. We both come from military families, but I was not expecting to cross a base. I don’t what they do at this base, but there was no security, no guard shack, and very few people. There was one area with a few buildings that were fenced off, but other than that it didn’t seem like a military base. Eventually we left the military area, and followed signs toward Prewitt Ridge I believe it was. This was an extremely windy road, that was a little sketchy at night if another car would come the other way. Eventually it turned to dirt, and we were basically relying on the GPS at this point. Winding left and right, around trees, occasionally I would roll the window down to see if I could see the ocean. The results were always inconclusive.
We eventually made it to the place I had intended to camp at, and pulled up to one of the spots. Taken. As were the other few spots. We drove around and there were a couple other places that we could have camped at, but they were either too close to strangers, or no view of anything. Just a pull off from the trail.

I made a couple turns, just seeing what was around. I pulled up to a big open area, with a big Oak tree at the site. From the map it looked like from here we would have a view of the ocean. I parked the truck, leveled it with a few rocks, and called it home for the night. We got out and started on dinner, on the windiest night I’ve ever spent camping. The wind was really wiping. We kept having to chase our belongings.

While making dinner and setting up camp I kept turning around to look down what I knew was a large hill to see if I could see the ocean from our campsite. I thought I could, but I wasn’t sure. I could see campfires at a campsite that I figured was along the PCH, but it was impossible to really tell. All I knew was our elevation was about 3,000 ft so if we could see the ocean, it would be spectacular.

It wasn’t terribly cold this night, but the wind made it unpleasant to be outside. We made dinner, and ate it in the front seats of the 4Runner, looking at a thousand stars through the windshield.

I took a couple night pictures, here but none came out too spectacular.

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We went to bed in the 4Runner, being rocked side to side from the wind blowing so hard.

Day 6 - Pacific Coast Highway

In the morning the wind had subsided, and we were greeted with this view out of the back of the 4Runner.

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Yes, that was the ocean.

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The coordinates for this campsite are: 35°58'28.1"N 121°27'22.6"W if anyone cares. It’s a really awesome campsite.

We made breakfast, and I ended up giving directions to a couple in an Audi Q5 with California tags who had pulled up to our campsite. We started off down the trail which would eventually lead us back to the PCH, on the other side of the rockslide. The road would switch from dirt to rough poorly kept pavement, but it was beautiful. You wind your way through the mountains, with the pacific ocean occasionally poking through.

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The road started to get smoother, and that Audi showed up behind us. They were probably looking at my Alabama tags thinking “I can’t believe we got directions from a guy with Alabama tags…” I pulled off and let them pass as I knew they wanted to go a lot faster through the curves than I did in my lifted, armored 4Runner loaded down with hundreds of pounds of gear…

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The road started to go downhill at a pretty good grade, and then I saw an area with a pull off and some huge trees like I’d never seen before. We pulled off again and went on a little excursion along a creek with some redwoods.

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These trees are magnificent and huge. I’ve never seen a tree as tall as this, and these aren’t even the really huge ones like you’d find in the National Parks. These were just ones that were growing alongside the Pacific Ocean on a mountainside. Pictures do not do these trees justice.

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We continued onwards, and ended up on a road that overlooked the PCH. The water was very blue here.

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We could now see that this side of the PCH was different than the southern end. This end had many more cliffs and shear drops into the ocean. It was beautiful. We passed through the Big Sur area, and were having a great time taking in the scenery.

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We took the PCH all the way into Monterey, where we drove around for awhile looking for a place to get dinner. After driving to Pebble Beach accidentally, and not finding anywhere we wanted to eat at we finally settled on Alvarado Street Brewery. I parallel parked along the curb, and my girlfriend pointed out to me that some people in a 4th gen were checking out Unner.

I got the “Loco Moco”, which was pretty good.

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Over dinner we figured out our plans for the rest of the day. I wanted to do Mojave Road next, but it was pretty far away from where we were at. We were contemplating which we would rather do, Mojave Road, or Joshua Tree. We decided on Mojave Road, and after dinner we got in the truck and headed out. We would be running the Mojave Road backwards compared to most people, we would be going West to East. From Monterey to the beginning of the west end of the trail it was something like 6.5 hours, 400 miles, and we would need to stop for gas a few times and restock on supplies.

We made pretty good time and didn’t hit any traffic, but it was still a long drive. It was starting to get real cold out as the sun went down, and I had to stop and change out of the shorts I was wearing… Probably around 2 AM we got to Barstow. I pulled into a truck stop and got gas as I figured this would be the last gas station we would see until we came out on the other end of the Mojave road. We hopped onto interstate 15 to cover the last few miles of pavement needed. We got off at our exit and onto Yermo Road, which might have been the roughest paved road I have ever driven on. It was miserable. So bad, that I drove on the dirt shoulder instead of the road because on the road it felt like it was going to shake the truck to pieces. I ran Tin Cup Pass without airing down, at a full 40 PSI. Yermo road was way harsher…

She was already very asleep, and I was very tired. I wanted to make it a little ways away from the interstate and onto the trail where I’d feel safer. We drove probably 7 miles onto the Mojave Road. I wasn’t aired down and the sand was pretty soft in places. With skinny tires and full PSI I was a little worried about sinking into the sand and getting stuck, so I kept the speed as high as I could until I found a place that we could call home for the night.
I picked a spot and parked the truck. She woke up and looked at the temperature reading in the truck. 15* is what it said. The temperature had dropped tremendously once we got into the real desert. It was certainly cold as we unpacked the truck as fast as we could, but once we were inside the 4Runner and into the Teton Mammoth 0°F Double bag I had bought we were no longer cold. I seriously can’t say enough good things about this bag. It’s a great size for 2 people, feels very quality, and is very very warm. The only 2 nights I was cold the entire trip were the first night where I slept in the driver seat and nearly froze to death in New Mexico, and one night where I fell asleep outside of the sleeping bag.

Falling asleep was not a problem tonight, as it was probably 3 AM before we got to bed…

Day 7 - Mojave Road

We woke up in the morning to views much different than the days before.

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We got our stuff together, aired down, and got on the trail. We had something like 135 miles of Mojave trail left to cover. We would camp tonight, hopefully somewhere around halfway or maybe a tad past halfway. We started back into the soft sand, which I was more comfortable with being aired down, and being able to see now. Trail finding can be pretty difficult on the western end of the Mojave road. I would be driving and then look at the GPS and realize we were way off the GPS path. It always came back together, but you had to stop and think about which fork to take multiple times.

After bombing through the soft sand we showed up to the water crossing. I knew it hadn’t rained in SoCal in forever, and the water wasn’t moving so I didn’t think it would be too deep. From what I had read people said stuff like “It came halfway up the tires on my JK, and I have 35’s.” So I was expecting 18” of water at most right now. Since we were going west to east we first went through the smaller “puddle” portion of it. That seemed like it was probably about 18” deep, so I wasn’t too worried about the second part.
Before we started across the second part I asked her if she wanted to video us driving through the river. She said “No, I just want to enjoy it.” We started off into it and it just kept getting deeper. And deeper. And deeper. About halfway through I was legitimately worried. If it got much deeper we might have a serious problem. We had a good bow wake going in front of us, so I kept up with that. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was hydro lock my motor 3,000 miles from home.

I was sweating bullets at the end, and it’s probably good she didn’t video it. Because it would just be a video of expletives… Finally the front end started to rise from the river after what seemed like an hour, and I knew we would be safe. As the front end starts to rise, this decked out 2nd gen Tacoma comes flying up to the river with the driver smoking a cigar. The guy pulls up as we pull out of the river and yells something to the effect of “How’d you like that?!” I told him it was much deeper than I was expecting, and he said he’s part of a military convoy with 7 more trucks behind him. A few moments later several more 2nd gens pull up behind him, along with several Humvee’s.

These Tacoma’s were all decked out, Pelfreybilt bumpers front and rear, Fox suspension with resis, 33” KM2’s, sliders, etc. Seemed like a pretty cool job to beat on these in the desert…

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They all proceed to cross the river, and we stayed at watched the Tacomas and Humvees cross, while we let the 4Runner continue draining out of the skids, frame rails, etc. I got some water in through the back doors, but it wasn’t too bad and dried fairly quickly.

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They all made it through the river and we continued on our way. The water in the river when we crossed was probably about as deep as my 33’s are tall. It was definitely the deepest water I’ve ever driven through. I’ve since learned that there is a berm on both sides of the crossing that you can use to put your passenger side up a little higher and keep it from sucking water if you’re on small tires, or the water is high.

The scenery here is awesome, lots of colors in the rocks.

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The route-finding got a little easier after the river crossing, but the GPS definitely made it easier.

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The ST Maxx’s had done well in everything thrown at them so far.

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Here we started getting into some whoops. With all the stuff in the back, and my suspension at the time we had to keep our speed right around 25 mph as that was the sweet spot. I wish I could go out there now with the Kings. They eat this kind of stuff up.

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We now entered the Mojave National Preserve, and then we made it to Soda Lake, the dry lake bed the Mojave Road crosses.

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We made it to the traveler’s monument which is inside of the dry lake bed. Most people grab a rock at the beginning of the trail and leave it at the monument for good luck. We took it one step farther. I had forgotten to grab a rock before leaving Alabama, so I had called my girlfriend on the way and told her, “Grab a rock and stick it in your backpack. We’ll need it in California.” She was probably confused, but we left our Alabama rock atop the pile, and read the plaque with the message for the travelers on it.

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If you ever do the Mojave Road, make sure to stop at the Travelers Monument, and read the plaque. The quote on it is truly inspirational, and you’ll never forget it. I have a picture of it, but don’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone.

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I can’t believe a Chevy made it to 300k miles…

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I wish people would stay on the trail…

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The sun started setting, as it does quite early in December unfortunately, so we started thinking about a campsite. We had no real plans on where we were staying tonight, so we just decided we’d know the spot when we saw it.

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The sand is actually a lot of fun to drive in.

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It was starting to actually get dark now, and we found a spot that backed up to a nice sized cliff thing that would shield us from the wind. We decided this was the spot, so we parked the truck and started setting up camp. I noticed what I thought was a Joshua Tree off in the distance, but I couldn’t really tell so I walked out there.

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It sure was a Joshua Tree. I’d never seen one, and they’re really interesting trees. I spent several minutes checking it out and taking pictures of it in the setting sun. It was the first of many that we would see along the Mojave Road.

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Something lived down in here…

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I walked back to the truck and we watched the sun set across the desert we had just traversed.

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After sunset, we started on dinner. It was cold again tonight, so we ate in the front seats again, watching the stars come out.

We sat there after dinner, looking at the stars, and also trying to figure out what all the light pollution was coming from out to our west. I still don’t know what causes all that light pollution. I heard some scratching coming from the engine bay and figured there was a mouse in there. I didn’t want him chewing up any wires, so I popped the hood to chase him out. It was a mouse, and he just looked at me, crawling around under the fuse box. I chased him away and decided I’d leave the hood open tonight so it doesn’t trap the warmth of the motor and hopefully prevent him from coming back. I got back in the 4Runner, and talked for a few minutes. From my left side I hear what sounds just like human footsteps on sand/gravel coming from outside the 4Runner. My heart rate went through the roof as there shouldn’t have been anyone near us, and I couldn’t think of an animal that would sound like that or come that close to the truck. I immediately locked the doors and grabbed my flashlight to see what it was. No animal, human, or tracks were to be found.

After waiting for awhile and not hearing the sound anymore I decided to get out of the truck and take a couple pictures of the night sky.

See all the light pollution? I’m not sure what was causing it.

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Apparently our campsite wasn’t too far from the paved road you cross on the Mojave road, thankfully there is very little traffic on this road at night. This was the only vehicle I saw, an 18 wheeler.

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Throughout the rest of the night while we were awake the sound never came back, but it sure was a freaky incident. I didn’t sleep to well that night…

Day 8 - Mojave Road Day 2

This morning we woke up to loud booms, obviously from some sort of military testing. This isn’t new to us, coming from “The Rocket City”, where rockets are tested almost daily on Redstone Arsenal. While it wasn’t new to us, it wasn’t something we were expecting either.

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We started to make breakfast and were immediately swarmed by bees that seemed to be coming out of nowhere. We packed up quickly and hit the trail.

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Trail finding became much easier on this day, as the majority of the trail is wide enough for only one vehicle. Joshua trees were starting to become more abundant as well.

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Some of these trees get pretty big and crazy looking. I want one.

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We made it to our next stop, the Mailbox where we signed in, just as we had done at the travelers monument.

DSC01463 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

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@SirWilliamGoes I opened the book and immediately flipped to this page and recognized the name from this forum and your posts about your travels across the country.

DSC01467 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

DSC01473 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

DSC01473 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

The shrine of frogs.

DSC01476 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

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It’s a Jeep thing?

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And some gnomes.

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DSC01489 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

The road opened up, and we descended for a pretty good ways. Since I shut the engine off at the Mailbox the Scangauge reset my MPG calculation. I was getting something like 60 MPG at the bottom of this descent!

Once again, we got stuck in the whoops. Going real slow through them was painful because of how long it would take, and anything over 25 mph was painful, because I would blow through my shock travel and the stuff would fly everywhere…

DSC00965 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

We came upon our first people of the day here in the whoops. I rolled down the window and asked if there was anything we should know about up ahead, and if the trail was open all the way through. They said everything was good and the trail was open now. According to the internet it had been closed due to water damage or something like that.

We continued down the trail, and got a little bit turned around somewhere. We were driving in what looked like a dry creek bed or floor area. The shrubs kept getting closer and closer until they were basically the trail, at this point the GPS showed we were pretty far off the track so we backtracked and found the turn we had missed. This turn took us straight to Watson Wash.
I had heard this was the most challenging part of the trail, but had watched several videos of people going through it recently and it didn’t seem that bad. I was wrong… Most people go east to west on this trail, which means they get to go down Watson Wash, and don’t have to go up. Going down you only need gravity, going up you need enough traction to overcome gravity…

DSC01505 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

DSC01508 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

DSC01509 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

My girlfriend got out of the truck to try and spot me as I lined up. I put it in 4Lo and gave it a shot. Nearly instant wheel spin. Everything was very sandy here so I was just digging holes. I backed up and tried a different line. More wheelspin…

I backed up again and tried to hug the side as best I could to try and get some sort of grip. Nope, just more wheelspin and then I threw a roostertail from the front tires into the truck…

This part of the trail is extremely flexy too. If I had lockers I could have made it up this I’m sure but being open/open and solo I decided it was best to back up and take a detour I had found on the map. I think if I could have made it up this I could have made it up the rest because it wasn’t as sandy, but I did not want to break a CV out here. So I swallowed my pride and turned the ship around.

DSC01510a by Unner Unner, on Flickr

DSC01512a by Unner Unner, on Flickr

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Now we passed through a very dense forest of Joshua Trees.

DSC01523 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

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DSC01527 by Unner Unner, on Flickr

There were some fairly open stretches here.

DSC01530 by Unner Unner, on Flickr