Just got back from a few days up in Drummond Island, MI. Spent 5 days up there roaming the trails and hitting some of the northern Great Lakes beaches and scenery.
For those that are unfamiliar, this is a fairly large island located off the eastern tip of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in Lake Huron. It's pretty remote feeling, to say the least. Cell service was non-existent on large swaths of the island, including on 90% of the trails we covered. No internet access at the cabin we rented either. The combination of which resulted in some planning challenges, to say the least. It also made Google Maps essentially useless, and required offline downloads of any maps you want on a cell or tablet. My Pioneer's navigation saved us after Google took up down a dead-end road and then had no connectivity to plot a new course.
This is the second time I've had myself, and the 4Runner, off road. The first was a trip to Silver Lake Dunes last year at this same time, so for all practical purposes this is my first time off road on a trail. I believe that goes for everyone riding with me. There were 4 adults and a 2.5 yr old in the 4Runner for the vast majority of the trip. I also had no effective spotter, so combined with rolling solo this limited our "Send It" mentality quite a bit for the first 3 days.
The trails were super fun, and a bit more challenging/intimidating than I was expecting from watching videos. They are composed of an endless rotation of water and rock. A few big step sets to go up and down that I was totally not expecting and had no idea how to handle initially, sorted it out though. Banged the skids 3-4 times, once pretty hard on some steps coming down, and the sliders actually got used to slide on a rock... imagine that.
4Runner is a 2019 TRD Pro, basically stock outside of sliders/skids/diff breather.
Threw together a compilation video that sums it up better than I can.
By all means, criticism is welcome, this is the first real time putting rubber to rock, everything for me thus far has been pretty much on paper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp7NIDNpJtE&feature=youtube