So here's a thread about my trip to do the Mojave Road in my 4Runner. Let me start by apologizing for the crummy embedded pictures. As everyone knows, posting pictures on this forum is a real pain. I'll try to add links to higher resolution versions with each thumbnail. Here's a link to all of the high resolution pictures in this thread in one album

This was my first real overlanding trip in the '99 SR5 I bought just about a year ago. I've done a bunch of trips to the mountains in the dry and in the snow, but never slept in the back and never spent more than one night on the trail at a time. I did the same in the T100 I owned before the 4Runner, so I'm comfortable with the 4x4 system and driving off-road in various conditions. However, I'd never been to the desert before, and the roughly 8-hour drive on I-5 from the North Bay Area, where I live, to the Barstow area, was the longest I had undertaken in the 4Runner so far. I prepared by doing an oil change, which it was due for, and checking various other fluids and air pressures. I also read through the thread that Unner made about his Mojave Rd. experience, which was very helpful in knowing what to expect. I think it's around page 59 of his build thread.

Day 1 (3/19):
After packing everything up the night before, I put the last few odds and ends in the 4Runner along with the cooler I was storing my food in. I left around 9 so that my uncle and I would be near each other on the highway around Livermore which is between the South Bay and I-5. We met for lunch at a rest stop in drizzly rain, and then kept on going through some pretty torrential rain. I didn't get any pictures on the drive down because I was worried about camera battery life but it's I-5 so there's not much to miss.

After an uneventful drive, I got to Tehachapi at around 4:00, fueled up, and waited for my uncle to show up. I played around with my camera until he got there and took some shots of him fueling up.

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He's got a sweet 1st gen Tacoma that he's built over the years specifically for multi-week desert trips.

As we were leaving I noticed my gas gauge wasn't rising as it should have after my fill up, but I figured it was the altitude or something and just kept going because I was eager to be done with the drive. Mistake.

We dropped down out of the mountains and I was greeted by my first views of the desert.

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Funnily enough, "A Horse with No Name" by America came on just as I got my first views of the desert, which was a very appropriate song for the event. We were meeting our cousin about 25 miles east of Barstow at a gas station for our final fill up, but about a mile outside Barstow my gas light came on. I figured out later what happened was that I had put the gas nozzle in and set the auto shut-off before the pump had started filling, so I got no gas. I was preoccupied with checking my oil and because some guy came out of the convenience store and knocked his knuckles on my fender and then went over to the next pump and said something to his buddy in another language. I know the gas lights in these things come on way early, but I was still feeling a little nervous, especially since we hadn't filled up our jerry cans yet. So, I got behind a semi and set the cruise control to 58 for the last stint of the drive. We got to the gas station, met up, filled up (for real this time), and drove 15 more miles to Afton Canyon Rd., where we got off of I-15.

Here we are just off the Interstate. Up front is my cousin in his lifted Suzuki SX4, then my uncle in the Tacoma:

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We had planned to get through Afton Canyon that day and find a spot to camp out in the desert, but since it was getting dark at that point we were considering just spending the night at the Afton Canyon campground, which has tables and trash cans. To make up our minds for us, the Suzuki blew its front left shock no more than a quarter-mile down the road from the Interstate exit. We could clearly see where the strut tower was broken. (I took this picture of it the next day)

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We limped the few miles to the campground at about 5 mph, being very careful.

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After making dinner in the dark we discussed our next steps. We decided the best thing we could do was call auto parts stores in Barstow and see if anyone could get a replacement out the next day because either way he was going to need to have it changed out before the drive home. Two places said they could do it, and we went with the one who said they could have it there by 11.

We all went to bed hoping for a more successful next day. Right as I was falling asleep I heard a loud, low roaring and I was pretty startled. I looked up and realized we were camped right next to a train bridge. This is the best picture I could get of it in the night, it's pretty crummy but it really illustrates how close the train was.

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