What a trip we had this last weekend! Absolutely nothing about this trip went as planned, but we still managed to have a blast.
Our original plan was to go down to Baja, camp on the beach, drink cervezas and relax. We were supposed to go with our buddy that knows the area very well and goes down there for all the races. He works in a race shop building and doing maintenance for buggies for the race teams. Then every race he goes down there and either chases, works in the pits or co-pilots. Unfortunately last minute he ended up getting sick and couldn't go. I don't know Mexico very well and wasn't very comfortable going without him to lead the way. We were literally ready to walk out the door when my buddy told us he couldn't make it and I immediately posted a thread here asking for some cool places to go within a 4 hour drive from where I live. Luckily a forum member quickly responded and mentioned a few spots in the Eastern Sierras.
We grabbed some warmer clothes and a few extra blankets and took off within minutes. We still weren't decided where we were going specifically but we new the direction we needed to go. My wife started looking into the mentioned places and we decided on Coyotes Flats. I unfortunately had no maps saved in this area and figured I needed to stop somewhere with Wifi to download some maps. We stopped in Lone Pine and got lunch at a little cafe then went next door to Jakes Saloon and grabbed a beer while the maps downloaded. Once I had enough mapping to feel comfortable, we hit the road again. We made one final stop before getting gas at Mahogany Smoked Meats and grabbed some fresh jerky. Got to the trail, aired down and headed up the trail for the weekend to explore the High Sierras.
The trail is about 14 miles till you actually hit Coyote Flats and you gain almost 5000 feet in elevation. What an awesome place it is up there, but about 1 mile into Coyote Flats my steering rack came apart and dumped all my power steering fluid, causing me to lose power steering. I didn't have big enough channel locks to try to thread the cap back on and I only had about 12oz or less of power steering fluid with me. We just found a spot to camp and called it a day.
We woke up in the morning, ate breakfast and drove back down the mountain to Bishop. Boy was it a pain to drive with no power steering! We stopped at O'rielly's, got large channel locks, and a gallon of power steering fluid. Went out and fixed it and it's still holding up. Not sure if it came unthreaded or simply just popped off. The threads looked and felt good so I'm guessing it came unthreaded?
We got some pizza in town then headed back up to Coyote Flats. As we were heading up my A/T Temp light came on so I pulled over and let it cool. I turned the heater on to help the radiator cool faster and help the A/T fluid cool faster. Immediately the engine temp got hot. I then realized I never bled the cooling system fully after the heater control valve broke last week. When I turned on the heater a bunch of air got into the cooling system causing it to overheat. I let everything cool and tried to bleed the air out by letting it run with the radiator cap off. At this point my wife was uncomfortable continuing since she is pregnant and this was the 2nd thing that happened already. So we headed back down again and went to another saloon while we let the engine cool down for a couple hours. Drank a few local beers with some old hay bailers and just talked about random shit for a few hours to kill time.
After the engine cooled I was able to fully bleed to cooling system. We then just went up highway 168 up to South Lake and found a decent campground (Four Jeffrey's Campground) that had a nice site. We just hung out, listened to music and relaxed together for our last trip before our 2nd baby comes in July. What an adventure it was but we still had so much fun. Definitely a trip I'll remember. I also want to try to plan a trip up to Coyote Flats with a group to really get a chance to explore the area. The little glimpse we saw was absolutely beautiful.
If you look at mine, I've chopped almost everything to eliminate rubbing. I still rub the top on the inner rear wheel well and the front of the inner front wheel well. But just barely. Still working on those spots because a BFH didn't quite eliminate the rub at full bump. 
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