Hey guys. Having a blast and looking forward to doing the trip report when all done. Made it to John Day tonight. Going to make it to LaGrande tomorrow! I have some great video I hope and about 80% time lapse of todays trek. When I get home I will get it all rendered and uploaded.
Long day today. Important lesson learned. Carry spare nuts and bolts.
Chrome got me home this time.
Rear Upper control arm nut came off and the bolt started to back out. We heard it in time fortunately but had to crossthread a lugnut with some loctite to get her going. Thank God I brought my impact gun and we had plenty of tools.
I will definitely be adding a nuts and bolts assortment to my spare parts list and checking everything thoroughly before every trip. We think we had been hearing the noise for a while and thought it was my shackles slapping the bumper till it got worse.
Lesson learned.
Made it to Sumpter today. Staying in LaGrande tonight and getting to the end tomorrow. Looking forward to typing the trip report. Been having a blast!
Long day today. Important lesson learned. Carry spare nuts and bolts.
Chrome got me home this time.
Rear Upper control arm nut came off and the bolt started to back out. We heard it in time fortunately but had to crossthread a lugnut with some loctite to get her going. Thank God I brought my impact gun and we had plenty of tools.
I will definitely be adding a nuts and bolts assortment to my spare parts list and checking everything thoroughly before every trip. We think we had been hearing the noise for a while and thought it was my shackles slapping the bumper till it got worse.
Lesson learned.
Made it to Sumpter today. Staying in LaGrande tonight and getting to the end tomorrow. Looking forward to typing the trip report. Been having a blast!
If you want some of these OBDR stickers, PM me a mailing address. Obviously they weren't used by the rest of us so may as well go to a guy who actually did it.
I did put one on my rack in advance of the trip... so I guess I'm a poseur
The mountain makes a cool stand alone decal even if you don't want the OBDR lettering on there (it can be deleted by cutting it off the transfer sheet).
Long day today. Important lesson learned. Carry spare nuts and bolts.
Chrome got me home this time.
Rear Upper control arm nut came off and the bolt started to back out. We heard it in time fortunately but had to crossthread a lugnut with some loctite to get her going. Thank God I brought my impact gun and we had plenty of tools.
I will definitely be adding a nuts and bolts assortment to my spare parts list and checking everything thoroughly before every trip. We think we had been hearing the noise for a while and thought it was my shackles slapping the bumper till it got worse.
Lesson learned.
Made it to Sumpter today. Staying in LaGrande tonight and getting to the end tomorrow. Looking forward to typing the trip report. Been having a blast
LOL
Well that's too weird, I had just tossed those bolts in my toolbox for the journey...picture of them a couple pages back. Because the same bolt that kept getting loose. 4th gen but it seems like a lot off parts interchange.
We made it home tonight at 10pm. Great trip. Hopefully trip report tomorrow and/or the next day. Got a lot of pictures and video to go through.
[MENTION=132734]MeefZah[/MENTION] I was going to ask. I will pm you tomorrow.
At the time, the two river fords between Seneca and Unity were impassable, and we ended up clearing dozens of trees over three+ days.
Am waiting on the edge of my seat to hear about current conditions because we plan to make a second attempt starting August 1, running the entire OBDR from south to north in about 8 days.
At the time, the two river fords between Seneca and Unity were impassable, and we ended up clearing dozens of trees over three+ days.
Am waiting on the edge of my seat to hear about current conditions because we plan to make a second attempt starting August 1, running the entire OBDR from south to north in about 8 days.
Woohoo! Awesome to see those videos. When we were there, the water was deep enough that there were no rocks above the water downstream of the crossing, and at the exit, the rock you can see at second 27 in this video (https://youtu.be/ZC9l20wjj7U?t=27s) was right at waters edge. Water was ~31" deep.
Even more excited for the trip report, now that it's clear we'll be able to make the run. :bravo: :snacker:
Woohoo! Awesome to see those videos. When we were there, the water was deep enough that there were no rocks above the water downstream of the crossing, and at the exit, the rock you can see at second 27 in this video (https://youtu.be/ZC9l20wjj7U?t=27s) was right at waters edge. Water was ~31" deep.
Even more excited for the trip report, now that it's clear we'll be able to make the run. :bravo: :snacker:
Nice work on the early trail run.
Reading through your adventure I would have to say, mrs.turbodb is a good find...just to put up with you...stupid amount of trees down...thank you for pulling that wind fall! Tailgate whoops...just part of the adventure.
I still would like to do this thing...before we have to buy a ticket, for the ride.
I am thinking a mid to late September, North to South, or vise a versa.
OBDR 2017 Trip Report Day 1 - Sutherlin to Wickiup Reservoir
Alright here we go. Finally getting to a point where I can get this started. I will probably do a day per day so I can get pictures in line and get all the videos ready.
So as everyone knows it ended up just coming down to me and my buddy James for this trip. Since I had done parts of it before I felt pretty confident that with the 2 of us we wouldn't run into anything we couldn't handle on this trip and that if we made smart choices we would be fine.
Since we had been rushing to get everything done to meet up with everyone on Thursday we decided we would just get up early on Friday and hit the road since now there was nobody to meet up with. That way we could make sure we had everything figured out and accounted for and make sure not to forget anything essential like you sometimes do when you are rushed.
So early Friday morning I went and picked James up and we hit the local Dutch Bros to energize our morning.
As soon as we were caffeinated we hit I-5 to pick up the trail at Sutherlin.
I wanted to get as much of the OBDR as I could in and since I had missed most of this part before I wanted to see what I had missed, but didn't want to waste half the day driving to Coos Bay so Sutherlin seemed to be the best option.
We stopped in Eugene to have breakfast and found a cool little cafe not too far off the freeway to eat called Buddy's Diner. It was ok food but a pretty cool music/old car atmosphere. I would eat there again.
Not too much longer and we hit Sutherlin, topped off the fuel tank and headed toward our adventure. We made it 2 blocks before our first re-route on the trip. Apparently there had been an accident so they had us detoured.
Of course we didn't detour around enough and had to backtrack a bit and find another way around. We were hoping this was not a sign of things to come on our trip. Once we got around the accident we then had to detour again to get around a farmers market/car show they were having that day. So... 2 re-routes and we weren't even out of town yet. This did not bode well. Soon enough we were out of town and finally hit some gravel road.
Quickly we came up to the first turn off the main road. Of course we were distracted and drove right past it and had to go back. The next turn took us down a road with lots of no trespassing signs. This confused us but the we were on the right track. Eventually we came to a spot where we were supposed to turn left but there was no road/trail. Re-route # 3 and we hadn't even been on the OBDR for an hour yet. (we have edits to the GPX I will post once I clean some stuff up and mark the waypoints better.)
We turned around and found the main road and re-routed to meet up with the course again. As we passed where the other road was supposed to meet up with the road we were on we noticed some tracks where a road used to be that disappeared into the overgrown brush.
Next we began to climb. We were in some very pretty wooded area but since it had been so overcast that morning we were going through a foggy section of the woods. It was pretty in it's own way buy also kinda creepy. It wasn't too much longer and we popped up into the sun. At this point we reached a lookout and decided it was time to take a small break and get some photos.
Of course this was the first stop so I was only focused on getting 4Runner pictures. (because I don't have enough).
The trip went pretty smooth for the next few hours. There was a mix of gravel and paved roads. There weren't any more real reroutes,just us missing turns because we weren't paying attention and still learning to use the tablet for navigation. We stopped for lunch and let the 4Runner cool down a bit as there were a lot of hill climbs and I was loaded down pretty good.
Eventually we came to a fire watch tower. Unfortunately we couldn't get to it because it was gated off. We did get a picture of the sign for it so we could check it out later. We believe it is one you can rent out.
We were able to get a picture from afar.
After that we came across some amazing views.
And old mine
And then finally a problem
When my friend Shaun and I had done this a couple years previous we came to a road on this section that had burms dug out every 50 yards or so and then finally came to a section that had been washed out and we couldn't get past. I thought this may have been the same section just from the other side but it was a different one with a similar problem.
Needless to say 2 years ago I had to tow him out and we gave up as it was 104 degrees and we were tired and running out of time.
This time we ventured as far as we could and decided not to try further but to re-route yet again.
The Gatekeeper
So... another reroute. It wasn't too bad and we didn't have to backtrack much. After that it was pretty smooth sailing. I even remembered to take a picture I had forgotten at the beginning.
Then we got to mosquito central. Windows went up as we passed all the little ponds and Summit lake. There were some little snow banks still around so I couldn't resist playing and got high centered on one. First test of the new 12k Engo winch with the new bumper design. Pulled me off the bank with ease. Unfortunately I didn't get a video of James dancing around as he was devoured by the little flying vampires while unhooking the winch line as I was laughing too hard.
The rest of this little section from around Summit Lake to Crescent Lake is actually an old wagon trail. It was fun and we got to do a little mild wheeling, and hit some puddles and some mud. It was fun to have a bit more technical stuff after the long day of gravel and paved roads only.
Finally we got to the road that goes around Crescent Lake and decided to head to town to find some gas. We followed the route on the map and made it without a hitch. The only odd thing that happened was an old guy next to his Jeep saw us coming and as I slowed down so I wouldn't dust him out he very very expressively flipped us off, as in leaned into it with his full body and an extremely sour look on his face. We had no idea what that was about and spent the next 1/2 hour discussing it trying to reason it out. We finally concluded it was 4Runner envy.
As we got gas we decided we still had plenty of daylight left, we may as well try to make it to Wikiup for the night as that would give us a good head start on the next day. I knew there was the possibility for a lot of technical challenges the next day so I wanted to make sure we had time.
We headed off to Wikiup, found a cool gravel pit and played around. Had to reroute again as it looked as if the dual sport riders had just said screw it and gone offroad for a bit where there was no trail and we weren't going to try to follow it and then there was the NW Pinstriping section. I am not too picky about scratches as I have plenty and plan on probably going the bedliner route eventually anyway but I know some people wouldn't have made it through the next section.
After a lot of that we finally got to Wikiup and found a campsite, opened a beer, ate some tacos and grabbed some sleep for the night.
Overall it was a good day. Things I learned are 4.88's are coming much sooner than I planned as climbing up those hills fully loaded while S/C'd isn't hard it does raise temps fast as it is really working with 4:30's. I am happy we chose to camp at Wikiup as it was free, 1st come 1st serve and we got a great spot with nice view right off the course.
Hope you enjoyed Day 1. I will get day 2 up tomorrow.
Yep, I agree - super good find. And the tailgate whoops was definitely just part of the adventure. In fact, she's come to love telling that part of the story, LOL.
Hey guys, the 2nd day trip report is going to have to wait a day. I got off work late and on the way home one of my electric fans came apart and went into my radiator on the 4Runner.
The temp gauge didn't register that I was getting hot and I didn't notice until I looked down and saw I was at about 267. There was no warning and no steam as I was on the freeway. I was able to limp her home but the 4Runner may be down for a while.
I work graveyard so I needed to go to sleep and couldn't do anything this morning when I got home. It needed to cool down anyway. After I woke up I went out and started it and everything seemed fine so hopefully there is no damage but Sunday I will pull plugs and do a compression test and make sure everything is good, then get a new radiator and fan setup.
I would recommend shying away from Flex-a-Lite at this point. There is no reason the fan blade should have come apart like that, and they really aren't enough for a S/C vehicle I am finding out.
Anyway, tomorrow after work I will get the next day done for you guys. Just didn't want to leave you all hanging.
OBDR 2017 Trip Report Day 1 - Wickiup Reservoir to Culver
Hey guys. I am sorry it has taken so long for the 2nd day update. Between the 4Runner pooping her pants on me and transitioning back to my graveyard schedule and tons of overtime this week this is really the 1st free moment I have had to sit down and type anything up.
4Runner update. Picking up a new Taco radiator tomorrow. (I use the 20" one because it doesn't hang below the frame) and my new cooling fan setup should be here tomorrow so with any luck tomorrow night I will have her back on the road.
Ok now on to what you have all been patiently waiting for.
Day 2
This day was a bit more exciting. I will be honest day one was fun buy it was mostly nice roads and easy reroutes. Day 2 started out easy but offered some fun challenges by the end of the day.
We got up that morning expecting to make breakfast burritos but were anxious to hit the road so it was coffee and cereal for me and I don't remember what James ate. We then realized that the way I had the 4runner packed was inconvenient and crap so we changed things around a bit to make it easier to get to food for snacks and lunch and more convenient for when we stopped to camp, even though this ended up being the last night we technically camped. (More on that in the next days reports)
So, after our quick breakfast we found a restroom and hit the trail and before we even left the lake we found our first reroute.
The map said to drive across the dam but we had to take the lower road behind it. No biggy.
Probably the 1st 30-45 minutes we were on nice flat gravel roads that were well maintained and making some good time. I had not done this section and the day we had come down the cascades a couple years ago it had taken most of the day so I was happy to make some good time starting out because I knew what was coming and that it would be a bit slower going and we would want to stop to take lots of pictures.
Eventually the road got a bit more dusty and interesting but still nothing too bad. We were able to get some off camber shots just playing around.
I also decided it would be the perfect time for a PSA video. Always check your undercarriage.
During this section we hit a bit more NW pinstriping sections but nothing like what we had the day before, we also had to reroute one more time but nothing serious. Again it seemed as if the riders just decided to cut across country to get to a different road.
Soon we were greated with a fantastic view of Mt Bachelor.
Then back to mostly flat dust roads.
Eventually we came across a fire lookout and decided to see if we could check it out. It was a small detour and it was still early so we felt it was worth the stop. Unfortunately once again we were foiled by a locked gate.
We considered going around (because I built my 4Runner to go anywhere and we could have made it) but we figured it was gated off for a reason so we backtracked back to the course and continued on.
Pretty quick in the day we hit dusty roads. To say that there was a lot of dust on this trip is an understatement. It is definitely something to be prepared for. It is really fine volcanic dust too, so it is not a lot of fun to clean out. I will honestly have to remove my interior on the 4Runner to get it all out.
So, it was pretty easy going and we finally caught up to where I had to bail off the trail last time I did this. At some point you get into cycling territory and there are mt bikers everywhere. Most of them were cool but there were a few that gave us that look like we were invading their trail and how dare we. Also do to the cyclists we had to miss what looked like a fun road on the route and just drive straight down to the highway.
At this point I decided that it would be prudent to get some fuel in Bend. We probably had enough but I don't like to risk it and I knew the next section coming up may have some extra challenges.
It was probably a quick 15 minutes in 15 minutes out all highway sidetrip to get to gas in Bend.
Pretty quickly after this you start to climb. Pretty good gravel roads for a while then you get into some logging sections that are mostly good but can get a little rough. Oh, they are also really dusty. Shocking I know.
At this point we actually hit some snow. Just little drifts, a couple across the trail and people had piled bark and wood in the ruts in the drifts so they were nothing to worry about but I can image had we gone a month earlier it may have been a different story.
So again, nothing too difficult and then we came to a hill that I remembered being a bit challenging the last time but I have built my 4Runner up a bunch since then so this time it was a pretty slow cakewalk.
So after playing around on some fun dirt/logging roads you hit more gravel roads, get some excellent views of the 3 Sisters since you are right at their base and can make some pretty good time, unless you stop to take a ton of pictures like we did.
Eventually you start heading downhill and here is where we ran into some more reroute issues.
We started down a trail that eventually was blocked off.
Then the next 2 reroutes we tried to take were impassable so we had to hit the gravel roads again and find another route. It took us a little while but we managed. I remember this part of the OBDR we had the same issues coming the other way when we did it 2 years ago but heading south to north it was a bit easier to find a re-route option.
- having to start a second post because I have to many images
OBDR 2017 Trip Report Day 2 - Wickiup Reservoir to Culver
Finally back on track we turn a corner and find a new obstacle.
There is a huge pine tree blocking the trail.
We stop and decided what our options are. [MENTION=116467]Rock_Rat[/MENTION] loaned us his chainsaw, but this was a big tree, did we really want to take a lot of time to try to clear it? We could re-route again but after looking at that option it would make us have to skip a large section of the route and backtrack for a fair amount of time and we really really were against that. We also had a winch, snatch block and plenty of straps and rigging so we could try to tow it out of the way or at least to a better position. The final option was to go around.
We tried the chainsaw option and we couldn't get it started, so we finally gave up on that and decided to try the winch option. That was a bust, we hooked everything up and I essentially ended up dragging the 4Runner towards the fallen tree. So after a bunch of deliberating we started to walk around the area to see if we could go around. We noticed that there had been a lot of horse traffic that had gone up the hill and around so we figured maybe this was a viable option.
We couldn't follow the horse path directly because of the off camber angles and the size of the 4Runner so we decided heading straight up the hill, jogging to the right around another huge pine tree and then straight back down to the road was our best option. The challenges we faced in doing this were overgrown brush, soft sandy/dusty dirt, hidden stumps, steep approach angles and off camber situations. I have always said I have done my best to build my 4Runner to go anywhere, this was a good test of that.
Starting up the hill, I figured I would do my best to crawl up and take it slow and easy. This did not work well at all as the ground was much too soft and I ended up just digging in. Finally James told me I just needed to stop being afraid of the skinny pedal and have at it, so I put my S/C to work, hit some high revs and climbed up with out a challenge.
Next came the fun off camber angles. We had to turn right and get me turned around 180 degrees so I was facing straight down again. We had planned this a bit and I had to go around another large pine tree so if I had to use my slider to rub the tree and slide me around we could. (I have had to do this before, it works well) It worked out pretty easy and soon I was pointed straight back down the hill again. Now was the fun part where I was definitely going to be testing the approach angles of my new bumper. (they are amazing by the way)
As I slowly crawled back down the hill I had to make a couple course corrections to avoid some stumps and rocks but I got to a point where I felt like I was facing almost straight up and down and had I not been wearing my seat belt I would have just fallen out through my windshield. Of course at this point we had to stop and take pictures.
I am glad we are so excited to get fun pictures because while we were doing that we noticed that I was about to rip off my drivers side fender.
So after a quick assessment of the situation we busted out the machete and made quick work of this obstacle and saved my fender.
After I got back on the trail we looked to see what damage we had done as we don't really want to be those guys that tore a trail into the side of the mountain and honestly you couldn't even tell we had been there. That made us feel a bit better about our choice.
So back to the trail. We continued on and had to take a couple more reroutes due to fallen trees but nothing that was difficult and we edited the map so it will be updated to avoid them next time. Then we hit some more gravel roads that led to the backside of Sisters. Here we ran into some more slight navigation problems as they have added neighborhoods and closed roads that used to be there so it took some doing but we found our way into town.
At this point we were hot, hungry and thirsty and a corn dog sounded fantastic.
So a fun fact about Sisters is, it is a total tourist trap town and this particular weekend they had a quilt festival going on. So the first place we stopped had a line out the door.
We didn't want to wait so we hit another place... that was closing... at 4pm... on a Saturday...
So we ended up at a gas station at the end of town.
The good, we found another pay phone as you can see in the picture with James. The bad, they had no corndogs so we had hot dogs and taquitos that were not good in any way and made me think I was going to die from eating them. So the next best thing was Dutch Bros.
Iced tea has never tasted so cool and refreshing.
So back on the road we went. I have been from Sisters to Culver kinda the back way quite a few times so I figured we were going to pretty much be on pavement the whole way, but I was quickly surprised as we turned off the pavement and onto a fun dirt road quite quickly.
This was an interesting transition from the Cascades to now sagebrush and lava rock and more dust but it was a welcome change and I really enjoyed the different beauty that this part of the route provided. It took some time but eventually we made it to Lake Billychinook and the Palisades.
There are plenty of places to camp here if you need them but my sister lives up the hill in Culver and she offered to provide us a hot meal, hot shower and comfy beds to sleep in. If we do this again next year she said we are always welcome and she has plenty of beds and hospitality to share.
So after a long fun day we got to eat some good food, have some good company and most importantly a nice hot shower and cozy bed for the night.
Since tomorrow the parts for the 4Runner will be here I cannot promise I will do the next update but I will do my best to get it up on Saturday, I should have time to the rest of the trip hopefully but again, it depends on time. Sorry this update took so long, I hope you enjoyed it. After this one the trip gets much more interesting!
