Refueled "Megaweapon" today and then ran it through the car wash. Next I have to clean out the tons of trail dust from the interior (Is it just me, or do these things let in an excessive amount of dust even when the windows are left up??)
I just got back from my annual Nevada/Mojave trip at 3:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and didn't get to bed until a couple hours later, so spent the past couple of days mostly trying to recover. Still have a few more bits of camp gear and junk to unload.
This was my first major trip with the new 4Runner, after driving Troopers for nearly 30 years. Broke it in, and also just plain broke it. First, lost one of the rear mud flaps, which I expected would happen eventually. I wouldn't care, except that apparently without the mud flap there's nothing at all to keep mud, dirt, roadkills, etc out of the fender.
Then I hit a really bad, well-hidden washout/pothole on an otherwise mild trail. Was only doing 20, but hit it hard enough to knock the steering off-center and also took some of the fancy electronic gadgets out of commission -- Multi-terrain, crawl control, VSC. Didn't affect my trip any, but I hope it's not going to cost an arm and leg to get those sorted out.
Then on Monday night I was going down a very narrow canyon and came to a place where the former trail was nothing but a jumble of boulders. My only options were to try to back out, in the dark, over difficult terrain, or turn around. Luckily I was at the only spot where it was just barely possible to get turned around, however in doing so the front piece of the bumper (with the license plate) broke off.
So, a bit more wear and tear than I'd hoped for on a six-month old vehicle. Oh well. It's not a mall crawler; I expect it to get beat up. Just not so much on the first big trip.
No pics to post right now, but hopefully soon. I have a ton of photos to go through and post to my website, and some cool videos too.
hwell: For next seven days I will be watching the truck driving across the continent. 
