SOAZ
Tim and Kelsey get lost..
So, pretty simple. Fly to Las Vegas. Pick up my vehicle for the week. (1991 FJ80). Drive to Red Rocks state park. Spend the week zigging and zagging over dirt tracks to Phoenix, AZ while training some military folks.
This is more of a report than a story. I was going all out from the moment I stepped off the plane so there isn’t really any fluff or commentary besides the facts I could remember. After the trip the instructors grabbed some dinner and a beer. I remember thinking that this week wasn’t so much a collection of days as much as it was 1 moment. 1 big moment of time that mushed together.
It took a little while and 2 buses, but eventually I found my vehicle for the next week waiting for me in the airport parking lot. I got a nice tour of the Las Vegas airport while looking for it.
We provisioned for the trip. Breakfast and Lunch we’re on our own. For dinner we’d cook the students dinner with gear/food provided by the company. We headed to the nearest store to find our breakfast and lunch lickem/stickems (Simple foods that don’t require cooking).
I met up with Graham, he’s the director for training at Overland Expo, but you may have seen his articles in Overland Journal or elsewhere over the years. He was driving his new temporary truck, the LR3.

The training starts out with 2 days of classroom/static training before we hit the trail.
The views the next morning while I explored a bit before everyone woke up were fairly epic.
The trucks were as follows.
A 2001 Tacoma that had been through a lot of these trips. Being the only pickup truck, the other one was rolled on a previous trip, it took some heavy duties in terms of carrying gear.
The aforementioned LR3 was the sharp looking one of the bunch and the newest vehicle in the fleet and newest to this abusive life.
Tall white as it was called had the most modifications (Names based on a color were given to each truck so all recovery gear/tools would make it back to the proper truck. If you see a strip of orange tape on something, it belongs in Orange vehicle). A Discovery 1 with custom suspension arms, it was clearly someones favorite.
The last vehicle in the lineup was another Discovery 1, but this one was fairly stock. It did have the added challenge and enjoyment that comes with a manual transmission. (Not a single student had experience driving a manual transmission offroad which made it interesting)
The trucks were each packed to the roof. These folks don’t travel light as they bounce from one training session to the next until their next deployment.
On day 2 we did some static hands on with the Winch, welder etc. Any breakdowns would be handled by the students. A shock bolt in the FJ80 decided to sheer off while replacing the shocks, likely fatigued by some prior impact, so the students welded a new end piece in place.


This is more of a report than a story. I was going all out from the moment I stepped off the plane so there isn’t really any fluff or commentary besides the facts I could remember. After the trip the instructors grabbed some dinner and a beer. I remember thinking that this week wasn’t so much a collection of days as much as it was 1 moment. 1 big moment of time that mushed together.
It took a little while and 2 buses, but eventually I found my vehicle for the next week waiting for me in the airport parking lot. I got a nice tour of the Las Vegas airport while looking for it.

We provisioned for the trip. Breakfast and Lunch we’re on our own. For dinner we’d cook the students dinner with gear/food provided by the company. We headed to the nearest store to find our breakfast and lunch lickem/stickems (Simple foods that don’t require cooking).
I met up with Graham, he’s the director for training at Overland Expo, but you may have seen his articles in Overland Journal or elsewhere over the years. He was driving his new temporary truck, the LR3.

The training starts out with 2 days of classroom/static training before we hit the trail.
The views the next morning while I explored a bit before everyone woke up were fairly epic.

The trucks were as follows.
A 2001 Tacoma that had been through a lot of these trips. Being the only pickup truck, the other one was rolled on a previous trip, it took some heavy duties in terms of carrying gear.

The aforementioned LR3 was the sharp looking one of the bunch and the newest vehicle in the fleet and newest to this abusive life.

Tall white as it was called had the most modifications (Names based on a color were given to each truck so all recovery gear/tools would make it back to the proper truck. If you see a strip of orange tape on something, it belongs in Orange vehicle). A Discovery 1 with custom suspension arms, it was clearly someones favorite.

The last vehicle in the lineup was another Discovery 1, but this one was fairly stock. It did have the added challenge and enjoyment that comes with a manual transmission. (Not a single student had experience driving a manual transmission offroad which made it interesting)

The trucks were each packed to the roof. These folks don’t travel light as they bounce from one training session to the next until their next deployment.

On day 2 we did some static hands on with the Winch, welder etc. Any breakdowns would be handled by the students. A shock bolt in the FJ80 decided to sheer off while replacing the shocks, likely fatigued by some prior impact, so the students welded a new end piece in place.


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