El Jeepe!

[AgentOrange76]

Here's another solution for your roof rack dilemna. Save up for a GR8Tops Safari Top. They are expensive but are sturdy for roof storage, have multiple panels to make removing the top as easy as possible, and you don't have to ruin your vision of the classic Jeep look.

I've lusted over that baby for a loooong time, way before I had any idea of Jeff's involvement. Stumbled across it while looking for a half cab for a clapped out Scrambler I should've bought. It really is the perfect solution, but at that price point I could buy another vehicle capable of hauling the boat and keep the Jeep a play toy. The El Camino was half the price of that roof......maybe one day.

 

[SilicaRich]

The Jeep? I'd think twice. I got spoiled. I miss driving a classic. I need one soon. I could rant about this all day. I love the crap outta that thing.

Whatcha talkin bout Willis!? Pretty sure our TJs fell under the label "classic" as soon as JKs came out:victory:

Hope you enjoyed your time in Texas. Next time I recommend heading NW of Austin and checking out Marble Falls. It's a Jeep town with a well known ORV park called Hidden Falls nearby. You also have to stop by Blue Bonnet Cafe and get their homemade pies. Pretty hard to beat Texas hill country, except parts around Ft. Davis and BBNP.

 

[Comanche Scott]

What a great update! :beer:

Sorry to hear about the Women's team. Sometimes things just don't go the way they should.
I think it has to do with Vegas...

 

[AgentOrange76]

Whatcha talkin bout Willis!? Pretty sure our TJs fell under the label "classic" as soon as JKs came out:victory:

Hope you enjoyed your time in Texas. Next time I recommend heading NW of Austin and checking out Marble Falls. It's a Jeep town with a well known ORV park called Hidden Falls nearby. You also have to stop by Blue Bonnet Cafe and get their homemade pies. Pretty hard to beat Texas hill country, except parts around Ft. Davis and BBNP.

Hahaha, my brother is always sayin' Whatchu talkin bout Willis?! Made me grin. Its hard to believe, the TJ will be two generations old next year! I can take solace that they still have a bunch of AMC parts bin stuff too :victory: It just seems so new when you compare it to our other shenanigans:sombrero:

I'm definitely itching to go back to Texas and see something other than the city. The drive between Austin and San Antonio was nice; has me itching to see the wild side. Looks like I've already got of stuff to check out In the meantime, if they wanna stick me on a charter jet and fly me down, I'm cool with that too.....

What a great update! :beer:

Sorry to hear about the Women's team. Sometimes things just don't go the way they should.
I think it has to do with Vegas...

Let's not jump to conclusions now.....

Its just so frustrating to see them get shafted like that, you could see it in the players, the coaches, the fans.....just really blows. Lot of seniors this year, we'll have to see how they move on. Wes got ACC coach of the year, so we know his end is solid. Just have to see what the ladies put up. On the men's side, our new coach Keatts says he's a winner. He certainly worked magic at UNCW. It's not like we could get any worse.

In the meantime I've got to root for my second favorite team tomorrow. First is always State. Second is whoever is playing Carolina

Update coming soon on my geomorphology trip over the weekend. Definitely some interesting stuff; my geology buddies might be interested on some theories my professor has on the Southern Appalachians.

 

[AgentOrange76]

So, this weekend was awesome. This was my first foray into the field for geology and it was super legit. We spent 2 nights at Black Rock Mountain State Park in Georgia and spent the first day going up and down the Cullasaja river taking bankful stream measurements, gravel sorting and observing waterfalls. We talked about some of the features in the southern Appalachians, like tall (6,000+) mountains, terrain capable of supporting debris flows and waterfalls, and why those features shouldn't really be there based on the age of the mountain chain. Our professor has done research on this (among other things, including beavers) and proposes the landscape has been recently (~10 million years ago) rejuvenated. He proposes this is because a piece of dense crustal root has delaminated from the crust and the asthenosphere has flowed up, pushing the regional topography up; like punching a metal garbage can lid. That's why we see mountains taller than they should be through calculated erosional rates, and the reason we see so many waterfalls is because streams are trying to return to equilibrium. The waterfalls are knickpoints migrating upstream carving into the terrain in response to this uplift. Topography above these knickpoints has not been affected by the response to equilibrium yet, so we see gentler slopes and fertile land (much like downstream of the knickpoints) instead of deep gorges as the rivers adjust. These delaminations are thought to happen fairly regularly in aging mountain chains, and is one of the hypothesis for the landscape we see. We finished the day with a hike up Whiteside mountain to talk about the Blue Ridge escarpment and the Brevard fault line and other regional geology. Fascinating stuff, I love this geomorphology class. If I was to become a geologist this is the type of stuff I want to do. Our campground was really cool because it sat directly on the continental divide, so if you took a leak right in the middle half of it would end up in the Atlantic and the other half in the Gulf. The next day we hiked all around the Tallulah gorge in GA. I always thought the New river gorge was the deepest east of the Mississippi, but apparently its the Tallulah. The Savannah river captured the Tallulah drainage basin fairly recently in the past, and the reason its so deep is becase the stream equilibrium had to adjust to reach base flow in several hundred miles instead of several thousand as it did before; it is thought to have previously drained into the Little Tennessee along with the Cullasaja and end up in the Gulf of Mexico. It was an awesome trip, gorgeous weather, made a ton of awesome friends. Definitely excited to go on the next one! Hopefully I got my facts right and didn't mislead y'all!

Cullasaja Falls


Dry Falls


Tallulah Gorge



Whiteside Mt

 

[AgentOrange76]

A few more:

First time with the full hammock set up. Its kinda a pain to set up, but I've only got about 40 bucks in this and that's a helluva lot cheaper than buying a smaller tent to backpack.


A sweet old forest service truck I'd absolutely love to have:


Wegmann's World:

 

[Happykamper]

Great journey your on !!! I'll keep tuning in . Thank you and nice job!

 

[AgentOrange76]

Long overdue update on the Jeep and relevant life. I replaced the front O2 sensor and the engine light went out and the Jeep is GOOD. Power isn't where I feel like it was when I started driving it, but much better than it was. I'm cranking out about 19.5 mpg between interstate and mountain backroads, and around 17-18 locally combined interstate/mountains/off-road. I can get about 300 miles out of a tank now. Its running seriously good. Aside from the minor rear pinion? leak that started this December and the 1st gear pop the drivetrain is pretty mint. I'm pretty stoked.

We took a camping trip out to SW Virginia for my sed/strat class over Easter weekend. I drove myself as it was a pretty quick jaunt down to be home for church/family on Easter Sunday, and the Jeep was flawless. We stopped at road cuts along the way and talked about the paleoclimate/environment of each spot, did some stratigraphic mapping, and collected hand samples from the sites. I turned in all my notes for our final trip report but I'll do my best to give a quick rundown of the trip. Apologies for the sideways pictures, I wish I could figure out how to make them correct.

Stop 1: Cambrian Carbonates ~500Ma
Indicative of shallow seas after snowball earth. Can see mudcracks, ripples, stromatilite fossils (round features at top of formation)


Stop 2: Mapping formations (rock units)
Grenville, Taconic and Acadian orogenies (mountain building events) and associated rifting/passive margins between orogenies. ~500-300Ma Mudstones, sandstones, shales, cherts.
"Great Unconformity"~40Ma of missing time

Another unconformity. You can see a squiggly dark line near the top; that's an volcanic ash layer.


We made camp that night in Hungry Mother State park. They had cool elevated decks to set tents on due to the steep terrain. We made a huge fire in tiny fire pit and life was good.


Stop 3: Proterozoic Conglomerates ~750Ma
Conglomerates formed from Cranberry Gneiss (~1400Ma) by a mountain stream, probably similar to the one below during the first Appalachain mountain building event (Grenville Orogeny)


Remaining stops: Proterozoic glacial lake deposits ~500Ma
These were my favorite stops of the trip. We made several stops along an ancient lakebed. I have a ton of cool hand samples from this trip I'll try and remember to take pictures of to show y'all. Some things we saw:
-Annual lake layering. So cool to see individual years from that long ago, just crazy.
-Dropstones. Rock carries over water by ice then released to fall to the bottom as ice retreats. Dope.
-Turbidites. Think of them as underwater landslides. They have distinctive fining characteristics as they settle in water.

-Regional fining (particle size distributions based on source distance.

I'll get some hand samples of all those uploaded soon. I swapped rides with my brother again so I'd have a truck bed to move out. Next year I'll pack lighter haha. In the meantime I took a couple shots around campus with the ol ElCo, thought they were pretty neat.


I love being back home, but I'm already itching to get back to school. More updates coming!

**EDIT it won't let me add photos, did them though the attachment like usual. Working on fixing it if I can

 

[AgentOrange76]

It's been a while y'all. Let's see if I can do a turbo update between exams.

El Jeepe has been a charm all summer. Yanked the doors and roof off and bombed around, cuz its a Jeep and that's what ya do. Mechanically she's great, only a few bugs with O2 sensors. I'm cranking 19 mpg out on the freeway. Oh yeah. Also learned how to ride a motorcycle, so that's pretty awesome.

Did a couple small upgrades. Got some of Jeff's tailgate hinges from Morryde. The bottom hinge factory hardware stripped and had to drill it out. Bummed I am missing 4 original bolts now (I have everything from the Jeep from new, hardware, radio, even the milk jugs). New ones bolted up great, I put some cut up inner tubes between the tub and hinges because the tub isn't painted underneath. The tailgate still doesn't line up correctly, the whole thing might be bent. Oh well, it still closes and locks. Threw a Trasharoo on the spare and it changed my life. I carried everything from my bedding moving into school to wet camping gear I didn't want to mix with my other stuff back there. Plus Toyota guys wave at me now :victory: Built a temporary shelf out of scrap plywood in the back to see if I liked it and it was one of the best things I've done so I'll be building a real one this winter. Also bought a pair of helicopter fuel tanks at the flea market and would love to mount one to the shelf or something but they're an awkward shape.

Let's see, adventures. Ran our usual favorites back home including winching some guy's transit van full of oxygen bottles off a local trail. That was fun. Went on my first big group ride with Asheville Overland on a new trail they're working with the forest service to open to 4x4. Hope to get up there and do some more work.


Ever since my grandfather got his Jeep we've made it a habit to go riding on Sunday afternoons. We just pick a close spot on the map and go for it. Found some cool stuff.


I didn't do marching band this year, which freed up a crapload of time. I helped reboot the Off-Road Club at NC State and we're working on organizing some camping trips. We've got a lot of guys who haven't really done any off roading before, so I'm excited to get them out in the woods and show them what it's all about and teach them what we stand for. To advertise for the club, we reserved spots on the Brickyard of our campus and got a whole gang out there. It was epic and something I've always wanted to do with my Jeep, but a little weird with Harrelson Hall gone. I also joined the school's HAM radio club. The school has its own callsign and hamshack covered in postcards from contacts ranging from East Germany to the Muir space station. Its epic. Hopefully getting licensed soon and we're gonna build antennas and all kinds of cool stuff. I'm pretty jacked. The next big investment in the Jeep will be a dual-band radio. Probably a Yaesu FT7900R but also looking at the FTM100DR and Icom 2730A. I'm going to pick up a cheapie baofeng handheld first and an antenna for the Jeep, then upgrade to a good mobile radio in the spring if I like it a lot.


Me and my buddies conjured up a name for ourselves for no other reason than to feel cool. We call it Pisgah Overland, and it's totally just a gimmick but we made an Instagram page to kinda keep track of the stuff we do. Something to look back on. And hey, if you do it for the gram, isn't that better than not doing it at all?



Finally, big preparations coming. Geology Field camp for school is this summer and I'm planning on driving out there so I can take my time coming back. Really waning to hit the high passes in Colorado and see Moab while seeing as many National Parks as I can. Hoping to do it with my buddies or have my dad meet me out there, but if I run it solo a couple things need to happen. I can't swing motels on the way out and back, so that means crashing in the Jeep. I'm going to try the hammock inside, and if that doesn't work I'll be yanking the passenger seat and building a sleeping platform so I have somewhere to crash out there and back when camping isn't practical. Regardless I'll build a more permanent shelf than the one I slapped in in the summer. A few wants. Really want to install a dead pedal, and maybe cruise control. Heater core is still pretty junk, need to replace that. Still would like to rebuild the trans to stop it popping out of 1st and tighten the syncros back up, but if we're honest that's not gonna happen. Starting to develop some minor electrical gremlins. Dropped the speedo/tach to nothing, tripped a gauge light. Smacked the dash and it went away. Does an intermittent long crank for no start. Key off/back on starts fine. Leaks some oil. The usual. They all do, I'm not worried. I think the hardest part will be narrowing down the list of things I want to see. This will be my first real trip out west and I'm super stoked.

Okay, I think that's it for now!

 

[SilicaRich]

Finally, big preparations coming. Geology Field camp for school is this summer and I'm planning on driving out there so I can take my time coming back. Really waning to hit the high passes in Colorado and see Moab while seeing as many National Parks as I can. Hoping to do it with my buddies or have my dad meet me out there, but if I run it solo a couple things need to happen. I can't swing motels on the way out and back, so that means crashing in the Jeep. I'm going to try the hammock inside, and if that doesn't work I'll be yanking the passenger seat and building a sleeping platform so I have somewhere to crash out there and back when camping isn't practical. Regardless I'll build a more permanent shelf than the one I slapped in in the summer. A few wants. Really want to install a dead pedal, and maybe cruise control. Heater core is still pretty junk, need to replace that. Still would like to rebuild the trans to stop it popping out of 1st and tighten the syncros back up, but if we're honest that's not gonna happen. Starting to develop some minor electrical gremlins. Dropped the speedo/tach to nothing, tripped a gauge light. Smacked the dash and it went away. Does an intermittent long crank for no start. Key off/back on starts fine. Leaks some oil. The usual. They all do, I'm not worried. I think the hardest part will be narrowing down the list of things I want to see. This will be my first real trip out west and I'm super stoked.

Okay, I think that's it for now!

Where is your Field Camp going to be located? I have mine this summer as well, home base Dillon, Montana

 

[AgentOrange76]

That's awesome! Looks like we'll be separated by a good deal of latitude. We have 2 base camps; the closest town to both is Taos, New Mexico.