Sparky Powers
Supporting Vendor
Like anyone who only gets only a handful of weekends a year, I headed out into the desert during the scorching summer in attempt to get lost. Lost in time. My pops and I grabbed up a handful of topo maps, minimal camping gear, lots of extra fuel, water and let's not forget, man's best friend. We quickly left the pavement in the rear view mirrors and worked our way across the desert floor in hopes of going back in time. We had been talking about going on a trail ride where we could go explore the desert and look for old mine's, mining camps, Army forts and ghost towns. Our journey took us about 300 "off road" miles of lonely sun baked salt flats of Death Valley at sea level to amazing mountain top views at about 10.000' above sea level.
The trip was a good test of man and machines. We battled roads, temperature extremes, altitudes and boredom. The desert is a lonely place, we didn't see anyone for the first two days after we left the payment. Don't get me wrong the trip was a blast and I can't wait for the next adventure. The boring part of the trip were the long straight stretches of road across the desert floors that seemed like they never would end. Some roads were a dream to fly across and others would rattle the teeth out of your head and then some were nearly rock crawling.
We had one little hichup mechanically through out the trip. My pop's Jimmy had a problem early on which left us with a decision to make whether or not to continue on or throw in the cards and head back to civilization. This was the first big test for his Jimmy since we took out the old and tired 6.2L diesel and dropped in a crate 350 TBI gas motor that I had. We were climbing our first mountain range when his temperature gauge pegged. We quickly discovered that the upper radiator hose blew off and he drained the entire cooling system. Since there is no shade in the desert we hid under the rear hatch of my Wagon so we don't end up overheated like the Jimmy while we waited for it to cool down. We quickly got the cooling system filled and burped when we were faced with a decision. The temperature gauge stuck showing 280*. Everything was running just as it should except the gauge so off we went furthering our efforts to get lost.
I will let the pic's do the talking as I'm not much of a writer.
[/url]20150703_110251 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150703_113645 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150703_123922 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150703_142311 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150703_145018 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150704_082855 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150704_084926 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150704_101030 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150704_102956 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150705_083939 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150705_100429 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
[/url]20150705_105835 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
BTW.........EUREKA!!!!!!!! there's gold en der hills.....and silver too.
[/url]20150705_165617 by Sparky Powers, on Flickr[/IMG]
The trip was a good test of man and machines. We battled roads, temperature extremes, altitudes and boredom. The desert is a lonely place, we didn't see anyone for the first two days after we left the payment. Don't get me wrong the trip was a blast and I can't wait for the next adventure. The boring part of the trip were the long straight stretches of road across the desert floors that seemed like they never would end. Some roads were a dream to fly across and others would rattle the teeth out of your head and then some were nearly rock crawling.
We had one little hichup mechanically through out the trip. My pop's Jimmy had a problem early on which left us with a decision to make whether or not to continue on or throw in the cards and head back to civilization. This was the first big test for his Jimmy since we took out the old and tired 6.2L diesel and dropped in a crate 350 TBI gas motor that I had. We were climbing our first mountain range when his temperature gauge pegged. We quickly discovered that the upper radiator hose blew off and he drained the entire cooling system. Since there is no shade in the desert we hid under the rear hatch of my Wagon so we don't end up overheated like the Jimmy while we waited for it to cool down. We quickly got the cooling system filled and burped when we were faced with a decision. The temperature gauge stuck showing 280*. Everything was running just as it should except the gauge so off we went furthering our efforts to get lost.
I will let the pic's do the talking as I'm not much of a writer.
BTW.........EUREKA!!!!!!!! there's gold en der hills.....and silver too.
