We drove from Wilcox back to Phoenix via a dirt route and met our friend dizzyspots along the way. There was a return party scheduled in Gilbert at SDHQ. They do all kinds of stuff from sales and basic installations to high end custom work. A few FJ's have gone through there and their work is obviously extremely good. What's cool is that the owner, Ryan, opened up the place on his off day (Sunday) just for our party! Woohoo!

My birthday was a few days before and I was surprised with a super awesome cake of an FJ driving over a mountain or something. Here I am treating the cake FJ in the manner I do my own...

Just when I thought the adventure was over, we discovered something very interesting on the way out of the campground in the morning... the only way out was completely blocked by a HUGE tree which had fallen apparently some time during the night. Fun!

The day I dreaded was drawing closer and closer - soon the trip would be over. We were to cross into Arizona today, a symbolic end to our journey. Because of problems with gated ranchlands near the border, we were on pavement for much of the day. We passed this HUGE mine... here you can see one of those dump trucks that are the size of a house.

Just to change things up a big, I decided to pitch my ground tent for the night. Nathan and I found a small clearing and set things up. In the morning we awoke to find that I'd nearly slept on a cactus, and Nathan had in fact slept directly on top of a huge ant hill!! He was fine inside, but the whole thing was pretty funny.

Lance split off the group to explore one last possibility of an alternate route while I drove back to the muddy water crossing to see how it looked. In a bold and courageous sacrifice of his own body, Nathan ventured into the unknown depths to check the surface quality and depth.

Once it was light out I walked back up the trail to see what we'd done the night before. The amount of 'construction' we did was amazing, and you can see some of it in this pic. But like all things, pics do no justice...

At the BUGS campground in the BUGS morning there BUGS were lots of BUGS little things flying BUGS around in BUGS the air. I BUGS couldn't be sure BUGS what they were, but BUGS they kept landing on me... maybe BUGS some kind of BUGS alien life form. I'll never BUGS know for certain.

Once back on the road, it was only a few minutes before disaster struck yet again. Another tire gone! Fortunately this time it was actually caused by something and not just a random explosion like I'm used to... The tire appeared repairable!

Check out Lance's writeup of the repair and our impressions of the ARB tire kit on the Disabled Explorers website.

The offending object turned out to be some kind of fishing implement!

Making breakfast I discovered something shocking that I'd grown to take for granted thoughout the trip. My fridge had died and was over 80F inside. This was especially a problem since any inspection of the fridge and its wiring required removing incredible amounts of crap due to the comical over-packing of my truck especially after the Summit where I gained a few huge boxes (i.e. complete suspension system). I had little choice, so I unpacked most everything to get to the back and sides of the fridge.

My first course of action was to see if the fridge itself was still operational. I suspected it was since they are pretty renowned for reliability, but best to check anyway. Plugged into the AC, it whirrrrrrred back to life instantly. Must be the DC juice that's off. Plugging my cell phone into the DC outlet for the fridge... sure enough, it was dead.

I took the top off my Don Box and what had happened became clear. The cheap plastic battery box had broken on the bottom and the battery, though strapped to the floor, had enough room to wiggle about an inch forward. It was just my luck that the wires happen to be tangled in such a way that this movement pulled a crimp apart and opened up the circuit. An easy fix, but kind of annoying. Most of the contents of the fridge were OK after a night at high temperatures... but getting everything packed back into the truck resulted in even greater disorder and tightness.

As if a commentary on the state of my truck, we passed through Hell's Gate at the begginning of the day... It was sort of creepy how the cloud seemed to point us into the gap in the rocks. Certainly, this is where our doom lies.

The day after the Summit was a bit uneventful. We left town late in the morning just looking to make any amount of distance. There was quite a bit of time to get through New Mexico and no set dates along the way, so the rest of the trip promised to be a bit more relaxed than our race to get to the Summit on time.

After an experience like the Summit, finding inspiring scenery for pictures is a bit more difficult... we did pass a cool lake with some sailboats on it, though.

Late last night, after going back and forth on what to do, I officially wimped out on doing Black Bear Pass today. The thought of doing it alone was a little scary, but adding the whole 'exploding suspension' thing into the mix made me think it would be a tremendously bad idea. Fortunately I received word that the crew from FJC-Central were going to do the Alpine Loop, so I thought I'd go with them and take it easy.

Only a couple miles into Alpine, the shocks had clearly leaked the last of their fluid and the truck was almost impossible to drive (why I even went out I'll never know). Hitting a rock about an inch tall would send the front end flying into the air, only to crash down into the ground, and over and over again... I embarrassed all of FJ kind for a huge group of Jeeps when I was coming back down the trail by struggling madly to descend a couple of 1-3 inch rock steps without smashing the front end into the ground. It was humiliating, for sure.

I told the guys at All Pro about my predicament - that I still had a week of the expedition to go, we were scheduled to be back on the road/trail the next day, and I had an undrivable truck. They helped my out big time with a seriously hardcore discount on a FOX 2.5 front and FOX 2.0 rear system that they had with them... now I would just need to install it somehow!

I pulled the FJ up into the parking lot of the Best Western and, just as the raffle was beginning, started to tear down the front end. The raffle went something like this, "And the winning ticket is BRABRABRABRABRABRA *CLUNK*"

Luckily I had the invaluable help of Mr. R2 and we were able to get everything done. Luckily too, Lance and I had every possible tool between us including air compressor, CO2 tank, impact wrenches, etc. Oh, and knowing how to install suspension was a bonus, too. ;)

After an amazing day at the first day of the Summit, I was excited to rise and face day two! The original plan was to run Ophir, but I learned from talking to some folks that I might prefer to do Imogene and it just happened that the R2's were doing that this morning... I met up with them only to find that our trail leader had not showed up! Fortunately we were more than equipped to lead the group, the R2's took charge, had a brief driver's meeting, and we head out!