At last, the long awaited FJ Summit! After unloading a ton of crap into my ground tent at the KOA and turning it into a kind of 'stuff cache,' I head over to their Kafe for breakfast. Meals at the Kafe were cooked up by a delightful old couple who were incredibly friendly and exceedingly good cooks! Each day they had cinnamon rolls fresh out of the oven... yum!

I was scheduled to do Alpine Loop and met up with my group in town. It was fun to hear the designated simplex frequency abuzz with chatter about the summit by all the HAMs in attendance.

Not much to say for the trail, hopefully the pictures speak for themselves. It was raining at the top of Engineer and at one point we were driving directly through (and then above) the clouds!

Because I had to split from the group to head into Colorado Springs for some personal business (banking), this day was a break from the expedition and spent almost exclusively on pavement. The night before we'd camped in a random pasture, which is admittedly one of the strengths of the whole roof top tent deal - the ability to camp literally anywhere (weird grass and cow poop included).

Image credit: 1leglance

This was a day I had been very much looking forward to. Finally we were in the mountains of Colorado. There is a reason Colorado is known for it's mountains despite the range covering many others states and we were about to experience it to the fullest. We met up with Scott ('Sky' on the forums) who would be our local guide for the day. Scott was, despite his modesty, a master photog and taught us many things over the radio throughout the day. Plus, it was pretty cool to see his 150-pound, 100,000-megapixel camera with a 57-foot lens... slight exaggeration, maybe.. but still very cool.

Also, Scott is without question the only person in the world to have a white All Pro roof rack!

We spent much of the morning in Rawlins running errands for the trucks. I needed an oil change (badly!!), Michael continued his quest in search of a shock for the trailer, and Lance had to find some bolts that had rattled loose out of his skid plates. I found a 'fast' oil change place, but like the bulk of our other experiences in Rawlins... I would be there all morning waiting.

As soon as I became excited to get out of Rawlins and back to our own pace on the road and trail, everything came crashing down in the form of insane construction. It was one of those 'one-way with a flag dude' things, but was miles and miles long. We were stuck. On the map it appeared that we could bypass the whole mess by going near 'Adams Reservoir' so we gave it a shot.

The trail to Adams was primitive and overgrown... perfect.

The day in Atlantic City began with.... MAN BREAKFAST. Not really anything special, just eggs, toast, OJ, and Red Hot, but still quite a bit manlier than cereal or something. This also gave me a chance to test out my $2 toast thingy, which in fact works quite well.

The Grand Tetons are absolutely wonderful, much more cut and jagged than the mountains I'd seen to this point along the Continental Divide.

As we awoke next to the lake, we were happily surprised to learn that the bugs sleep late and we'd be able to enjoy breakfast without breaking camp. Back on the road, we crossed the Continental Divide several times, occasionally marked by really cool huge signs.

Last night Nathan and I went on a small side-trail excursion away from the group that lead to some good muddy fun. As night fell, the effectiveness of both my headlights and HID's was nonexistent... we were able to imagine why, and as the sun rose in the morning we confirmed it. oops.

With its epic scenery, incredible hikes, and wonderful campsites it was hard to leave Glacier National Park but come morning it was time to move on. We stopped at a few lakes, waterfalls, and rapids on the way out and got back into 'dirt mode.'

After a last minute change in plans and a pretty good delay, I finally met Lance just north of the Canadian border. We looked around for a campsite and found a nice one next to a lake called Dorr Road. After camp was setup, I went over to the lake to attempt some night images of the lake (none of which worked) and started talking to some folks who had a campfire by the water. They were some crazy Canadians and we wound up talking for a very long time, having a great time.

In the morning we hit the first sections of the trail. It was a lot of fast dirt roads through some thick, though often burnt, forests.