It’s easy to procrastinate when trying to write up a big trip summary. I often spend weeks just going through the photos, culling many which I don’t like, and then doing my post-processing routine on the rest. By the time I’m done (often months after a really big trip with close to 1,000 unprocessed photos), actually writing about the trip ends up on the back burner. So here it is 2021, and I still haven’t posted anything about our 2019 or 2020 trips. Time to fix that.
Our 2019 trip was a blast, and our trip timing was driven in part by the annual Land Cruiser Destination Club (LCDC) meetup, this time in Ouray, CO.
We started off at Rocky Mountain National Park, exploring a number of the trails and enjoying some of the amazing views. One thing about Colorado is that I never tire of high elevation hikes to scenic places like this:
After RMNP we hit the San Juan mountains in and around Ouray for 3 days of off-roading fun. The first day was in and around Yankee Boy Basin. We didn’t make it to the end because of the epic snowfall (over 500″ in some places in the mountains) which had created unbelievable avalanches and still had not completely melted by August.
Our second day I led a large group over Imogene Pass into Telluride. Between the pine forests, river crossings, rocky climb, amazing views, and dilapidated mines, Imogene is my favorite trail anywhere.
Day 3 kicked off with a much smaller group (just us and one other person) heading up Corkscrew Pass and across Hurricane and California Pass and into the Animas Forks ghost town.
After Ouray, our next stop was near Las Vegas on our way to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
Sequoia and Kings Canyon were next. The parks are next to each other and are typically lumped together in guidebooks (and visits)
Our last major stop was Yosemite National Park
The trip home was slated as more than 30 hours, so we decided to break up the drive and stop in Salt Lake City for a day.
Final tally, about 5700 miles, 8.5 MPG, and an average speed of a whopping 39 MPH!