Desert Trip VI: Trip Report starting on page 6

[78SWB]

Beautiful!

 

[Larry]

I was telling little scuba Steve about your trip and he said he is second cousins with little elvis! Small world.

That is great! Brothers from another mother.... You should take Steve wheeling sometime. They love the duck out of being off-road.

I bet you're not missing too much with the Delorme vs Streets and Trips. I have Delorme running when we are on the trail, but I rarely look at it. I am almost always looking at the Oziexplorer on the trail. It uses the USGS topo maps and puts a track line and an arrow where you are. I like that a lot because there is so much old information on it. The name of that mine over there. The gravel pit over that hill. All kinds of neat info that is "lost" on new maps. I was having problems with it on our travels with you last summer, but I got it working now (with Lance's help of course) and I love it. I do like the Delorme for highway/city travel. It has the utilitarian info like a Garmin or Tomtom--gas station, hospital etc, but if streets and trips has that, then you aren't missing much.

You'll have to show me Oziexplorer sometime. Lance can probably get my Delorme working and teach me to use it too. My lack of knowledge to know how to use the damn thing is probably half of my problem but it does lock up my machine after a short time of use.

Believe it or not, Streets & Trips listed all the goodies in California (mines, Teakettle Junction, U-joint Junction, Lippincott, etc). It does okay in Utah too but doesn't show squat in Nevada. On the Nevada portion of the Mojave trail nothing was appearing on screen until we got into CA.

 

[Blue85]

The thing I like about Delorme Topo is the ability to download satellite photos and have them superimposed with the maps. When you get in areas where there are no trails on the GPS, the aerials give you a better idea of where rivers, lakes and trails are. Sometimes you can navigate by clearings you see or bits of trail. Of course things are much different in the desert, so it might help more or less. Downloading just Michigan is like 100GB of data. I know you can do some of that with Google Maps, but IMO, a system that depends on a cell phone connection is not a real solution.

I have another GPS using the open streets maps and sometimes it has trails that the Delorme subscription service doesn't show. IMO there is really no excuse for that.

Great trip report - looks like a lot of fun.

 

[max 02]

Amazing pics great story...love your truck more everytime you post pitures of it!

What kind of gas mileage do you get with it. Ever worry about running out?

 

[y5mgisi]

I think he said he got 10-11mpg overall this trip.

 

[Larry]

Amazing pics great story...love your truck more everytime you post pitures of it!

What kind of gas mileage do you get with it. Ever worry about running out?

I think he said he got 10-11mpg overall this trip.

Yeah, I didn’t do a very good job of keeping track of receipts (with the gallons listed on them) this trip. Plus the fact I lost about 7/8 of a tank on the highway between Durango and Pagosa Springs when I forgot to turn off the transfer pump skews the readings as well.

Last year’s 1,555 mile trip to Southern Utah and Western Colorado I kept track of every ounce of fuel used. That trip came in at 11.72 MPG. This year feels about the same if not even a tad better as the engine wasn’t working very hard blapping through the Mojave Desert and most of Death Valley. You can hear it in the videos barely blapping along under 1,000 RPM’s most of the time. I was actually surprised how much gas I didn't use on the 130 mile Mojave Rd. I don’t think 11ish MPG is too dang bad for a gasoline powered 8,000 lb. rig with the aerodynamics of a drive-in movie theater screen

Figure the two 16 gallon tanks can actually filled to 18 gallons and I carry 12 gallons on the rear bumper give me 48 gallons total. For easy math, even if it is getting 10 MPG, I am still good for 480 miles. I don’t think there is any place in the US where you can’t buy gas somewhere within 480 miles, even in the desert. Heck, we ran across two gas stations in Death Valley.

 

[BlazerFarm]

I just saw this thread and read it all. Great pictures and I love your truck. What a well written trip report. I know how much time that takes so it's much appreciated.

 

[496truck]

Not bad mileagewise. My 04 2500HD with the 8.1 and Allison averaged 11.7 in stock form. Empty for the most part and towing/hauling on the weekends. But the info screen always hovered around 11.something. I miss that truck.

 

[y5mgisi]

Larry, i was thinking about tires the other day, how did you end up liking these tires on this trip? I guess you liked them if you were able to cruise near 90mph.

 

[Larry]

Larry, i was thinking about tires the other day, how did you end up liking these tires on this trip? I guess you liked them if you were able to cruise near 90mph.

Oh, yeah! I love the new Fierce Attitude tires. I highly recommend them. With the truck being so heavy, moving to load E tires made a huge difference in stability. Hence, the 87 MPH on I-40 in Arizona . As crazy as it sounds the truck really feels planted to the ground now. You would think it would feel top heavy with the camper but not at all, it goes down the highway just like a modern truck. The old load range C Kumho Road Venture AT tires made the truck feel pretty squirrelly at any speed.

The Fierce Attitude tread pattern performed very well off road on the Mojave Rd and Death Valley. I ran them down to 18 PSI front/22 PSI rear when off road. They worked great! I haven’t had them in mud or deep snow yet though. They have a tad under 3,000 miles on them now and still look like new. At 3,000 miles the cheap Kumho’s were already showing significant wear. Getting ready for another 1,400 mile trip this weekend to the Overland Expo in Flagstaff, AZ. Should be a fun weekend.

 

[y5mgisi]

Awesome! Thanks! Have fun at the expo!