by Nathan Kennedy

I thought I had seen the real deal. But until our dusty, cliff-edged, rock piled trail ended after four days and we settled in to breakfast Saturday morning, I had never seen a true cowboy. I mean in the flesh, and not some Hollywood caricature at a bar in Minneapolis. His dust covered hat, manure caked boots and leather coat with extra strength forearm protection for handling barbed wire were tell-tale signs of his cowboyishness, but what really gave him away was what he ordered.

“The same?” Scotty the bartender asked.

“Yup,” he said as he tipped his hat our way as though he understood what we had been through over the last four days. Scotty set down a shot of Jack Daniel’s and a Budweiser and it was then that I realized there was no background noise to filter the hardness of his stare as he turned from us toward his drinks and downed the Jack. I asked Scotty to turn on the radio.

“Where you been, boys?” the cowboy asked my friend and I.

“Just trying to be as tough as you, sir,” is what I felt like saying. Or maybe something like: “Out hoping to catch a glimpse of the glorious Western Colorado mornings you witness every day while the rest of us get no closer than a photograph.”

I bit my lip and tried to look dustier than I was, like I hadn’t just taken a shower, and like passing through the John Brown Canyon from Moab was something I did every day.

“We came from Grand Junction, wheeled on Kokopelli’s Trail from Fruita to Moab with the Toyota East Coast Trail Team and about fifteen trucks, and wound our way back here to Gateway.” My answer was pretty honest, I thought. Lacking detail, but certainly humble after the trip we just finished.

Scotty scratched around the radio dial. I raised my coffee mug in a sort of toast across the restaurant to the Trail Team leaders, and to the cowboy I continued…

"We’re not Toyota guys, you know. We are Land Rover guys. I drove Adam Ruben’s 1984 Defender 110 from Minneapolis and met up with the Toyota crowd to do four days of expedition-style off roading. Adam came out mid-week, after finishing up some work back home.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from these Toyota guys. We were invited into a group of strangers, to begin with. A group of strangers who may very well have perceived us as the enemy. But in the last two hundred yards of the twelve hundred mile drive from Minneapolis, a brake line broke. Gustaf Kupetz and Garrett Matt of the Trail Team took me to Hugh Phillips at Safari, Ltd., and I began to realize that an expedition like this was judged on the experience itself, not on the logo on the wheel.

The brake line repaired, Fred Baer, also from Minneapolis, and I met the rest of the group at the Breckinridge Brewery for the introductory dinner. The Toyota crowd was putting faces with screen names as we all shared handshakes and enthusiasm for the trip. No more outsiders than anyone else, even with our Rovers, we ordered something medium-rare, and everyone got down to the business of building each other up with anticipation.

The next morning, we left Grand Junction for Fruita, CO, toward Rabbit Valley and the start of Kokopelli’s Trail. As beautiful and huge as this land was, Gustaf and Woody (Brian Swearingen) made it clear during the driver’s meeting that the scenery would only get better. We lined up our trucks for the group photo, snapped the shutter of what seemed like a hundred cameras, and the convoy hit the trail. Channel 4 on the CB lit up with drivers getting to know each other, and I realized an empty peace, as I made my small talk, but got no answer - the dammed CB wouldn’t broadcast, it would only receive.

We stopped at Knowles Overlook to tip our hats to the mighty Colorado River and take in the first canyon-style view. The afternoon had a few white-knuckle, winding edges with two hundred foot drop-offs that took spotting and patience for Alvin Kuenster in his 80 Series Cruiser towing an Adventure Trailer. The biggest challenge for most drivers, however, was visibility itself. Driving blind, due west in the dusty afternoon sky, “good navigation” simply meant not rear-ending the truck in front of you.

We had planned on making it to the Dewey Bridge campsite that first night, but for the sake of setting camp before nightfall, we stopped at Fish Ford. The Trail Team came through in grand style with their promised chili dinner, and as we sat around the fire passing onions and sour cream, our unfamiliarity with each other drifted off with the smoke of the wet logs. Scott Steal, in from New York, read aloud the – ahem - stimulating history of Kokopelli, the God of Fertility, and we shared the things we brought that meant the most to us that night: cigars, drinks, and stories of why we were there.

The temperature dropped to seventeen degrees and we put our contented selves to bed. I shivered as I put on a second base layer and a fleece jacket. Moisture from my breath froze on the outside of the goose down coat I put over the face opening of my mummy bag. Judging by what sounded like people wrestling large balloons in the tents around me, I knew I wasn’t the only one struggling to keep warm and cursing marketing company exaggerations about cold weather capabilities of their equipment. Soon all the commotion stopped and the campsite slept.

The next morning was a constant battle with frozen water, gloves and coffee presses. It was too cold initially to take off the base layer that had made for a semi-comfortable night, but the sun would rise above the Sand Flats ridge by late morning and the temp would rise in a hurry. Years before, I had learned that it’s just as uncomfortable to change out of long undies on the trail because of heat as it is to change in to them in a dark tent after it had already become cold. As the rest of the group broke camp to catch back up with Kokopelli’s Trail, I packed a pair of regular undies in my coat pocket and set off for the Grand Junction airport to pick up Adam - and to do my changing in their renovated, environmentally controlled bathroom.

The plan was for the two of us to get to Dewey Bridge and follow the directions the Trail Team would leave on a note behind the parking lot bathroom. If there was no note, we were to assume they hadn’t passed through yet, and were to stay put. No note but the waiting was beautiful. There were picnic tables, a tree with golden yellow leaves hanging over the river, and our truck with our cigar smoke rising from its shade. A couple in a Ford Mustang parked and spent a decent first date amount of time courting at the bridge. When they had gone, the silence they left was a reminder that we had no idea how far away we were from the group.

But soon an 80 series Cruiser covered in a cloud of rolling dust smashed its way off the trail into the parking lot like a rock band busting out of a dry ice veil as the lights blaze and the music crashes to start a show. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you guys are here,” Gustaf said as he and Robbie Antonson pulled up next to us.

Ha. HE was happy. We were ecstatic. Two river crossings and a few hairpin, high speed turns later, our trucks and that same rolling, rock band dust cloud came roaring into the Cowskin campsite. Overlooking a setting sun on Cowskin Canyon and Big Pinto Mesa, everyone had claimed their mostly level sites, pitched tents and were either scouting the area for great views of the upcoming sunset, or artfully wrestling with the final touches on their Iron Chef trail cooking competition entries.

The Iron Chef proved to be far more challenging than any of the entrants thought. People had come to win, and the Engel off road refrigerator grand prize was worthy of everyone’s best effort. There were homemade sausages, aromatic Thai basil beef, lasagna with homemade noodles, a pork steak with zesty adobo seasoning, Tandori chicken - and another warm campfire, surrounded by stories from the day’s adventures. Crossing rivers, traversing cliff edges and sharing the efforts of getting everyone through when it seemed the trail was impassable had made respected confidants of each of us. The thought of having been strangers just three days before had faded, and everyone congratulated Thong Cao on his Iron Chef win.

My LED headlamp and the inverted bowl of a million stars marching alongside Orion lit the way as Adam and I climbed a five hundred yard path to set up tents and fade into what would be a much warmer night of sleep. Our simple plan hit a glitch, however, when Adam’s untested tent turned out to be nothing like the packaging depicted. The poles were wrong, it was the wrong shape, the color was like a mid-seventies bell-bottom denim pant, and everything was the wrong size. Even the logo on the tent itself didn’t match the logo on the bag or instructions. Adam engineered a workable frame from the poles and begrudgingly climbed inside his also newly-purchased, untested mummy-style sleeping bag. As his feet stuck out the end of the tent and the wind blew through the webbed openings on either side at the top, I couldn’t help but laugh as he pointed out that the only way for him to fit inside the bag was with his right arm outside the zipper. After his mostly sleepless first night, he blamed his discomfort as much on my snoring as on his gear.

The next morning the group set out for the Top of the World trail while a few of us stayed behind to finish cleaning up camp. The Top of the World trail is about nine miles of bumpy terrain. Not terribly difficult off roading, but certainly enough rough dirt riding, rock climbing and slickrock traversing to keep most drivers on their toes. There were a couple of obstacles to be reckoned with, however. The first Toyota we came across was Bob Devereux’s 60 series Cruiser on the side of the first fairly difficult part of the trail. He had picked a line to hit the obstacle head on and sheered six studs off of his hub. Ouch. He and Gary Coberly-Waggoner were hard at work getting the truck back on the road.

One of the more experienced off roaders in the group finessed his FJ through some tricky situations without a spotter. He picked a line on the last major push that several of the other FJs had bypassed and hammered the gas a little harder than his insticts told him to do. When those rear wheels dropped, the ring and pinion snapped, shattering six gear teeth. The Trail Team had anticipated a situation like this, and inside of two hours, the FJ Cruiser had an upgraded 2008 differential installed and was back with the group. The rest of us used the time to get photographs of trucks proudly standing in front of the amazing canyon at the Top of the World. Adam and I took few bites from a pastrami sandwich we had in the cooler, and Woody used the small window of cell phone coverage to post an update, with photos, on the IH8MUD.com website. Soon enough we headed out through Onion Creek and on to the famous Rose Garden Hill.

Some of the drivers had never felt the eerie sensation of a front wheel slowly free-falling, teeter-totter style, a few… more… feet… finally touching down, and waiting for the opposite rear to rise up to compensate. I stood beside the one monster drop on Rose Garden Hill taking photographs as Gustaf and Woody spotted trucks down and the driver’s expressions showed which ones were new to the experience. Most of the trucks were outfitted with rock sliders, at the minimum, and all of the trucks got through without incident, save a few turned stomachs.

Back in line, we made our way to Hideaway Canyon and the Hideaway campsite. The ease and speed with which the drivers weaved through the darkness showed how much more comfortable and sure of our abilities we had become. The expedition was winding down, and as we felt it creep toward its end, we became a little more aggressive on straightaways, a little more cocky on turns, a little more respectful of what experienced control of excellent vehicles could produce. Then again, it was middle of nowhere dark - maybe our inhabition came from not being able to see the edges we teetered along, or their two hundred foot drop-offs.

Pulling in to the last campsite in darkness was not a hindrance to us, but rather an inspiration. It was a call to the next expedition, where silently we hoped that not only would it be total darkness when we made camp, but that it would be raining and muddy, with 30 mph cold winds whipping our tents as we fought to drive in the stakes. Whatever challenge would be brought before us, we knew with a group like this, we could rise up to meet the test.

As Adam shared a camp stove with Tim, Chuck, Dan, Amanda, Gustaf and Garret (sounds absurd, I know), I was past the end of a trail setting up our tents. Back down the path, through the trees, I could just barely see a hint of what was a healthy group campfire. I could hear stories and laughter and soon the strumming of a guitar letting loose a familiar song accompanied by horribly out of tune, out of pitch, out of everything, bevy of screaming screaming voices belting out hysterical Toyota lyrics:

I’m Leavin’ On An F.J.
Don’t know when I’ll be back again
Leavin’ on an F.J.
Oh babe, I hate to go…..

This impromptu talent show was a perfect lead in to the unexpected Trail Team raffle. All names were placed in a hat, each was drawn and prizes were handed out. Toyota came through with trailworthy hats, gloves and tool / utility bags; Iron Pig Offroad gave hats and t-shirts; Winchline.com donated hats and winchline bags and a fiber winch line extension; Tuffy offered a certificate for one security box and discounts on others; and Metal-tech offered a certificate for half the purchase price on a set of FJ Cruiser rock sliders. Gustaf had even hunted down Harold Stephens in Thailand to autograph a few copies of his legendary book, Who Needs A Road? The Trail Team guys had obviously gone out of their way to get support for this expedition, and the off road world responded. Everyone went to bed that night with a bit of shwag to help them remember the trip.

We woke up Friday morning and broke camp as though it had become routine: nodding to the next fellow as we left the makeshift bathroom, cursing as we grabbed the top of the Jet Boil right where the steam from the boiling water came pouring out, giggling as the grape jelly came out of the jar in a frozen, unspreadable heap on to our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Weary but excited for our last day on the trail, we were aware of the fact that many of the trucks would be out of gas by midday. Yes, we had all brought jerry cans. Yes, we had all used them, and yes, the threat of running out of gas was very real. The trail leaders looked at several options and ultimately decided to stick to plan: stay off-road to Moab, fuel up, and circle back to rescue any trucks that didn’t make it.

There were a lot of little orange pumpy lights flashing that morning and all of the trucks had coughed their way through their last trickles of gas on the way in, but no one was left behind. After refueling we met for lunch at the Moab Brewery before heading through Porcupine Rim toward Gateway, Colorado. The day’s drive took us from 4,600 feet above sea level to over 8,700 feet, back down to 4,500 feet, up again to almost 9,000 feet, and landed us, warm transmissions and all, at the Gateway Canyons resort.

Gateway Canyons was the perfect spot to clean up after a few days on the dusty trail. Warm showers and brief naps behind us, everyone met at the on-site Paradox Grille for our final celebration and goodbye dinner. We weren’t prepared for the luxury we found. From Alaskan King Crab, filet mignon and exceptional Mexican dishes to Patrón margaritas, we were being well taken care of. The laughter rang out as it had each night on the trail, accompanied by storytelling and a bit of exaggeration. There was no cold air just beyond a warm campfire, however. This night it was Irish coffee drinks and smooth jazz music that kept the group warm and the stories growing. Dinner came to an end with a surprise from George Zoros. Rumors spread and then it proved to be true - he had paid everyone’s tab. The entire tab. Food, drinks, gratuities – all covered! Speechless, we shook his hand and said what we could to express gratitude in the face of such a gift. Woody stepped up to to keep the festivities in high gear, and when he opened a new tab for the crowd, we all raised our glasses and yelled Goerge’s oft-repeated toast: CHECK PLEASE!"

“Sounds like a pretty good week, fellas,” the cowboy said at the end of the story. He muscled his way through his Budweiser, paid his tab, flipped a coin to Scotty, and waltzed out the door into his real wild west. The rest of us waltzed out that same door after breakfast, but ours was to a weary, mission accomplished type of beat. We had crossed 1,200 miles to drive 180 miles off-road and brought Land Rovers to a TLCA event. We had come to the end of the trail and what we would take back to our Rover contigents were stories of respect, off-road capability, hospitality, ingenuity and trail tenacity of an enthusiastic Toyota crowd. Most importantly, we would take back the pleasure of spending time on an overland expedition as well organized as this, with a group of people as unique - and now united - as we had come to know.

24 hours and 1,200 miles later, the presets on the radio started pegging our local stations again. We were home.

“Sounds like a pretty good week, fellas.”

Indeed.