About a year ago a friend of mine (@aventuraseeker) mentioned an event called Land Ops (www.LandOps.com or www.meetup.com/LandOps/. In short, a Land Ops event is a group activity of four-wheeling and geocaching with HAM radios used for communications and control. After lurking on their site for a while I made it out to one of their mini-ops and was totally hooked. This weekend I participated in my first full day event, it was a “recon op”, the primary goals were wayfinding and reporting on trail (or lack there of) conditions and difficulty. I learned quite a bit, put the Tundra through some places I probably shouldn’t have gone and collected a new assortment of pinstripes.

On top of camping, its a great opportunity to geek out. Try out your gear, test what works (and what doesn’t) and learn along the way.

Inside the truck I run Motion X on an old iPad with a Bad Elf GPS. This trip I saw some other mapping aps and will give one of them a try.

Timeline of the whole trip. Top line is elevation, bottom is speed over time. You can see the gap just past halfway where I got stuck.

Lastly, its always best to travel with others. I was with a number of Jeeps and the Tundra was the heaviest and longest vehicle. I got it stuck pretty well when I chose the wrong line and proceeded to dig it in on the side of a wash. With some careful pulling and then a winch backwards the truck was free and I picked a better line and drove out.

On the way home I sidetracked to Nelson, NV an amazing little photo spot that is just loaded with nice oddities. If you're in the area, don't miss it. Well worth dropping a $5 or $10 bill in their donation envelope!

And don't forget to have fun!