After walking away virtually unharmed from our accident in our '97 Land Cruiser, there was no doubt I was going to get another 80-series Land Cruiser. Yes, the gas mileage is horrible on these trucks, but they are big, capable, heavy, over-built vehicles that proved to me would take about as much of a beating as can be dished out, and still protect me and my family. It was pretty much a no-brainer decision. After settling with insurance on the wrecked rig, I was off to find a replacement Land Cruiser. I finally found another already built 80-series, '95 Land Cruiser up in Los Angeles. A week or so after getting the truck, it was time to give the rig a shakedown run, so Marcus and I headed up to our favorite camping spot for a quick overnight trip. Any excuse to go camping, right?
This truck was even more built than our '97 that we wrecked. It had been re-geared to 4.88's (stock gearing is 4.11), and had 315 tires (35"), so it pretty much handled the trail up to camp with ease. The locking differentials were not engaging, but it seemed to be electrical relay related, so it was good to figure out on the shakedown run (I was later able to easily fix this issue when I got back home). Even without the lockers, the truck handled the trail easily.
For early November, the weather couldn't have been better. It was nice and warm, and we were in shorts and t-shirts for the whole evening. Our RTT had been pretty much thrashed from the accident, so we just used my 2-man backpacking tent for the night. The weather was so nice that we just left the rainfly off for the night. After some grilled chicken, sauteed vegatables, and campfire baked potatoes for dinner, we had a fun snack of JiffyPop popcorn made over the campfire.
The next morning, we awoke to another beautiful morning. We did a little exploring around our campsite, and found a viewpoint from around the corner from our site that gave a clear overlook of Lake Henshaw. We then went and explored some of the old mines (even though some are closed) around camp. We've never found anything in these old mine other than bats a couple times, but they are still fun to explore.
We broke camp and headed back home, but it was fun for a quick father-son camping trip and a shakedown run on the new Cruiser to figure out how to start modifying it to best accomodate our needs.
