Desert Trip 2017: Trip Report

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In this year’s installment of the annual Desert trip that Larry and his cast of characters normally run there has been a couple of desert noobs to join in on the fun. That’s me and our buddy Ian. Prior to this year my previous K5 was deemed “unfit” for the trip. Something about not wanting to be hauling me or my junk out of the desert when it breaks came out of Larry’s mouth a couple of times. As most have followed in my build thread he’s worked his butt off to get my new K5 into a Desert ready form with my added work later, it was deemed “fit” for the trip. So with emails sent back and forth to the crew the cast of characters on the trip ended up like this:


Larry and his Mother In Law Lynne in the 78K10/Pheonix camper combo

Ty and his wife Jody in his Ram 2500/Pheonix camper combo


Don in his 2016 Ram Power wagon


Bill and his girlfriend Jenn in his Cummins Dodge


Me and Ian in the only other Chevy, my 91 Blazer.


The plan was to ride out at O-dark thirty on Sunday June 11th and make our way for Moab as our jumping off point. We’d meet up with Don that night for some Mexican grub and make our way to Green River UT on Monday to meet up with Ty and his wife. From there the plan was loosely set to explore the area of the San Rafael Swell North of I-70 and work our way back towards Moab by the end of the week. My how those plans got altered, but that’s part of the fun right?


Teeming with excitement I was up late the night before packing the Blazer to be ready to pick up Ian on the way to Larry’s place the next morning. I might have got a couple of hours sleep before my phone alarm went off. But once it went off, I was off with a quick kiss to the wife and away I went. Got Ian’s stuff loaded at his place and made it to Larry’s just before Bill and Jenn rolled up. We exchanged some smart assed pleasantries and hit the road in short order. Keep this in mind, this was a first time most of us were meeting Jenn and I’ll say in only a few minutes she was fitting right in with us. Westward bound we shot down US 50 with a small amount of chatter on the CB between the trucks. Here we are rolling west on Hwy 50 outside of Salida CO. This would be a familiar view of Larry's rig for us for the week.





We made our way over Monarch pass, past Gunnison, Blue Mesa reservoir, the Black canyon and stopped for fuel and lunch in Montrose. Blue mesa here.

The first stretch of road mileage had my little 5.3 equipped Blazer keeping up with the two heavy hitters and knocking down 16mpg to boot.


Larry had planned to take the southern route to Moab rather than hauling up to Grand Junction and back down again. This proved to be a most scenic and fun way to get into Utah. Ian and I both couldn’t believe the change in topography as well as ecosystems we encountered along the route. We had talked about taking the new Rim rocker trail that connects Montrose to Moab, but most trip reports up to that point had it listed as a two day run in a truck. Still, the route we took was still 40 solid miles of dirt before we touched pavement just before the Utah state line.

Looking down south from our route at the area near Telluride from outside of Montrose.

Same area:





We took our time at the line to take the obligatory photos with the Utah sign. Taking off again shortly after that was the first case of heat induced stalling in my rig. Larry and I had discovered the problem the week before due to Stevie Wonder’s exhaust shop routing my pipes awful close to important things like the fuel lines and tank. So began process we would repeat many times throughout the week. Hook up the fuel pressure gauge, bleed off the air being created by the fuel boiling with the pump shut off and repeat until solid fuel comes out of the bleed line. We get it running again and press on for Moab.


Once we got onto hwy 191 heading north for Moab Larry called us on the CB to say he could swear Don was behind him in his Power Wagon. We laughed at the possibility but what was the chance? Larry tried calling him on his phone, but the cell coverage is pretty bad where we were at so it took a few miles to get through. Sure enough Larry came back over the radio to say it was in fact Don behind him. What great timing. We were only a few miles away from the famous “Hole-n-the rock” gift shop so we decided to pull in and check it out. Besides we are on vacation right? Ian and I got to meet Don for the first time after months of harassment via email. It was great to put a face to the smart assed emails finally. We checked out the hole in the rock and proceeded to get back on the highway and head into Moab.





From there we split up to our own lodging arrangements and last stop for supplies at the grocery store. Ian and I checked into our Campsite on the north end of town and hatched a plan to remedy our hot fuel problem before dinner. While the hotel folks were freshening up, Ian and I found the only hardware store in town and bought some 18ga sheet metal to make some shielding from the exhaust. We met up with Larry and Lynne at their hotel and waited to hear from Don, Bill and Jenn. Dinner was fun for a first full meeting of a portion of the group. Don is a riot by the way. What we didn’t expect is Jenn punking the entire group before we dug into our food. She got us all with a well-timed joke that none of us expected from her. Bravo Jenn. After dinner we split back up with Ian and I getting to work in our campsite blacksmithing out a heat shield. I’m pretty sure we got some odd looks but it was well before dark and we worked quickly. The fix in place we setup our sleeping arrangements and kicked back to relax.




Our fix:





Monday found Ian and I up early breaking up camp to hit a local Denny’s for breakfast as my camp stove was in Bill’s Dodge. The rest of the hotel crew caught up to us there and we headed out for Green River to meet up with Ty and Jody.

Heading north on 191.

The drive up takes no time at all, but we noticed the closer to I-70 we got the windier it got. We rolled into the hotel lot where Ty and Jody were. Pulling in, they were waiting for us.