Yesterday: off-roading & puppy toting

Today we took the puppies out to the bay and let them frolic in the water. But today was only partially about them. A lot of it was about me (and the Mighty Tacoma).

Out by the bay where we sometimes take the dogs to play is an OHV park (Off-Highway Vehicles). I’ve been doing some thinking about what the Tacoma is currently capable of in stock trim (with better tires) and what it is I want it to be capable of. The rub is, I’m not sure of either at this point. I have a vague idea of what I want it to be able to do (EVERYTHING), but I’m not sure what all it’s lacking as of now. Besides ground clearance, that is.

So after the dogs had some time to play, we loaded them up and went ‘adventuring.’ It wasn’t too much of an outlandish adventure really. It’s a park, there’s a lot of easy trails and a spot with some obstacles to practice on, and one in particular I really wanted to play with: The rock pit.

It’s rated as “Moderate” difficulty. From afar it looks simple enough: A stretch of rocks that make up a path. Simple, right? As you get closer though, you notice that this rocky outcropping is full of large pointy boulders that reach pretty high, and shallow patches that conversely stand pretty low, and you start to wonder (silently, to yourself); can I actually navigate this? I had attempted it a few days prior when I was there alone with the dogs, and decided after clearing my first boulder & having my mudflap make some hideous noises that it wasn’t wise to do this without my navigator present (The Girl), and backed up out of the obstacle. Unfortunately my tire pinned the mudflap against the rock behind it and subsequently ripped it off. So yeah, this pit means business (and my mudflaps are WAAAAAYYY too low).

So today I took the rest of the mudflaps off, loaded the navigator, and we tried to tackle the obstacle. Twice. Because I wanted to make sure that we could get through something like this somewhere else, if we ever came across it. Which is good to know.

So how do these boulders stack up? Take a look at the video on my videos page. It’s a little long, I wanted to get a few different angles and such. Tough it out, take a look and see.

With a few extra inches in suspension and another inch or so due to bigger tires, I think that the Tacoma could go just about anywhere, any time. And I plan to do this. Not real soon mind you, but eventually. I definitely want to add the inches, but I still have 2-½ years under warranty, which I want to take part in.

But it will come. I started a photo gallery for the Mighty Tacoma, I figure it can be a visual timeline for the truck, both in what we do to it and with it over time.

Don’t tell The Girl this, though. She won’t take to lightly to the idea of me wanting to put some $$ into the truck to have some fun with it. Shhh. We’ll break it to her later.