An Epic Jeep Adventure – Western Mountain Loop Part 1

An epic Jeep adventure is underway right now! Our Jeep Western Mountain Loop Trip has begun.

A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” – Grace Murray Hopper

Just like ships not being designed to sit in port, Jeeps weren’t meant to sit in a garage or pound pavement. If that is what you are doing with your Jeep, you’re doing it wrong.

Let’s face it, Jeeps are designed to be taken where other vehicles dare not tread. And that is exactly what I plan on doing during this epic Jeep adventure.

For those new to Jeepsies, my wife, son, and I are full-time travelers. Jeepsies is a play on the word gypsies because we are nomads in the truest sense of the word. We usually don’t stay in a single location for more than 2 weeks at a time. And no, we’re not on witness protection.

In 2018 we began our 5th year of full-time travel.

Our epic Jeep adventure actually began back on February 16th when we left Austin, Texas and headed toward Fredericksburg, Texas to participate as speakers at the RV Entrepreneur Summit.

Of course I had to pop up to Hidden Falls Adventure Park for a day of wheeling.

If you’ve never been to Hidden Falls, <~~ read this. It is like Disneyland for Jeeps.

The sold out RV Entrepreneur Summit was a blast! Here’s a photo of over 100 awesome people partying at our campsite. We had 3 fires, a live band, and even a fire dancer!

Summit over. Time to head out on our epic Jeep adventure.

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Epic Jeep Adventure – Overview

Here is where it gets crazy. There is simply too much to do, and too much to see, to make an exhaustive list. If I wrote this article with all the details it would be a book.

But I’ll cover some of the highlights of our epic Jeep adventure in this article, and you’ll have to stay tuned to Jeepsies to see all the wheeling pics and adventures.

I hope to meet with Jeepers everywhere we go. If you are somewhere along my route, let me know! My ever-changing itinerary will be posted on the right sidebar here at staging2.hourlesslife.com, so check it out.

If you took a look at my itinerary you’ll understand why I’m calling this our epic Jeep adventure – Western Mountain Loop Trip.

This trip will take us into 13 states and 2 countries. I estimate that it will take us the better part of 11 months to complete.

This will be the adventure of a lifetime!

Epic Jeep Adventure – Texas and New Mexico

The first leg of our epic Jeep adventure takes us through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. We’ll possibly dip into western Colorado as well!

Fredericksburg, Texas is already under our belt. We had an amazing time in this little German Texas Hill Country town. The highlight of our time there was our party at our RV pictured above and our hike up Enchanted Rock. If you are ever in the area, don’t miss this hike.

Next we headed to Caprock Canyons State Park in the panhandle of Texas. This is the home of the Texas State bison herd. There were bison everywhere and plenty of hiking with gorgeous views of magnificent canyons. Not much wheeling in this area, but one of our favorite places we’ve ever stayed.

They say there isn’t much out in Eastern New Mexico, and there isn’t.

But the plains of Eastern New Mexico do offer fishing, boating, camping and hiking. To be honest, being here has been a nice little break as we are miles from anything and it has given me a chance to catch up on emails and well, write this article.

I’m currently sitting in our RV looking out over Lake Santa Rosa. The rest of our adventure is still ahead of us.

This weekend we head to Albuquerque, New Mexico where I might do a little wheeling at Rio Puerco or up in the Jemez mountains.

On Monday March 19th I’ll be meeting up with the awesome folks at the New Mexico Jeep Group who I just featured in an article. If you want to join us, we’ll be at Nexus Brewery from 5pm to 7:30pm all Jeepers are welcome! I’d love to meet you.

After Albuquerque, it is off to Gallup, New Mexico for another week of rest and catching up on emails and writing before we make our move into Arizona.

Epic Jeep Adventure – Arizona

Flagstaff, Arizona is our only stop in Arizona but I’ll be using it as a base of operations to head out on some of the best trails in the nation. But trails aren’t the only thing to see in this area… Wait until you read this…

All of the places listed here are within a reasonable drive of Flagstaff:

Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Grand Canyon National Park, Montezuma Castle National Monument, Montezuma Well, Navajo National Monument, Petrified Forest National Park, Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, Tuzigoot National Monument, Walnut Canyon National Monument, Wupatki National Monument and Antelope Canyon pictured above.

Not to mention all of the Jeep trails I’ll be tackling while I’m there.

~breathe~

Ok, the only part that sucks is that I’m only there for two weeks.

How the heck am I going to fit this all in? Especially when you know I’m going to take a day to dip down to Sedona to run Broken Arrow, Schnebly Hill Road, and a few other trails at least once!

Plus there are so many more trails in this amazing book by FunTreks that I’ve been salivating over since we left Texas. If you don’t have a copy of this, pick one up right now!

Epic Jeep Adventure – Utah

From Flagstaff we head into the Mecca of the Jeep world, the Great State of Utah. No epic Jeep adventure would be complete without some time in Utah right? Well, we will be there for at least a month and a half. Jealous yet?

I’m jealous and I haven’t even arrived there yet.

Also if you are planning a Jeep trip to Utah. You MUST have this essential Moab Jeep trail guide by FunTreks. Do yourself a favor, just go ahead and pick it up now, it is cheaper than any Jeep mod you plan on getting and you’ll get more use out of it than your winch.

April 14th finds us near Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon.

I’ll actually be “moochdocking” meaning staying in my RV, but at a friends house. In 5 years of full time travel I’ve never moochdocked, but when my buddy Brian “Woody” Swearingen, of IH8Mud.com fame invited me to stay with him, I couldn’t say no.

Even though he’s a Toyota guy, (we won’t hold that against him) Woody is a cool cat. He is super well known in the off road world and off road racing circuits. Truth be told, you might not want to talk any smack about Toyotas until you’ve wheeled with Woody. You (and your Jeep) might just be handed a slice of humble pie. Just saying.

Toward the end of the month we head to the Capital Reef National Park area.

I don’t think we’ve locked down a place to stay yet in the Capital Reef area, so if anyone has suggestions, let me know!  I might moochdock at your place!

Epic Jeep Adventure – Utah, Wyoming, and More

Our epic Jeep adventure continues full force in May.

Arches National Park is first on the list, then Canyonlands National Park. With that, we’ll have hit all 5 Utah National Parks! In addition there will be many Jeep runs and trails all throughout the month.

If, and I do mean if, I can be dragged out of Utah we’ll be heading to Yellowstone National Park next in Wyoming. Pretty much nothing could drag me out of Utah except Yellowstone.

But my route to Yellowstone is still up in the air. Haven’t decided if I’m going to go into western Colorado first and then north into Wyoming. Or, If I’m going to go north through Salt Lake City and into Idaho before crossing back east into Wyoming.

You see folks, these are the tough decisions I’m faced with. What would you do?

Epic Jeep Adventure – Part 2 Coming Soon

Because this article is so long, Part 2 of our epic Jeep Adventure – Western Mountain Loop Trip will have to wait. Part 2 will cover Montana, Canada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, (Possibly Kansas), Colorado, and Oklahoma!

I hope you are enjoying this and would love to have you comment and leave me any tips for the areas I’ve covered here in Part 1!

Until next time, keep it dirty and wheels side down.

~ Eric