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Category: 4×4

Our soon to be home – FJ Cruiser

Last week we put together our soon to be home for 4-5 months this summer. The car is serviced, washed and all eager to go.

This is the car and the boxes we custom made for it. It is a bit of a hassle to get them in place. They have some sharp edges and are fairly heavy which makes it a workout to mount.

The drawers we usually use for our cool box, food, water and cooking stuff. This is what they look like in place.

In the images below you can see the front box which is basically a storage box with 2 compartments. These are great to store backpacks, camping gear and other things you don’t need if you are on the road. The second image shows what it looks like when the extensions are in place and it is all ready for sleeping. It might look short but we do actually fit straight lying down. Good thing none of us is very tall, then we might have had to get a different car.

It looks very clean and roomy right now but wait until we put all our stuff in there. The boxes are full and there is lots of things also on top of the boxes. Usually during the day we just fold the mattresses once without completely deflating them in order to make it easier to make the beds at night. This takes up a lot of space during the day but is all worth it when you just want to go to sleep.

Could you imaging living like this for a year or so? 😉

Car upgrade

Last summer we build two large boxes that can be mounted in our car and used as storage and a sleeping platform. During our holidays in August we slept most nights in the car and it worked out great. Our car is a Toyota FJ Cruiser which is not the longest car ever so we have to push the front seats forward in order to fit while sleeping. After moving the seats we have to extend the sleeping area with an extra board that is stored in one of the boxes while driving the car.

Since this car will soon be our home for a bit more than 4 months we decided to upgrade. Instead of having a separate board we attached it with hinges on the box itself so that is easily folds out. The boards are supported by smaller pieces also attached with hinges on the side of the box.

It works very well and we are happy with the successful upgrade. Why did we not do this from the beginning?? Next step is to mount the boxes in the car again and go for a test trip. 🙂

Needles – an unexpected adventure

After some breakfast in our favourite café in Moab we drove south towards Needles. The Needles is a part of Canyonlands National Park and since we already had a backcountry permit for this park we thought we should drive in and have a look.

This is what we did NOT read before driving happily along and now we also understand why the park rangers wished us good luck…


So, we did not know that we were about to drive one of the hardest trail in the state although it was written on our map, on the flyer we got at the ranger station and on the big board as you start the drive. We simply did not read it… Maybe sometimes it is good not to know everything.

We just wanted to drive in, hike a bit and camp somewhere in the park and then leave the next morning. It turned out being quite a drive with one of us most of the time in front of the car spotting the best way to go. We knew that the car was capable of a lot but we did not really want to try it out because we did not want to break it. Now we know more.



We made it through without any damages to the car, but next time we will probably hike into the area and leave the poor car safe on the paved parking lot. Once we reached our camp we went for a hike and it was all worth it because this is what we saw.





The fact that the hike was longer than we expected (our mistake again), that we had to hike the last hour or so in the dark (luckily we were clever enough to bring head lamps), that we lost the trail for a short while and were hungry and tired is something we don’t really remember anymore. Somehow it is almost always worth it.

White Rim Road – Utah


Almost ten years ago I stood at Grand View overlook in Canyonlands National Park, looking down over Colorado River as it meanders through the canyons. Halfways down I saw a trail following the white rim and I thought that some day I want to drive that road. A few days ago we drove down the Shafer Trail that took us to White Rim Road and exactly where I wanted to go.

The Shafer Trail is a steep trail with a series of switchbacks that takes you down to the white rim level. The trail then takes you along the rim in a very desolate area. There are a few camps along the trail but the number of visitors are limited and it is a quite long and bumpy ride so very few day trippers go that far. We spent two nights on the trail and saw very few people, only as we were entering the area and leaving again. Unfortunately the end part of the trail was blocked due to heavy rain so we could not drive the entire loop but had to go back the same way we came in.

The cool thing about the White Rim Road is the fact that it is isolated and you feel like you are the only people in this moon like landscape. At one spot you can look up to the Island in the Sky and see the tourists at the look out point looking down at you. Otherwise there is no sign of civilization at all. Luckily we brought some extra gas because we would not have made it back on only one tank of gas. And of course the beers we brought were also important. What else is there to do in the afternoon when you have reached your camp and it is still almost 40 degrees… 🙂

Green River at sunset from our second camp site.

The white rim is white sand stone that runs along the canyon. At some spots you can walk out on the rocks and look down towards the river.

After two and a half days of driving mostly 20 mph due to road conditions it was nice to get out on the paved road again. It is fun to drive on this kind of trails but it is usually enough for a few hours. The picture shows an example of what it can look like and although it looks quite smooth it is fairly bumpy.

In this park we saw a few long horn sheep along the way. This one looks particularly cute.