Expedition Colorado

“A Search for High Adventure in a Shrinking World”

- Brad Lovell

What line of reasoning made me hunt down an all original '43 Willys MB with the plan of driving it 550 miles nearly all off-road to the wheeling Mecca of Moab? Well, it’s complicated and the product of a strange cocktail of experiences and opinions that slosh around in my head. The unifying theme, however, is adventure. I’m talking serious adventure like racing Baja, crossing the Australian Outback, or driving the ice roads to the Arctic Ocean. I want one that comes with consequences, challenge, and discomfort. Could there be an epic adventure in my own backyard?

To find out, I decided to rewind 75 years and feel what it was like to travel from Colorado Springs, CO across the roof of the Colorado Rockies and through the remote high desert to Moab, UT. I linked together the most difficult backcountry roads - a 550 mile route that is 88% offroad reaching 12,705 ft while crossing five major mountain ranges including the Continental Divide. No top, no seatbelts, no doors, and only a smattering of tools and spare parts. That ought to do it! A true adventure.

I guessed it would take us five days and we would simply sleep where we stopped. And who is we? Well, I figured I better drag along my two sons for some true manly expeditioning. Antique offroaders don’t exactly grow on trees and we all agreed that my brother Roger and his son were sufficiently disadvantaging themselves in his Bronco II, a project freshly christened as functioning after 28 years in the shop. Jake Arbitter apparently suffers from the same lack of judgment as his employer and joined us in his home built ‘96 Ranger. To top it off, we were able to cajole our longtime sponsor AMSOIL into sending along Wyatt Gruben as a photographer.