For four years I turned down my son’s invitations to join him, his girlfriend Andrea, and some friends on their annual EXBRO (Expedition Broverland, a word play on the tv series Expedition Overland) trips with the excuse I don’t have a suitable vehicle. But when I heard that this year’s trip was going to be in the wilds of Nevada, an area I’ve long wanted to explore, I decided that life was too short for that lame excuse anymore. So I impulsively decided to modify my xB to make it suitable, hopefully. I’m coming!
It was one of the best decisions I ever made. The trip was fantastic, fulfilling multiple aspirations: spend days driving off-road; see splendid sights, endless vistas, ghost towns and superb scenery; enjoy the company of my son, Andrea, Jim Klein and some new friends; and do it all in a silly little FWD box that I modified myself to take on the challenge. Would it make it?
The plan was to meet on the evening of June 19th at Alkaline Flat Hot Springs, 20 miles south of Tonopah, NV. That’s some 700 miles from Eugene, so I broke up the drive into two pleasant days, with my first overnight on a hilltop pull-off from Hwy 447 about 80 miles north of Gerlach, NV. It was a scenic preview of things to come.
It was also my first night sleeping in the xB, which I turned into a self-contained microvan (this was shot before my final packing). With the front seat removed, I have a full length foam mattress; food and utensils are stashed in bins just ahead of the bed. The cooler is underneath, supporting the front of the bed. With its high roof, it’s quite easy to climb in via the driver’s side rear door, to change or whatever. It’s a comfy, one-person camper, and it’s exceeded my expectations in that regard.
I already detailed here the many changes I made to the xB to make it as suitable as possible for the job at hand. For those who missed it, here’s the highlights: lower bumper sections removed/cut, sill body “kit” removed, suspension raised 1″ with polyurethane spacer blocks, softer springs, struts and shocks from a Toyota Echo/Yaris, front sway bar removed for better articulation, larger 205/65R15 HD 6-ply Firestone Winterhawk commercial tires, which combined with the spring lift created a total lift of 1.5″ and a bit over 9″ of ground clearance. Hopefully that would be enough.
The roof rack carried a full-size spare, two 2-gallon gas cans and my recovery kit (recovery bolt, snatch strap, tow strap, and folding shovel). All the rest of my gear easily fit inside. Total outlay: about $500. A cheap price of admission.
The final touch was a suitable mascot.
Front and rear.
I was the first to arrive at Alkali Flat Hot Springs. There are two hot pools of different temperature that we enjoyed in the cool of the evening and again in the morning. The views across the vast valley were soon to be very familiar. Nevada has numerous mountain ridges running north-south, and broad valleys in between. The mountains typically look much closer than they are due to the exceptionally dry clear air.
The large pool was perfect for cooling down afterwards.
There was a welcoming committee of about a half dozen wild burros in the middle of the road as I drove in.
Ted (Ed) and Andrea arrived in their Tacoma TRD, sporting its new swing-away carrier out back.
A bit later, Jim “Cannonball” Klein arrived in his Jeep Wrangler looking remarkably fresh after the long drive from Colorado, and only a day after he had returned home from Minnesota, also driving. Two other participants also arrived; Josh from Idaho and Randy from Eugene. It was to be the first of many lovely evenings eating and socializing, with the inevitable spectacular sunset over the distant mountains to the west.
There were also two ponds, visible here on the left. The closer one was populated with bullfrogs, whose repetitive deep and plaintive pleas for a mate became a sort of semi-pleasant white background noise as we went to bed. One frog would start, and the others all repeated his rap.
But the curious braying and other indescribable sounds that two burros made on thefar side of the pond was too loud and obnoxious, so Josh climbed down from his roof-top tent and walked over to have a very frank conversation with them: Shut the fuck up! Which they did, after a few mutterrings only two burros can make. Thank you Josh!
As we ate breakfast we were treated to a series of visits by small groups of wild horses that came to drink at the pond.
The groups appeared to have regular scheduled times at the pond, as there was a constant coming and going with very little overlap. Another group is barely visible, awaiting their turn in the distance.
There were several young foals to be seen. It was superb breakfast scenery on the go; sure beat watching or reading the news.
After the horses were done, some pronghorn antelope took their turns. This one locked eyes with Josh.
We stopped in Tonopah for ice and gas. When Ted looked across the parking lot and saw this old Corolla Liftback with two giant antennas sitting there with a person inside, he almost fell over: he had seen the very same car in a parking lot on a previous EXBRO, two years ago, somewhere in Eastern Oregon. What are the odds? Is he following and monitoring us?
Ted ambled over to talk to him. Turns out he has lived mostly out of his Corolla for many years, and spends much of his time hanging out in the wilder areas of this part of the world. Just a coincidence; and one involving a very genuine CC at that.
I had stopped in for a bit of poking around in Tonopah the previous afternoon, so I’ll add a couple of shots of the town. Like so many Nevada mining towns, Tonopah was once a bustling and prosperous place.
Three famous silver mines, including the Silver Queen (above) produced very profitably for several decades before finally shutting down.
The Mizpah mine was another, and its name also was given to the biggest hotel in town. The mean-looking flat black Viper’s license plate reads “ASSAYER”.
Since there was an assayer’s office just a few doors down, so I assume it’s his Viper. Just the thing to take out for a fast spin on the mostly deserted highways around Tonopah.
Maybe the Tesla Model S is his too. The two quickest American cars of their times.
As we headed north out of town on fairly easy dirt roads, we couldn’t help but see the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project off in the distance, lit up with an almost unearthly brightness. As so many things in the dry and very clear desert air, it was actually a lot further away than it initially seemed; it was in our view for some twenty minutes.
The plant, built in 2014, uses 10,347 mirrors to focus the sun’s energy on its central tower to heat circulating molten salt (sodium) to just over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is then stored in a tank and used used to heat a steam generator, allowing it to also operate all night unlike solar panels. But the plant was overly expensive and suffered several technical setbacks, including a leak in the sodium tank. It went bankrupt in 2019 and has been offline since then, although there is talk of restarting it in 2021. Photovoltaics (solar panels) have dropped in price dramatically, making this technology essentially obsolete.
We stopped for a group photo shoot a little ways down the road. To the right of Ted and Andrea’s Tacoma is the most serious off-roader of the group, Josh’s prior-generation Tacoma. It’s got a front winch, and Josh carries a chain saw, Max Trax, and other recovery items to cope with just about any obstacles he might encounter. At the far right is Randy’s Toyota 2011 Sequoia, which he just bought and outfitted for this trip to replace the 4×4 Econoline 350 extended body van that he used on past EXBRO trips. That van was a bit unwieldy and rode roughly due to very stiff springs. Randy removed the middle and one of the rear-most seats, making room for a full-length bed and plenty of storage. Jim also figured out how to sleep in his Jeep, which he will show us later in a post and video.
We skirted the Tonopah Test Range.
And lots of free-range cattle, which vastly outnumbered the humans we saw on this trip.
Stops for route consultations were not uncommon. We used the Gaia app, in which we had uploaded maps of the area as well as the Nevada Backcountry Discovery Route (“NBDR”) route points ahead of time, as cell coverage was very intermittent. But we didn’t always stick to the NBDR, in order to explore points of interest or other reasons.
We all carried cheap but very effective little two-way radios so that we could space ourselves out to avoid driving in the inevitable clouds of dust kicked up behind each vehicle. That’s both for comfort as well as safety, as driving into a thick dust cloud is dangerous as well as unpleasant.
Page 2 continues with ghost towns and some video of the xB tackling some challenging terrain:
After a morning of fairly easy dirt roads, we entered the first of a number of very sleepy (if alive at all) small hamlets. Like all the others, Manhattan, NV had once been a busy little mining town, and now is home to a small number of inhabitants.
The old wood church on a hill overlooking the town is the most prominent building. It was actually moved here in 1906 from Belmont, our next stop, according to a sign. I couldn’t see how they would have got it up the steep hill intact. It had been taken apart and reassembled.
Its unpainted wood siding and trim have developed a deeply-defined texture and patina after well over a century of harsh Nevada sunlight. The wood is bone dry and hard, but will never rot out here.
Lunch in Manhattan in the parking lot of the museum/former school was as good as anything you’d likely find in its namesake on the other side of the country. Ted’s famous smoked pulled pork was put to use in several meals, starting with these EXBRO sandwiches. There were no gustatory deprivations on this trip.
I noticed a fine collection of CCs across the lot from our lunch spot. Scenes like this are extremely common all through this part of the country, as cars don’t rust and nobody can be bothered to haul them the great distances to a scrap yard. So there’s a museum of previously-owned cars on many folks’ property.
These might be more than one owners’ collection; perhaps because it’s next to the town museum?
The Toyota Tercel 4WD looks to be very much still in use, not surprisingly. It’s a spiritual antecedent to my xB, although with genuine 4WD.
As we were eating and checking out the cars, an older gentleman walked up and greeted us. When five trucks pull into town, folks in places like this do notice. He told us that he worked at the museum when it was open (it was closed this day), so he decided to give us some town history out in the parking lot. He’d lived there for over forty years, having worked at a nearby gold mine that’s still active, and where many of the town’s current inhabitants still work. The little blue Datsun pickup in the collection here was his; he’d bought it new and drove it for a number of decades. He also gave us some good advice about points of interest and camping spots on our route.
Our drive after lunch took us up over the Toquima Range, a fairly low ridge in relative terms. The driving now was even more fun, as the tracks narrowed and became steeper, bouncier and curvier.
We descended into Belmont, first noticeable by the tall chimney from a former ore smelter. These are quite common sights out here, as the wood buildings they were once attached too have long burned or collapsed.
Belmont was founded after a silver strike there in 1865, and was once the seat of Nye County. The elegant brick courthouse has been restored on the outside, but looking into the tall windows showed that the inside is anything but restored.
The former jail at the back of the courthouse had partially collapsed.
No worries; a temporary steel jail had been erected to house the more unruly citizens of Belmont. The hot box.
The main street’s stone buildings are now just a few remaining walls.
Only the former bank’s fine brick facade is still intact.
The Belmont Courier’s building stands quite intact, sporting a new sign.
A few wood buildings survived too.
As has this wood plow. That blooming cactus has nothing to worry about, though.
Right in the center of town there were a few old vehicles, including the almost inevitable Advanced Design Chevy pickup. A 3/4 ton, with an 8′ bed, no less.
There was also this old fire engine. I couldn’t see any markings or badging as a tell-tale to what brand it was. So I lifted the hood in hopes the engine might provide a clue.
No, I don’t think it was an Oldsmobile. But the Rocket V8 must have improved the engine’s speed and pumping power by a healthy margin.
We decided to heed this sign in front of the saloon, and quench our thirsts after a hot walk around town.
The barmaid was taciturn, but Josh has a gift of getting folks to open up, and soon enough we were listening to some fascinating snippets of her life story; just the thing to wash down with a cold beer. Older folks that have lived their lives out here are almost a different species than the average city dweller. And the contrasts have only gotten greater over time.
Back on the road, the scenery was ever-changing. Jim’s Jeep belongs out here, not cooped up in the city.
Our next stop was this ruin way out in the middle of the deserted vast valley, the Stone House Ranch. It’s was quite an edifice; a two story stone building. More than likely it wasn’t just only a ranch house, and there’s some evidence of that out back.
The inside was a jumble of collapsed walls and ceiling, but an old table still stood. And on the far wall, there was some intact plaster.
Some of the writing was still legible. The one apparently dated August 2, 1920 reads (in part):
The dirty Bastard that took that gun better bring it back or I will box a fart out of him as long as…. yours truly…
There were several outbuildings in back, including this mud and wattle one. Not sure what it was used for.
This cabin made of squared-off logs was the most recently inhabited, the evidence being some 1950s vintage furnishings and appliances.
The final outbuilding was chock-full of shelves stacked with hundreds of boxes of core samples. So this place was likely an assayer’s or geologist’s place, at least at one time.
Here’s a video made while on the go. It’s a bit shaky, as I was holding my phone while driving. I should have a mount on top the dash. It gives a reasonably good idea of what it was like on many of the tracks.
From there our route continued north up Monitor Valley, on the valley floor. Jim took a series of videos from the dash of his Jeep as he followed me, willing to eat my dust for the sake of posterity. This first one shows us bopping along, the track being fairly easy. But even then, I had to always drive with a very high level of alertness, as sometimes the ruts got too deep, threatening to high-center the xBox. And there was the ever-present danger of rocks lurking in the endless brush growing in the center. My front end was very unprotected and vulnerable. It eventually took a hit.
The track is getting a bit rougher here, and you can see that at times I have to move out of the tracks/ruts, and place one side up on the bank and the other in the high center, to avoid high-centering.
This final video caught us crossing a dry wash, which was a common occurrence. Randy is taking his Sequoia through slowly, and you can see it bouncing through the wash and its exposed rocks and back up its bank. This was typical of the 4×4 trucks; they had the luxury of taking it slow, including some even rougher and steep sections. I didn’t.
With only FWD, momentum was the essential ingredient. If one of my front wheels went in the air or got hung up in soft sand or mud or such, without 4WD, or at least a limited slip differential, that would be it. So you see me taking it with a bit more verve and commitment than Randy. Of course going faster has very real risks too, such as crashing against a steep bank or rock. It’s a fine line between too slow and too fast.
This section actually wasn’t all that difficult, but it’s representative of the many little challenges thrown my way that kept me on my toes. Which of course was precisely the purpose of the whole exercise: to test myself and my car. As such, it was eminently satisfying. Not to disparage the 4x4s in the slightest, but undoubtedly I had even more driving fun than they did, if one thrives on challenges and risk-taking.
There were bigger challenges to come, including one that finally bested me and the xBox. That’s in the the next part.
After a long hot, dusty day in the saddle (it was in the low-mid 90s), we were eager for some shade, but most of all water, so we headed up to Pine Creek, which is in the watershed of 11,941′ high Mt. Jefferson. We camped right at the edge of the creek and wasted no time putting it to good use washing the dust off ourselves.
I can’t remember now just what delicious food we had for dinner, probably because the dessert that Jim surprised us with was so unexpected. What a way to end Day One. Each of the subsequent days were to be just as memorable, if not more so; stay tuned. EXBRO5 was off to a splendid and delicious start.
All photographs were taken by the following: Andrea Blaser, Edward Niedermeyer, Jim Klein and myself. Videos by Jim Klein.
Day 2 is here:
Preparation of the xB in the following posts:
The xB Gets An Off-Roading Makeover – Who Needs 4WD Anyway?
The xB Overland Edition Is Finished and Ready For Off-Road Adventure
xB Preparation: How Steep Can It Climb – And A Few Backcountry Waterfalls
What a pleasure it is to take this trip vicariously through your wonderful travelogue. Not as good as being there, but one has to accept that life requires a certain balance between pleasure and commitment.
NEATO! I’ve never done anything like this. More, more; encore, encore!
Oh my, that looks like a lot of fun. And with the kind of attention you needed to pay to the rut depth, was probably pretty mentally tiring, too.
Actually not. But maybe that’s just me. I like to be fully engaged when driving, and this is a bit less risky to the pocketbook than driving at 130 mph across Nevada on the highways. 🙂
Amazing trip, Paul!
As for 4WD, my dad often told me, “When you understand momentum, you don’t need four wheel drive!” I recall how he often took me boonie-bashing in his Corolla. We never go stuck, either.
Quite awesome! Ghost towns have a melancholy enchantment that puts human endeavors into perspective.
Looks amazing, definitely a party of the world I’d like to see for myself.
I enjoy taking a small FWD car places it was never designed to go, it forces you to think about your route more than simply driving across in a dedicated 4wd machine.
Just for grins I looked up the ground clearance of a new Jeep Wrangler. 9.7 inches to 10.8 inches. Not a whole lot more than your xB. But i suspect there are skid plates and such that make the bottom of the Jeep less vulnerable.
That’s undoubtedly the minimum clearance, at the differential pumpkin or such. It’s going to be higher on either side of that, which allows one to position it if maximum clearance is needed. The xB has a flat underside. Given the weight I was carrying, with a week’s worth of water, a heavy cooler and stuff on the roof carrier, I may well have lost up to an inch of my measured clearance. And the biggest vulnerability was the lack of protection in front, as I soon found out.
Supposedly my 2015 Jeep has 8.8″ of ground clearance. It didn’t seem that it had less clearance than the Scion but it never audibly scraped on anything either front, rear, side, or underbody beyond vegetation.
A bigger issue are likely the approach, departure and breakover angles. Not at all bad on the Scion but even with momentum (or especially with) there is the danger of literally jamming the end of the car into an incline/ground before the wheels and suspension move the body upward. Being able to slowly (not needing momentum) traverse an obstacle is an advantage in that regard. At least two vehicles experienced issues with that sort of thing on this trip, but nothing trip-ending. I won’t spoil which ones they were. 🙂
Ground clearance measurement has traditionally quoted the static number. That works for solid axle vehicles as the static & dynamic numbers usually match.
On independent suspensions, the dynamic number becomes quite a bit more important, yet it is rarely measured. The dynamic number can drop quite a bit from the static number upon suspension compression.
The difference is most noticeable when landing.
Not familiar with Paul’s repurposed box, but it likely has at least an independent from suspension and possibly also the rear.
That’s an important point, and explains why the Jeep still has a solid front axle. Ground clearance never changes as a consequence. And it was precisely that issue that caused me to bend my lower radiator support member, although not seriously.
You’ve summarized Day One perfectly, and what a joy to relive it through the written/pictured chronology. The trip was amazing with each day different from the last and the next, I’m eagerly awaiting your description of our next installment!
What a fantastic trip. Great photos as well. Amazing place to visit.
I’d love to give this a go perhaps next year.
I’d be curious to know whether you would do the next Exbro in the Xbox. I understand your desire to stay fully engaged while driving, but do you think there might come a time when you’d like to exhale a bit more and just enjoy the drive more?
I do love ghost towns. They are museums created by nature.
That’s currently the working assumption. I’m planning to add a limited slip differential and some kind of skid plate for the front, to protect the a/c condenser and radiator. It really works very well for my purposes.
I’m quite serious when I say that I enjoy the challenges involved. It’s actually the best part of the trip. It keeps me engaged, but it’s really not stressful for me. I’ve been driving cars and trucks in challenging situations for a very long time. I used to take my stock ’64 VW on all sorts of Jeep mining roads in Colorado back in the early ’70s.
Ask me in another ten years. 🙂
This looks like a great trip and is why I keep going back to the Desert year after year….
You have great skills with a camera and good writing too .
-Nate
Awesome and excellent adventure! Looks like your car is holding up to the challenge so far!
Great stuff! I’ve never had the opportunity to drive off road in a large way. What a treat to read about it.
You should have come with your VW. It would have made it fine, except maybe for the front bumper. 🙂
All those weathered buildings reveal just how harsh the environment is and the wood patination is otherworldly. It takes a hellova rugged individual to put down roots there. Especially the kind of person that will “punch a fart out of you” if they find out you took their gun. 😄
Wonderful adventure guys! Would have been a great trip for my ol’ diesel horse. Since I’m a shorty, I would fit in the back too.
What a great adventure! I am with you Paul; four wheel drive is a great luxury, but the challenge of driving a one wheel drive vehicle where usually only four wheel drive vehicles tread (your Xbox, my Vanagon) is rewarding in itself. There’s a challenge and art to picking the right path that allows you to stay moving, a personal test of your judgement and skill. You can see a lot of sights that others will miss due to fear. And when we fail? Well, that’s just learning.
Looking forward to Part II!
I am very much enjoying this; thanks for taking the time to write up your adventures! Also, the photos are beautiful!
I’ll be done with niceties and admit to plain jealousy here. What scenery! I’ll add the caveat that those temperatures might stress me some, but I suppose a/c is quite the refuge. Just wow.
Right up until the late ’80’s, people here hitched up a caravan and Holden or Falcon or Val and drove off for thousands of kms on roads like this. And even though Oz is an ancient and worn continent and often flat, the mountain range slap-bang in the middle of the map (the 400 mile McDonnell Ranges) go up 5,000ft, for example. With a bit of care, folk rarely came to grief. Actually, before the mass arrival of 4wds in the ’70’s, all of the roads and non-roads far outback were done in ordinary cars.
More, please, you lucky bastard*. And every photo you’ve got.
*for clarity, an un-aggressive expression of happiness-at-your-good-fortune hereabouts, and not the insult it might sound to NA ears.
Right up until the late ’80’s, people here hitched up a caravan and Holden or Falcon or Val and drove off for thousands of kms on roads like this.
I have no desire to make the “roads” we drove on appear to be any more difficult than they were, or to diminish the capability of Australian cars and drivers back in the day, but I am quite certain that a Falcon or Valiant with a caravan hitched to it would not have made it through, up or down a number of the more challenging segments. My lifted xB only barely made it through some of them, and not all, as Day 2’s post details.
Oh for sure, it’s over-stating it a bit to imply thousands of miles of real off-road roads, so we’ll put that down to the Aussie habit of exaggeration.(If you’re a local, you just automatically adjust for it as a story is told, mentally knocking off the excesses as if by unspoken agreement!) However, rest assured that the “main” roads were merely dug DOWN out of the landscape by bulldozer, are often astounding rough, and every time it came to a river or creek crossing – always dry – you have to drive down and up very like the one in the vid here. As an anecdote, in the mid-’90’s, I’ve done the very road my uncle and aunt drove with Falc and van in the early ’80’s (for Oz readers, to Innamincka): and thought god knows how they did it, but it wasn’t considered unusual.
Three considerations spring to mind. One, not doable at all if there have been rains or floods up North (maybe every 10-15 years). Two, very little in the way of hillclimbing. And three, I’ve noticed ever since reading this site how odd Oz models right up to the ’80’s can look because of the huge ground clearance designed-in compared to US cousins.