by Walt Middleton
Special to Torque
My love for overlanding and Jeep itself started shortly after purchasing ‘Rescue’ — a fully-loaded Jeep Wrangler JK Unlimited ‘X’.
The ‘X’ is what Jeep would later call the sport edition, and I picked her up with exactly two miles on the odometer on a rain-soaked April 14th, 2009 morning, and haven’t looked back yet.
Today she sits with over 418,500 miles on the odometer, been through seven sets of tires, 69 oil changes, seven radiator flushes, three radiators, two steering wheels, seven transmission fluid changes, three rear main gaskets, four batteries, three front drive shafts, two transmission cross members, eight axle seals, two pinion gear sets (3.73 ratio), one transfer case fluid change, probably 20 differential fluid changes, two hard tops, one passenger mirror, and three Freedom Panel sets.
And these are just the stock maintenance and repair items.
As you can see in the pictures, I modified a whole lot of the Jeep throughout the years. Everything from adding heavier suspension to engineering and building my own one-of-a-kind rooftop tent that is built right into the hard top.
The number of aftermarket parts on ‘Rescue’ would take a lot of space to list, and all of them have been swapped out a few times or modified to make them work for me — the way I wanted them to work.
As I mentioned before, I’ve put a lot of miles on the Jeep and while many are daily driving ones, there are also miles spent on memorable trips to tackle challenging Moab, Utah trails, the Rubicon in California and ventures to all the lower 48 states.
To say the least, my Wrangler has seen a lot, conquered a lot and created even more smiles.
Today ‘Rescue’ is safely taking my 16-year-old daughter to and from school and works as her first vehicle. While I have not entirely said goodbye to ‘Rescue’, I’m not behind that wheel much any longer.
When I’m not working as a professional photographer covering, among other things, Big Ten athletic events, my days are spent working on my latest build, a Jeep Gladiator truck, and helping teach the overlanding craft to numerous Jeep enthusiasts. And, of course, I’m looking forward to the next “almost half a million miles.”
