by Matt Konkle
Torque Editor-in-Chief
MOAB, Utah — Our kickoff to this year’s Easter Jeep Safari coverage actually begins with loading a trailer in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
In the rain. The cold, unrelenting rain.
Several of us hauled up two new Jeep Wrangler JLs on that trailer Thursday morning and locked them down for an initial journey to Lennon, Michigan and a visit with nationally-renown fabricator Greg Henderson.
We’ll have more information on those Jeeps as the year progresses, but after hauling them to Lennon, we swapped one out for our Jeep Wrangler YJL build and quickly turned our sights toward Moab early Friday morning.
We wanted to get out to Utah a bit faster this time around versus our jaunt to King of the Hammers back in late January. So that meant not much in the way of stopping for sightseeing with our YJL like we did a few months ago — just food and fuel stops. But we did take the same route out from Michigan, through Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, into Colorado and then past Grand Junction to Utah.
On the map, it shows 2,254 miles.
No doubt it is a path many have worn from the mid-Atlantic, or northeast, when making that trip to Moab.
There is also no doubt plenty to really see along that route if you have the time, as we only touched the surface of places to stop when we headed to the California desert for KOH — pausing at the World’s Largest Truck Stop in Iowa, a Pony Express station in Nebraska, as well as the Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles in Lexington, Nebraska and the world’s largest Chevron gas station on the Nevada/California border.
We did hit the World’s Largest Truck Stop again this time, and had to refuel just inside the Colorado/Nebraska line at a gas station weirdly named ‘Major Brand’, but as we said before, the goal of this trip wasn’t the journey as much as the destination.
We also experienced just about all four seasons, as we left the rain and cold behind in Michigan, had fall-type weather through Illinois and Iowa, and then snow squalls for some of Nebraska, before heating up into summer-like weather in western Colorado.
Along the way, we hit gourmet food spots like Little Caesar’s, Arby’s and Caribou Coffee, as well as a few truck stop convenience stores, before pausing in Denver for the night with a dinner at a BJ’s Restaurant and Brewpub — food tip, leave some room for their uniquely-named Pizookie.
Another great tip, take the ride on I-70 between Denver and Grand Junction if you ever have the chance. The scenery alone makes the five-plus hour journey well worth the time.
After all that traveling, it was great to finally see the La Sal Mountain Range glistening in the distance, its bone-white snow-capped peaks reaching out and acting like a beacon for weary travelers.
We pulled into Moab just after noon on a perfect, sun-soaked 80-degree day that felt more like it should be mid-June than early April.
And as we did, the raw scenery of red rocks, blue sky and those La Sal mountains in the distance hit us in the heart just as hard as the very first time we saw that view.
