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Earlier in 2020, largely due to COVID, my wife and I cancelled our vacation plans for the summer. Every few years we normally do an east coast roadtrip up through Boston and Maine. By cancelling, we saved thousands in likely costs from hotels and eating out. So I suggested we take the cash we saved, spend about half of it on gear (~1500-2000) and turn the GX into a proper travel-mobile. I'm not a big overlander, but that's the new buzzword for taking your car to less than accessible places and camping. I prefer to think of it as an adventure. Anyway, here is the trip log from August - long overdue I know!
We looked at areas to travel and the logical place in early-August was the Upper Peninsula (we live in the lower near Grand Rapids). A quick note on the UP and COVID, at the time case rates were very low and we saw less risk in going up there, particularly by avoiding dine indoors and restaurants - we are neither idiots or nor anti-maskers, so we felt that outdoors was a good option. The UP is also double the size of New Jersey and only has around 300k residents. The summer population swells with tourists, but overall we spent very little time around others.
Onto outfitting the rig...we already had a 2015 GX460 with air ride, levinson, and all the goodies. I had since added more aggressive and slightly taller all terrain tires (Falken Wildpeaks). I wanted to retain the stock rack and not drop 800-1000 plus on an aftermarket rack, so I opted for the very recently released LFD Off Road Ruggedized cross bars, I'd also note LFD has been awesome to deal with. These allow you to carry up to the factory side rail limit while using an RTT as the stock bars suck and are super flexible. Oh, and we bought a Smittybilt Gen2 Overlander tent - which is approximately 55x96 or 48" wide folded. This gives you a full size mattress plus about two extra feet at the bottom to sleep on. It's super comfy and we love the thing. We got it shipped from 4WP and it ran around $1100 all-in. I also bought a cheap set of recovery boards for around 60 bucks, a mini shovel, ax (which came in handy around camp), a better coleman cooler, a small propane coleman stove, and a 25000mah chargebox for phone charging/aux lighting. Everything all in came to around 1800 dollars. Think about it this way - a decent hotel is minimum 100 bucks a night, if you spend 18 nights in the RTT over the next two years, which is really two week long trips or a bunch of weekends, you've made all your cost back.
Here is the cross bars (I ordered the wind fairing and it came just two days ago). Also, harken builds a ceiling winch for storing things like bed toppers - this was perfect for the RTT - I just lower, bolt on, and go. takes me about 10-15 mins to be ready to roll:
Test fit with recovery boards (and yes, my garage door has 3 extra inches of clearance!):
Onward to the trip and planning; remember when I sad the UP was big, its not big, its freaking massive and has no real divided highways. Our original plan was to head to Wisconsin for a weekend and see the IMSA race at RA, but high COVID rates and uncertainty about the event meant we were going in an out via the bridge. Our initial run was to head north to see friends and camp two nights along the Boardman River near Traverse City, then head over the bridge to the area around the Crisp Point Lighthouse in the UP (2 nights), head west to Pictured Rocks (1 night), spend a night in Marquette at the Landmark Hotel (a chance to take a good shower and a real bed), then head east to High Rock Bay at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula (2 nights).
We were accompanied by another couple in their GX - you may not recognize his face, but he's the guy behind Winding Road's POV driving videos and also is TheTopher on IG/Youtube. I've known him since college and we used to race Miata's against each other. I can't say enough how much we enjoyed our time with him and his wife and all credit to him for a few of these pics/videos (ie. he had a drone and way better camera than I do). His youtube channel is here, so inserting my shameless plug for him: https://www.youtube.com/user/mrtopher
He also did a video of the trip, which incorporates a lot of the content below:
Onward north we went. The GX with the giant drag brake on the roof gets about 15-16mpg highway, which was perfectly fine as gas hit an unreal low around this time of less than 2 bucks a gallon in many places. I'll trade fuel economy costs for go anywhere reliability and durability any day! The first two nights in TC were fairly uneventful, my other buddy got some fly fishing in on the Boardman, which is also a world class kayaking stream. 60* knee deep water was a so refreshing.
Our site (note my buddy's sweet jeep behind us), the river was right behind the brush across the drive:
My buddy fly fishing, I had never tried and it was super relaxing/fun. The weather was perfect.
Onward and northward, we continued our trek towards the bridge, which is about 2 hours from Traverse City. I'll be personally honest in telling you I really don't enjoy driving over the bridge. It is long, very high up, and also the middle lane is open grating. Honestly, riding a motorcycle over it once remains one of the more frightening things I've ever done...it is insanely gorgeous though as the view is incredible in nice weather (which we had).
in traditional fashion we also got stopped by some traffic on the downward slope into the UP. we weren't too high up as we waiting for the tool booth, but damn I hate that...
A few hours later we arrived at the turn off to head towards the Mouth of the Two Hearted River/Crisp Point Lighthouse. After a 20 mile over rough sandy dirt, we got to the campground at the Mouth of the Two Hearted and it was packed. We ended up retreating a couple miles inland to another state forest campground (these are first come first serve) and found a stellar end spot right on a small inland lake. It was awesome.
Glad I put that tire shine on before the 20-30 miles of **** road:
We made camp, cooked, lounged in hammocks by the water reading, it was a great couple nights (cheers!):
AYYYYYYYYY!
Here's the rig in all her glory:
Mmmmm...books and hammocks:
We did the many mile drive out to see Crisp Point - we would not recommend this drive for a car, but anything with a decent clearance can do it in the dry. This is a truly remote place and crazy beautiful place. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald of shipwreck fame went down off the coast to the left of this photo some distance, the next major stop down the coast is Whitefish Point. The water is deep, ice cold even in August, and really reminds of a late-fall Atlantic Ocean:
This area is also very close to Tahquamenon Falls, we avoided the state park for camping there as it's totally mobbed all the time. If you're willing to drive 15 miles into no cell service, I'd rather camp nearly alone (8 spots) on a lake! That said, we did visit both the upper and lower falls, which are spectacular! Here are the upper falls:
The lower falls are about 4 miles down the road:
From this point we headed further west, grabbed some outdoor lunch at a brewery in Munising near Pictured Rocks, then drove the area/did the tourist thing to see the sights. I'll spare you the Pictured Rocks tourist photos you've see and show you a few from some nearby hikes - here is Miner's Falls:
I'd also recommend Munising Falls, which are kind of closer to Munising and very accesible via a trail off a sidestreet. I'd just watch that first step:
Here the view from the ground after you make the long walk around the cliff:
Here is the status of our trucks about four days in:
Also, we were in one area with so much tree cover my GPS lost the script for a minute...
We stayed one night at a state forest campground about 15 minutes inland from Pictured Rocks.
We looked at areas to travel and the logical place in early-August was the Upper Peninsula (we live in the lower near Grand Rapids). A quick note on the UP and COVID, at the time case rates were very low and we saw less risk in going up there, particularly by avoiding dine indoors and restaurants - we are neither idiots or nor anti-maskers, so we felt that outdoors was a good option. The UP is also double the size of New Jersey and only has around 300k residents. The summer population swells with tourists, but overall we spent very little time around others.
Onto outfitting the rig...we already had a 2015 GX460 with air ride, levinson, and all the goodies. I had since added more aggressive and slightly taller all terrain tires (Falken Wildpeaks). I wanted to retain the stock rack and not drop 800-1000 plus on an aftermarket rack, so I opted for the very recently released LFD Off Road Ruggedized cross bars, I'd also note LFD has been awesome to deal with. These allow you to carry up to the factory side rail limit while using an RTT as the stock bars suck and are super flexible. Oh, and we bought a Smittybilt Gen2 Overlander tent - which is approximately 55x96 or 48" wide folded. This gives you a full size mattress plus about two extra feet at the bottom to sleep on. It's super comfy and we love the thing. We got it shipped from 4WP and it ran around $1100 all-in. I also bought a cheap set of recovery boards for around 60 bucks, a mini shovel, ax (which came in handy around camp), a better coleman cooler, a small propane coleman stove, and a 25000mah chargebox for phone charging/aux lighting. Everything all in came to around 1800 dollars. Think about it this way - a decent hotel is minimum 100 bucks a night, if you spend 18 nights in the RTT over the next two years, which is really two week long trips or a bunch of weekends, you've made all your cost back.
Here is the cross bars (I ordered the wind fairing and it came just two days ago). Also, harken builds a ceiling winch for storing things like bed toppers - this was perfect for the RTT - I just lower, bolt on, and go. takes me about 10-15 mins to be ready to roll:

Test fit with recovery boards (and yes, my garage door has 3 extra inches of clearance!):

Onward to the trip and planning; remember when I sad the UP was big, its not big, its freaking massive and has no real divided highways. Our original plan was to head to Wisconsin for a weekend and see the IMSA race at RA, but high COVID rates and uncertainty about the event meant we were going in an out via the bridge. Our initial run was to head north to see friends and camp two nights along the Boardman River near Traverse City, then head over the bridge to the area around the Crisp Point Lighthouse in the UP (2 nights), head west to Pictured Rocks (1 night), spend a night in Marquette at the Landmark Hotel (a chance to take a good shower and a real bed), then head east to High Rock Bay at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula (2 nights).
We were accompanied by another couple in their GX - you may not recognize his face, but he's the guy behind Winding Road's POV driving videos and also is TheTopher on IG/Youtube. I've known him since college and we used to race Miata's against each other. I can't say enough how much we enjoyed our time with him and his wife and all credit to him for a few of these pics/videos (ie. he had a drone and way better camera than I do). His youtube channel is here, so inserting my shameless plug for him: https://www.youtube.com/user/mrtopher
He also did a video of the trip, which incorporates a lot of the content below:
Onward north we went. The GX with the giant drag brake on the roof gets about 15-16mpg highway, which was perfectly fine as gas hit an unreal low around this time of less than 2 bucks a gallon in many places. I'll trade fuel economy costs for go anywhere reliability and durability any day! The first two nights in TC were fairly uneventful, my other buddy got some fly fishing in on the Boardman, which is also a world class kayaking stream. 60* knee deep water was a so refreshing.
Our site (note my buddy's sweet jeep behind us), the river was right behind the brush across the drive:

My buddy fly fishing, I had never tried and it was super relaxing/fun. The weather was perfect.
Onward and northward, we continued our trek towards the bridge, which is about 2 hours from Traverse City. I'll be personally honest in telling you I really don't enjoy driving over the bridge. It is long, very high up, and also the middle lane is open grating. Honestly, riding a motorcycle over it once remains one of the more frightening things I've ever done...it is insanely gorgeous though as the view is incredible in nice weather (which we had).

in traditional fashion we also got stopped by some traffic on the downward slope into the UP. we weren't too high up as we waiting for the tool booth, but damn I hate that...

A few hours later we arrived at the turn off to head towards the Mouth of the Two Hearted River/Crisp Point Lighthouse. After a 20 mile over rough sandy dirt, we got to the campground at the Mouth of the Two Hearted and it was packed. We ended up retreating a couple miles inland to another state forest campground (these are first come first serve) and found a stellar end spot right on a small inland lake. It was awesome.
Glad I put that tire shine on before the 20-30 miles of **** road:

We made camp, cooked, lounged in hammocks by the water reading, it was a great couple nights (cheers!):

AYYYYYYYYY!

Here's the rig in all her glory:

Mmmmm...books and hammocks:

We did the many mile drive out to see Crisp Point - we would not recommend this drive for a car, but anything with a decent clearance can do it in the dry. This is a truly remote place and crazy beautiful place. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald of shipwreck fame went down off the coast to the left of this photo some distance, the next major stop down the coast is Whitefish Point. The water is deep, ice cold even in August, and really reminds of a late-fall Atlantic Ocean:

This area is also very close to Tahquamenon Falls, we avoided the state park for camping there as it's totally mobbed all the time. If you're willing to drive 15 miles into no cell service, I'd rather camp nearly alone (8 spots) on a lake! That said, we did visit both the upper and lower falls, which are spectacular! Here are the upper falls:
The lower falls are about 4 miles down the road:
From this point we headed further west, grabbed some outdoor lunch at a brewery in Munising near Pictured Rocks, then drove the area/did the tourist thing to see the sights. I'll spare you the Pictured Rocks tourist photos you've see and show you a few from some nearby hikes - here is Miner's Falls:

I'd also recommend Munising Falls, which are kind of closer to Munising and very accesible via a trail off a sidestreet. I'd just watch that first step:
Here the view from the ground after you make the long walk around the cliff:
Here is the status of our trucks about four days in:

Also, we were in one area with so much tree cover my GPS lost the script for a minute...

We stayed one night at a state forest campground about 15 minutes inland from Pictured Rocks.