Toyota 4Runner Topsites
Fall Colors 2004
Presented by
YotaTech & WATTORA

September 18th, 2004
With fall getting here many of us were itching to get out and explore Greenwater some more and take in the fall colors.
The weather ranged from downright pouring rain to light rain, and some snow.
The sun tried its hardest to burn off some clouds, but it did not make it out all the way.

I left my rig home this time, as I need front brakes, and I did not want to take a chance with it in the mountains.
Rob offered to let me ride shotgun in his 2001 SAS'd Tacoma.
I gotta tell you, his rig handles better than mine and tracks better also.
Not bad for a solid axle rig and with no sway bars on it anymore.

We explored the 74/75 forest road area with a stop at Lonesome Lake, then headed over to 73 to explore Suntop Lookout.
There is a lot of history behind Suntop lookout which I will include some links here.
The lookout was built in 1932 and used as a fire lookout, and as an early warning system for enemy aircraft during WW II, and has an elevation of 5,271 feet.

Also a cool thing we saw up in the lookout was a fire finder tool called an "Osborne Firefinder that was made around 1920.
William Osborne made between 1913 to 1934  5 different designs.
This fire lookout is still in use today as seen by the pictures below.

Suntop Lookout info:
http://www.firetower.org/listings/us092.html
http://www.firelookout.net/Individ_Lookouts/US092_Suntop.htm

Osborne Firefinder:
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20030924/Feature1.asp
http://www.fs.fed.us/eng/pubs/html/03511311/03511311.html

Here are the people who went.
Crash & Mrs. Crash - 1987 4Runner
Chris (DiabloTaco) - 1999 Tacoma
ChrisCo - 2001 Tacoma
Corey - I rode shotgun in Rob's (WATRD) 2001 Tacoma
Jen (lorentje) - 1988 4Runner
Jesse (Waterboy) - 1992 Toyota truck
Jim & Trudie (mytruck) - 1984 Toyota truck
Mark - 1997 Tacoma
Rob (WATRD) - 2001 SAS'd Tacoma
Todd (Toddski) - 1988 4Runner

The thumbnails will turn into a 1024x768 picture.
The videos are best viewed if you right click the link and save it to your desktop.
If you merely click on the link, it will play, but it can be choppy, and some parts may not play at all. These pictures & videos are from my Sony S70 CyberShot digicam.


 

Here is a GPS route from Rob's Garmin Vista GPS.
Pretty cool huh?
This is the whole area we covered.


More pictures (will be adding more from members possibly):
Trip report on YotaTech

Videos:
Please right click the reel and choose "save target as" from the menu.
These will not play or stream in if you just click the link.
Please stand by for vids coming later when I get time to edit them.

Trip Summery:
A blast 
Felt great not having to drive this time, and I could concentrate on the beautiful scenery up there at Greenwater.
Rob (who's truck I rode in) was very great company, and a blast to yak with.
I was most impressed with the way his SAS'd Tacoma handled.
It can corner much better than my rig and take the fire roads with greater speed too.

No dusty weather this time like the Fall Colors trip of last year.
This was a wet and cool one this time, but a lot of fun.

Got to meat a lot of members I see on the forum and other forums, but have never met in person before.
Jen gets the long distance award coming all the way up to our area from Portland, OR.
Found out her rig was only operating in 2WD this trip, but she still had a blast.

All in all this was a most fun run with the capper being the trip up to the lookout at Suntop Mountain.
I think I can say that we all had a very great time, and Jim got to take his newly acquired '84 truck out for the first time with all of us.

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