By the time you read this magazine, summertime will almost be over, but as I write this, the Four Wheeler staff is in Summer High-Travel Mode, racking up thousands of road and frequent-flier miles to cover various trail rides, races, and testdrives for the pages of this magazine. Here's a typical week in the life of Four Wheeler-this very week, in fact:
Tech Editor Sean Holman took time out from admiring his new "Banana Slug" CJ-3 project to testdrive the next-gen Hummer H2 and H3 Alpha in the mountains around Durango, Colorado. When he wasn't being taunted by the local eco-hooligans ("Geico cavemen," in Holman-speak), Sean put the new trucks through some pretty rigorous paces, and he came away impressed with the new Hummers' big power boosts and by the H2's new luxo-class interior. You can read his driving impressions on page 24 this month, but suffice to say, we'll be working overtime trying to pry the keys from his hands when we test the new Hummers at Four Wheeler of the Year, a few months from now. (We're giving Sean the rest of the summer off-he and his wife are expecting their first child any day now, so we reckon he'll be far busier than the rest of us for awhile, even if he never leaves his house.)
Meanwhile, Senior Editor Ken Brubaker went off to Moab for some red-rocking in the new Jeep Liberty. He was complaining about the weather-102 in the shade in late June-but hey, we can think of worse places to roast ourselves than Poison Spider Mesa.
Also this week, our Art Director Greg Smith absconded with our JK test Jeep for a brief vacation in the Sierra Nevada, 'wheeling with friends and family around Mammoth Lakes. Around here, everybody on the staff gets into the act.
Not to be left out, Feature Editor Robin Stover, as is his wont, went to the races. And not just any old race but the Diesel Power Challenge, held this year in Salt Lake City by our friends at Diesel Power. Robin's become a fixture on the Baja race circuit these days-he's already a veteran of multiple SCORE races, he's ridden along with a class winner to boot, and he even has plans in the works to run at next year's Dakar Rally. (We're not sure which class the Mega Titan qualifies for, but we digress.)
Finally, yours truly spent a couple of days near Detroit, piloting the new-for-'08 Dodge pickup trucks over some test tracks at Chrysler's Chelsea proving grounds. You'll be reading more about these new trucks in the next couple of issues, but long story short: The new 6.7L Cummins is a monster of a motor (can you say zero to 60 in under seven seconds-in a factory 1-ton?), and the new 4.7L V-8 Dakota seems upon first ride to be an improvement over the old truck in virtually every way.
And that's just one week in late June.
That was our week on the road-now what about yours? What's your favorite all-time 'wheeling vacation or destination? Drop us a line, send us some photos and your best trail 4x4 vacation stories, and if we get enough of them, we'll publish the best entries a few months from now. And of course, to sweeten the pot, we'll send out some Four Wheeler swag to the authors of every submission we publish. Send 'em along to Four Wheeler Vacations, 6420 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90048, or to fourwheelereditor@primedia.com.
-Douglas McColloch