A trip to get a flippac - The scenic way through Arizona

Well here goes nothing, so a few weeks back I put a deposit on a flippac out in Durango Colorado, I had posted a WTB on Expo a long time ago and had been contacted by a few people but they always seemed too expensive or in rough shape so I passed. Until this person contacted me, the price was right and the condition was too but the problem was when the hell can I go out there? I was just in Europe for work and leave this sunday for Australia/New Zealand for work which left me about a week in between so 48 hours after getting home from Amsterdam my GF and I took off for Colorado! We made a straight shot to Flagstaff where we stayed in a rather shitty hotel and the next morning we hit the road again to make it to Durango at a reasonable time to install the FP but first we stopped at Four Corners:

We also met some fellow offroader/overlanders:

And I thought my truck was rigged out....

I didn't take any photos while doing the install because we were kind of scrambling to get it on before the rain/dark but it was a pretty straight forward process.....I did a lot of research and question asking about this before hand and bought a ton of high grade bulb seal and silicon and sealed up the bed beforehand. The only issue we ran into was for some reason the bolts he used were not long enough for my truck, the went through his bed rails just fine but not mine but his was an '06 and mine is a '14 so that may have been it so off to the hardware store we went. After we got it all on and situated we needed dinner and from the recommendation we went to Serious Texas BBQ which I was very skeptical of being from Texas and seeing that we were in CO I thought it was gonna be garbage but damn was I wrong! If you're in Durango I suggest you hit this place up!

I've driven this highway many times and always love seeing this old indian ruin, it's on private property so there is no way to get close to it but what a cool thing to have on your property!

I love the varying terrain of Arizona, you can be in the deserts and before you know it you're in snow

We took the 89A from Flagstaff down to Sedona which is always a fun road to drive

Now Sedona is one of those places I love and hate, it's easily one of the most beautiful places in this country but it's just so damn touristy and packed with people it's kind of hard to enjoy. That said we still went to check out the Native American ruins outside of town.

I seriously can not understand why someone would do this, the pictograph here was the oldest at the site (1500 years old IIRC) and two kids scratched a stick figure with a big dick on it, this kind of shit infuriates me but the docent said they were caught and both received felonies so there's that....

The "cowboy killer" cactus, hard as bamboo I would not like to be on the receiving end of a fall onto one of these

Broken Arrow Trail is a must stop for anyone in Sedona, that said it is completely overran with Pink Jeep Tours but we really lucked out that day and barely saw anyone, we even had Chicken Point all to ourselves which is extremely rare from my past experiences there. It's a pretty easy trail, I did it when my truck was stock but it does have a few places a modded truck can mess around.

As you can see it was pretty stormy looking in Sedona and the forecast predicted snow and high wind which obviously sucks for camping so we headed south! I mapped out a quick spot to hop off the 17 and made camp. This was my first time ever setting up a flippac and with a high chance of rain that night I wanted to make sure we had the rainfly on, a lot of people make out the rainfly thing on the FP to be a nightmare but I set it up in the dark for my first time in a matter of a couple of minutes.....If you didn't need the rainfly the FP sets up in less than a minute easily.

So like I said the forecast was rain and it was late so we didn't bother with a fire that night and wanted to see how useable the living space is in the FP, with over 7' of headroom standing in the bed I'd say it's very usable, so convenient to change or cook if you need to while still being in the tent. We were lame and watched a movie and relaxed after 3 long days of driving

And the Mr Heater is so much more practical in there than my old RTT, it was in the low 40's all night and with this going for an hour or so before bed it was straight up hot in the tent and I had to turn it off, some people run them all night but I just run it before bed and when waking up to take the chill off.

Normally I'd cook on my swingout but with light rain I wanted to stay under the window of the shell, I do think I'll be adding an ARB awning to the back for this exact scenario

After packing up we decided to explore the area more since we got in so late the night before and it was awesome, mainly just a long dirt road but with some offshoots with great camping spots and some technical sections but what's more fun than a good water crossing to wash off in haha

So after that we were ready to get headed home, we were about an hour north of Phoenix at this point and my good friend lives there so we stopped by on our way through town, both of us are into keeping venomous reptiles and he just got a new Atrox (Western Diamondback Rattlesnake) that he wanted me to take pics of. This was easily the heaviest snake I've ever worked with, it's only about 5ft long but so dense.

I kept a good amount of distance when possible because he tracked me like crazy, anything I did he was onto but it was cold out and he was slow, Atrox can be one of the harder rattlesnakes to deal with as the tend to not have a great demeanor. 

Have you ever seen a rattlesnake with venom dripping out of it's mouth? haha

So that's that, quite the trip to be done in such a short amount of time but it was really fun and I'm glad to finally have a flippac! I took a lot more pics so if you wanna see the rest or see higher res versions go here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/396598...66511176/page2