The Enchanted Rockies Trail and the End of Rumble
I’ve had a Jeep Liberty for years. I was kind of known as the Jeep Liberty guy and I wore it with pride. I liked having something different. I enjoyed building an overloading rig out of something not many would attempt. Even before a lift I was trimming fenders and removing the front bumper to make it better for off-roading. To be honest when I started, I had never heard of overlanding, I just knew I wanted to combine my love of camping and hiking with driving off-road. I made all the mistakes; I bought a cheap spacer lift and I bought cheap gear. I was getting started and that is what most of us do, in the beginning. We try to save money here and there not realizing in the long run it would cost way more. This quickly became real as I started to go out longer, further, and to more remote places. I replaced the lift with an Old Man Emu lift, bought better gear and stayed out longer and went further. It was fun to see the look on people’s faces as I pulled up in a Jeep Liberty. They all thought I would get stuck or even break down on the trail. In that Liberty I only got stuck once and I never had to leave it on the trail, although the last trip I did get worried. It was approaching 160K miles and for a Liberty driven the way it had been that was really high. I took it on the Enchanted Rockies Trail with eleven other rigs in June. We spent several days on the trail, because of the heat we decided to start the trail near Weed, NM, yep Weed, NM. The plan was to go as far as 42
Angel Fire, NM. Most of our group drove fast, I mean fast. We covered so many miles per day it was crazy. A few of us decided to slow way down and go at our own pace. We stopped often to take in the trail, photographing the experience along the way. The first night on the trail was so windy we could hear the wind in the trees coming down the mountain, it sounded like waves coming into the beach. We woke up in no big hurry, since we started in Weed, NM we were a day ahead of schedule. So, about an hour or two onto the trail we found a great campsite with more than enough room for all eleven rigs and a few trailers. Some of the guys
