…my Land Rover ended up with dirt under the tires.
Given ARF’s propensity for bashing Land Rovers, I thought you boys might
enjoy seeing some pictures of my trip to southwest Colorado from August
with two of my lifelong buddies.  We did stop at a Wal-Mart, but we
shied away from doing any serious mall crawling in my soccer mom-mobile.
I should clarify that no one was injured by parts falling off the Land
Rover, and we were free from mechanical breakdowns.  My experience with
Land Rover, so far, has been the polar opposite of what ARF would have
you believe; in fact, I would call this the best vehicle I have owned,
to date.
The "White Goat”, as she is affectionately called is a 2012 LR4.  It
normally serves as my wife’s daily driver in suburbia, but I have been
slowly modding it to an "overland travel” type offroader.    It benefits
from having the factory installed rear differential lock, a Tactical
Rover’s front winch bumper, and a full set of Tactical Rovers skid
plates and rock sliders.  Basically on the bottom side, there is a clear
path down the middle for the exhaust, and the rest is up-armored so you
can drag it across rocks as needed.  (With a company name like Tactical
Rover’s, I have a sneaking suspicion someone at their company might
have an account here).  Once the wife rotates out of it, I plan on a
steel rear bumper with a tire carrier so I can get the spare down off
the roof.
I have also replaced the factory wheels with some earlier 18” LR3 wheels
to increase the range of suitable offroad tires available.On This trip
we were running Cooper At3’s aired down to about 18 pounds.
For a comfortable, luxury type SUV, I have been consistently impressed
by the performance of this truck.  On the road, it is nothing short of
luxurious (we drove 1,000 miles to get there, which is not something I
would want to do in a Jeep).  It won’t ever be a Jeep, but pull off the
pavement, push a button, turn a dial, and it brings some pretty
reasonable off-road chops to the table.  Its weak points are overall
ground clearance and departure angle, but with careful placement, we
rolled right over anything in our path.
Did I mention it is rated to tow just shy of 8,000 pounds…try that in a Wrangler.
Long Video of us going over Black Bear Pass.  Skip to about 8:40 to get
to the steps and the switchbacks (most interesting parts of the trail).

Going up "The Wall" at Poughkeepsie Gulch.  Probably the most technical
obstacle in the area.  Youtube is full of people bashing their rigs
around trying to make it up.  We picked a good line, and had not issues.

A nice rocky area somewhere on Poughkeepsie Gulch trail.  Notice my spotter gets a little confused as to left/right

Your intrepid travelers.  Surprisingly, the ARFmember is not in the camo…

Imogene Pass tunnel

Low Water Crossing

Looking out the rear window on the Black Bear switchbacks.  That green
stake is the bleeding edge of the trail.  At some spots there was only a
few inches of clearance between the trail edge on one side, and a shear
wall on the other.  

For comparison, here is a picture of a Jeep that went off the trail on
the Black Bear switchbacks some years ago.  Two fatalities from that
accident.  Not the most technically difficult trail, but as you can see,
the price for failure would be severe.

Lake Como at the top of Poughkeepsie Gulch

Gratuitous climbing picture

Somewhere on Black Bear

Plenty of old mine entrances scattered around.

I think this was the Yankee Girl Mine

I assume an old smelting furnace

Black bear on the other side of a gorge

As Old Painless would say.  What we learned?  Driving over stuff is fun.