There is something captivating about the sand dunes. They are ever-changing; a place from a mystery or sci-fi novel where the protagonist is lost for days, or must conquer before a grand event. Everyone is in awe of their grandeur.
As part of our training for the 2018 Rebelle, Penny and I went to the Imperial Sand Dunes outside of Yuma, AZ to practice driving on dunes. This was a completely new experience to both of us.
I thought I would be petrified of driving in such large dunes. Instead it was like a glorious waltz sometimes when you are perfectly in flow with the hills, and other times like you are fighting the sea of sand and constantly getting stuck- or perhaps this is when we started panicking and overthink our turns.
The other downfall to being in the desert is that it was 110 during the day and only "cooled" down to 90 at night. Monty was not a fan of this and started overheating soon in the day. I had driven down in one day from Colorado the day before and hadn't given him much of a break. We also noticed his systems were not handling correctly, as the car was not giving us power when we need it most- see above pictures of us digging!
Our trainers said to keep the LR4 going, but I was getting pretty skeptical, knowing how LRs work... End of the day we had an overheated car that had to be towed to a dealership in California (Thank you Hoehn Motors! We love you!) and Penny and I drove onto Moab in a Dodge Journey, pretending it was a Land Rover!
All's well that ends well!
Monty now has a new engine installed by Hoehn Motors in Carlsbad, CA, in less than two weeks before the start of the Rebelle Rally! Be sure to say "hello" to them if you are in the area! They are miracle workers!