| Took my 2+2 for a scenic excursion into the mountains over the holiday weekend w/ girlfriend. This was the first time i've used it to go camping and it worked out very well. The trip was to Gunnison Canyon and Blue Mesa Lake in central Colorado. I highly recommend this area to anyone within striking distance - it is spectacular. The drive there is terrific and once there, it is an outdoor paradise. Lots of people were RV camping and boating. The fishing was pretty good too - lots of rainbow trout. I'll post more pics when i get them downloaded, but here are some to start: The road to happiness
 Fully loaded
 I was able to fit two suitcases, two fishing rods, tent, sleeping bags, pads, etc. The drive goes over several 11,000' mountain passes and lots of open road to stretch your legs. Luckily no speeding tickets even though i was cruising at speeds 90+ mph at times. Maybe the police were taking the day off because of the holiday. Surprisingly i still got 25 mpg with the a.c. blowing and going over mountain passes. My greatest accomplishment was cruising over Vail Pass and Eisenhower Tunnel in 5th gear without downshifting. Typically cars struggle to make it to the top. Can't complain about that. Those Nissan engineers did a good job. When i was a kid, our VW camper van couldn't even make it to the top. The route.
 One of the campgrounds on the first night. We were lucky to find a spot. Most people had RV's, so there were not too many tent campers fortunately.
 Take that West Nile Virus!!! Thank god for that nose bra.
 
Looks like i need wheel spacers in this photo. Would TT wheels sit out more?
 View through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison
 Check out the new window tint. FormulaOne Pinnacle 35 all around. Seems to help keep some heat out (plus it looks cool).
 Morrow Point Lake
 Getting ready for some fishing.
 Kinda liked this angle of the car against the background.
 An unlikely duo: sports car and fishing pole
 Mmmmmm... rainbow trout
 One of the fishing spots we tried. The park ranger came and could've busted me twice - expired one day fishing license and no park permit. Instead he waved and went on his way. Never figured out what happened to the two cans of beer i put in the stream to cool off. floated away to a better reward i guess.
 Coal train at Somerset, Colorado. It stretched as far as the eye could see and every car was loaded like this one.
 View from the campground at Blue Mesa Lake. Perfect spot.
 Getting packed in the morning.
 The legend of the Curecanti Needle
 The pinnacle
Fun trip. Lots to do and see. I was very happy with the car as a weekend camper and plan to do more road trips like this. [I lost my SUV last summer when a hit and run driver totalled it and got away. Still paying off the car loan for that one.] The Z really took up the slack though. I made one mistake of taking a gravel road and it didn't like that at all. No ground clearance. Also, somehow i ran over a big rock and scraped the s**t out of the front fascia - expected the worst, but it cleaned up pretty well. Just a slight gash. The only other weird thing that happened was when we pulled into the campground after driving all day, the car was sitting at an idle and the rpm needle started revving to 2-3k for no apparent reason. The Alpine stereo started humming too.
As a side note, i didn't realize you can upload more than 3 pictures to Photodump.com without having to open a new free account. The upload window says "Limited to three. Upgrade for more." So i created several new email addresses just so i could get the pictures up. Then i realized you can keep uploading three at a time to the same account. duh.
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2+2 = great for camping (20 pics) - 
21:09:33 07/05/05
