Well I did it, I took my Xterra and went on one hell of a trip. I took lots of pics which I will post as soon as I can shrink them down a little. This is a really long note with a lot of my personal opinions about the diffrent features of the X. I wanna appologize now for typos and spelling....give me a break this thing is long as hell.

Gas for trip north: $700.00
HOtels: $700.00
Driving Offroad in 7 states 2 Countries and only in 2 1/2 weeks..........PRICELESS!(Especially if it was paid for by the Air Force)

Now before I left on one hell of a cool trip I spent many an hour getting the X ready for one hell of a road trip. I highly recomend if you're thinking about new tires....DO IT....makes the 13 hour drives so much smoother...go ahead spend the money and just go ahead and replace all the fluids in the X. I even went as far as thinking ahead and buying -20F rated windshield wiper fluid. Plan ahead, know what climates you'll be driving through, and changes in preasure altitude which might play havoc on your tires. I also bought tire chains getting ready and you'll see later...I am glad I did. I will explain this later too but if you go north to Canada, or Alaska.... Buy a block heater and then find someone who knows how to install it in the lower 48 or try it yourself like I did. I RECOMEND, this be the only think you don't try. ITS A PAIN!

I left Corpus Christi Texas where I was stationed on 29 November. My wife and I packed the X up with 800lbs of clothes, shoes, pots, pans, equipment etc. We needed all of this stuff because we figured we'd be living out of the X until we got to alaska waiting on a house. It all fit good, I guess you could say I am one of those guys who beleives any car can be packed perfectly, like a puzzle or something. The only thing I don't like about doing that with the X is that you have to deal with the seat bottoms from the rear seats. I usually stuff them between the rearseat head rest and the front seats but this time I needed all that space. The X is great however for what we Pilots call our "Nest". My wife had a whole system of where the atlas was, there the cd's were stored and all of her other girly stuff. I love all the lighter plugins available to me. We had 2 cell phone chargers and an MP3 player plugged in. So anyway....we headed off down the road and started west on highway 35 out of Corpus toward San Antonio. I'm sure it'd be interesting to those who'd never done it but it wasn't all that because we'd driven it many times before. Our origional plan was to stop in San Antonio which again if you've never been its a blast especially down on River Walk but we'd been there and this trip was all about new stuff. So we drove on through the night and stayed in Fort Stockton. You have to understand.....all of you.....(My wife doesn't) as I was driving these long lonely desert roads in Texas...I kept thinking to myself, HOW COOL WOULD IT BE TO RIP OFF THE ROAD AND JUST THROUGH IT IN 4X4 and the GPS and take a direct route north though the nothingness. So I had my wife look up from Fort Stockton all the way to Alaska, where there were dirt roads or 4X4 Parks. I made a vow to take every back aswards way to Alaska and if it could include Dirt... I would take it...So we traveled on and outside of El Paso there was what looked like a service road that instead of headin west, it went directly north. We took it.....and MAN IT WAS AWESOME... The desert mountains and desert we drove across was beutiful. It turns out the road we took was a service road for the rail line that ran kinda near Highway 10 West. We took it for about 3 hours and then took a south road back to 10. I've got great pics and we saw all kinds of cool stuff like boar and old shacks and abandoned windmills and cars and such. What was even more cool was that it had obviously rained a couple of days before and some dry creek beds had a little water in, of course I had to take it through the water and mini boulders in it. So we headed on HWY 10 West through El Paso, I wanted to stop but wife wife wanted to keep truckin. I wanted to taste a little MEXICAN TEquilla which I had never done...but the wife wasn't havin it. So we drove on to Old Historic Las Crueces where she was...The drive on wasn't too eventful So i will end this one here where we stopped in Albequerqui.

I will write more later and I will try to get pics.

wow that's one hell of a trip. glad to hear it was a blast and u made it safely!

Wow if you ever convert that book to tape let me know

you should have...I was out there last night with some buddies, having a good time...anywho!!! I'm glad to hear your trip was a good one...and the X made the trip Ok...

My girlfiend and I just did the Alaska to Florida trip in November. Left Anchorage and EIGHT days later we were in Melbourne, Florida.

Was a beautifull drive. Thinking of doing it again in a few summers.

Roger the windshield wiper fluid. Being a San Francisco Bay Area native, I had regular washer fluid. On a 32 hr drive fest to Minneapolis, my washer fluid reservoir froze solid. At one point, I was getting chunks of slush coming out of the squirters.

Was it comfortable? The whole trip? did you have all season tires?

That is an outstanding trip. I drove from Richmond to Anchorage in '94 and it was the best road trip I've ever done. Unfortunately Xes weren't even on the drawing board then so I drove an old Dodge 600, which limited my offroading. Though at that time some of the main roads were in a mild offroad condition. If I could get the time I would love to do it in my X. However, it took me nine days to get there, and I sold the 600 and flew back. Also, it was July.

YEah I had all season All terrain on there, I went from 80 degree weather in Texas to -30 degree weather in Tok alaska. I will be posting the best part here soon, I have to wait till I move into my new house to get some pics up!