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(<– See Part II of the road trip)
Over the past few days Randy and Carson made good time, yet saw plenty. From Yosemite, they traveled southeast until camping somewhere in Nevada.
The next morning, they drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, where they hit the Vegas strip. At some point, Carson broke a fan belt, so they got to spend more time than planned in Vegas.
Back on the road, they drove to Utah. There, they met up with Jake White and others to take the offroad trip to Toquerville Falls, Utah.
Randy Qualls is on the left and Carson on the right. Here, they are just entering Arizona.
Randy and his son Carson are currently part way through a cross country trip in two flat fenders. Their journey began a few days ago in Jacksonville, Florida. Their western destination is Ventura, California. From there, they plan to drive back, heading slightly farther north through Utah and Colorado, before angling back south towards Florida. They’ve been documenting their trip on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ P?id=100085873092539
Here are a few pics.
This is a map of their route. They are currently in Arizona driving west along the yellow line.
From Florida, they drove to Alabama, but had a few mechanical issues at one point.
Then on to Mississippi:
They got caught up in some rain, but that didn’t stop them:
Soon, they were in Arkansas (cool stickers ;-)):
Eventually they hit Texas (and likely had good weather from there):
They’ve are equipped to camp at night:
A photo from the May 30, 1959, issue of the Eugene Guard showing the FC-170 “EL Borrego” with the Boyds.
UPDATE: This series of articles was first published in 2015. I’ve updated with several additional articles and photos.
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(First published February 15, 2015) This interesting collection of news articles captures Howard & Ora Boyd’s 1958 trip in an FC to South America. The first article was published prior to the trip. The second was published during the trip. The third was published following the trip. I was only able to find one photo and it was poor at best. It may have been that the Boyd’s got the idea from the Schreiders, who did nearly the same route three years before them.
Howard Boyd died in 1993, but Ora Boyd lived until 2009, dying at the age of 106, meaning she was born around 1903. Living much of their lives near Eugene, Oregon, according to her obituary their year-long jeep trip was one of her all-time favorite memories. The obituary was published in the Talent, Oregon, Historical Society newsletter, so I’ve written them to see if we can learn more.
1. This October 31, 1958, EugeneRegister-Guard article discusses trip preparations. The Boyds had a custom camper built for their FC (though no articles mention the model of the vehicle — it looks to me like an FC based on the pic below). They named their jeep “El Borrego”.
2. November 09, 1958 Eugene Guard .. brief article:
3. December 14, 1958, from the Eugene Guard:
In 1951, Kurland Motors provided the Los Angeles Times automobile editor, Lynn Rogers, a wagon for a journey down to Ensenada, Mexico. A description of the trip was printed in the October 21, 1951, issue of the Los Angeles Times.
UPDATE: This was first posted in August of 2016.
This September 13, 1958, article from the Toledo Blade told the story of four italians who drove what appears to be a WWII jeep a distance of 80,000 miles from Italy to Toledo. The men, all newspapermen, planned to drive another 15,000 miles back to Italy. What a trip! I wonder if their counterparts in 2013 knew of their countrymen’s adventure?
This December 06, 1958, article in the Tulare Advance Register highlights the Tulare County Four-Wheel Drive Club with pics and text. It’s not a club that I recognize, but the club was pivotal to the formation of the California Association of Jeeps Clubs in 1959 (later known as the California Four Wheel Drive Association). I tried to find a club logo or sticker, but couldn’t locate any example.
Here’s the 1958 article (spliced for easier viewing):
The March 1963 issue of Four Wheeler Magazine included an article by Brian L. Pinn about the Anglo-African Trans-World Safari, the pics and text of which can be found at The FC Connection.
It turns out there’s a bit more information out there, though not as much as I’d hoped to find, especially given that the group of travelers that made up the trip had access to cameras and film and also given that in January 1963 American Television script-writer John Hicken was supposed to join the group to film the around-the-world adventure.
Without that storehouse of info, or a book, or a movie, we only have the following scraps to better understand the adventure.
South African Derek Linton came up with the idea to travel the world in 1958. At some point, in order to gather equipment, Derek travelled to the United States in 1959. He was photographed at a Ham Radio station in Burlington, Kentucky, a visit later reported in the January issue of Short Wave Magazine:
The 1959 story appears here http://hamgallery.com/gallery/W/w4kvx_shack.htm … and the January 1960 excerpt from Short Wave Magazine appears here.
This map shows the proposed route:
On September 19, 1961, a photo of Derek Linton and Gerald Cubitt (unsure who he is) was taken by Henry Bush. It’s part of the Henry Bush collection at Shutter Stock:
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Henry Bush/ANL/Shutterstock (5693954a)
Anglo-african 1st Expedition Adventurers Derek Linton (left) And Gerald Cubitt. Box 634 413101543 A.jpg.
In the July 27, 1962, issue of the Warren County Observer, a syndicated article appeared by John P. Callahan that shared the news of how the idea for the trip originated and the progress the travelers had made:
Finally, on January 05, 1963, the Evening Standard (London, England) reported that John Hicken was going to join the crew:
In March 1963, the Four Wheeler article appeared.
There is also a mention in a 1963 issue of Business Week about the travelers, but I’ve been unable to determine which issue.
LINKS: Top two excerpts were here and bottom one was here.
After that, I have been unable to learn more about the journey.
In 1949, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Meyer drove in a CJ-2A from the Panama Canal to Decatur, Illinois. The article below provide the only records I could find related to their trip. This first article summarizes the adventure and shows a great photo of “DOPEY”. It was published in the Decatur Review, June 16, 1949:
This second article is a pictorial of the trip that was published June 18, 1949, in Bloomington, Illinois’ “The Pantagraph”:
This is a different summary of the trip, but contains no photos. It was published in the Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana) on May 13, 1949:
This last article was published June 17, 1949, in the Herald and Review out of Decatur, Illinois:
Derek published this story on the CJ-3B Page about three Brazilian Boy Scouts (Gabriel Paula Fonseca Jr., Everardo de Mello Nogueira, and Paulo Pinheiro de Andrade) who traveled the world, calling themselves the Baden-Powell AfricaEuropeAmerica Expedition.
Leaving in 1957, just after Hugo Vidal and his friend returned from their Operation Pineapple adventure, the Baden-Powell party used a CJ-5 that was styled and outfitted in a way similar to the Operation Pineapple CJ-3B jeep.Their goal was to attend the 9th Annual Boy Scouts Jamboree, one that also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Scout’s founding and the Centennial of Robert Baden-Powell, the Boy Scouts’ founder.
In 2018, a story was published in English called: 1957: From Cape Town to the Nordkap on a Jeep – Three Brazilians youngsters set out to discovery the world. I just purchased it ($6.50) for the kindle, so will be reading it as I can.
In 2017 a story was published about the trip on this site, but it appears you have to log in to access it. Some pics from this story can be seen on the internet. Based on these pics, the trio may have used the same “built with Brazilian” parts that Operation Pineapple used to fund the expedition:
This photo captures three friends traveling from Hawaii to the midwest via Minnesota. Akira Tanaka, sitting in the driver’s seat, helped establish the military intelligence company that was part of Camp Savage in Minnesota.This was published in the September 16, 1946, issue of The Minneapolis Star.
I tried to learn more about these three, but didn’t have much luck. There was an Akira Tanaka that went to work for General Motors and built himself a home that was featured in a 1955 article in the Detroit Press. So, it’s possible that he graduated from College in Michigan, then went to work for GM. If that’s the case, he developed several automotive patents for the company.
