The only thing I remember about buying our FJ was how excruciatingly painful  sitting and listening to adults babble on like chickens about prices, interest, credit, and warranties was for a nine year old girl. Little did I know then that this car would open up a whole new world for me.

My family and I were big campers, but we camped in established camp grounds that held a lot of people at one time. We slowly moved from a tent to a pop up, and as far as I was concerned our camping trips were not camping trips if we were not camping in a tent because Pop-ups are like compact RVs. The only  thing I liked about the pop-up was there was heat when it was frigid, and I could sleep with my  dog which was a very rare occurrence for me.

There were beautiful places and memorable experiences, like the time in Yellowstone where I fell in quicksand, and luckily the only thing I lost was my flip-flop, but there were good amazing experiences too. Along with these places and experiences though, were filthy pit toilets, over- crowded camp grounds, loud music,  noisy next store camp neighbors, and more and more people.

I wanted to be alone with nature and these camping trips were just not cutting it. You can imagine my surprise when my dad and I took the FJ on her first four wheeling trip in Moab and Canyonlands and (minus the first day in Moab were our next  store camp neighbors had very indecent mouths resulting in me learning quite a  few new things that night)  you would not see a human for hours and hours on end,  and we created the only sound.

We moved back to a tent ( so I considered it real camping), and for the toilets matter bushes and trees smell much less disgusting and look a lot cleaner than pit toilets. The pit toilets we did use were rarely used by humans. The places we used to camp were close to civilization and people, I could not get in touch with nature or learn from it.

We now camp far away from civilization and humans, and the FJ takes us to these places. The FJ provide the means to get into the back country. It introduced untamed wilderness, and an independence of a type you can not get in the modern world. The FJ has and still does allow me unique experiences that would be impossible without the FJ being able to take us where it does. If that 9 year old girl had known of the adventures that lay ahead she would have been much less impatient.