We had quite the laundry list of things to do before heading out. About a month before deciding to go on this trip we had purchased a 2012 tundra which is by far both the newest and most expensive vehicle either of us have ever owned. It was decided we would stick to more "soft-roading" overland style trails which would give us an opportunity to bring our mountain bikes out as well, which is a new hobby for us but something we really enjoy. Knowing that a stock truck would not cut it for this trip we had a lot to do.
Our goals were to install a ton of stuff to make this trip do-able before we left, including; front coilovers, rear shocks, rear leaf springs, a dual battery setup, cam tab gussets, spindle gussets, a bed shell of some kind, L track tie downs in the bed, a swingout bike rack (with a 6" riser so we weren't smashing it off road), rock sliders, full skids under the truck, and new wheels and tires... Oh yeah, and we had 4 days to get all of this done before leaving. To make matters worse I had started to learn to tig weld 4 months earlier and decided this time crunch was the perfect time to use a welding style I am unfarmiliar with and that takes much much longer than mig...
We ended up leaving about 48 hours after our scheduled departure time which is fairly standard practice for us. We hit the road late in the day tying up some loose ends and spent that night camped on some BLM outside of Vegas. After a restful 3.5 hours of sleep we headed for Moab as the goal for that night, taking the scenic route through the 12 and 24 freeway.