While we’re all stuck at home missing the smell of fresh air and the sound of knobby tires crushing sand, somebody at Nitto Tire had the mildly brilliant plan of slapping a 360-degree camera on the roof of a 4Runner and recording the trip down some trails for us to tag along on.
The concept here is pretty simple: You can take a virtual trail ride in this 4×4 to get a change of scene from your house/office/apartment. Warning: It is a little bandwidth-hungry, so depending on how many people are home streaming videos, your computer might struggle to load these up at full 4K resolution.
But I enjoyed the little taste of the trail provided here. I’m also a lot more motivated to tinker with my own SUV a little more to make sure it’s good and ready to make memories as soon as the world’s turned back on.
Sand Hollow Reservoir (Hurricane, UT)
Just some classic late-day desert cruising. The area in this clip doesn’t quite have the drama of Moab or Monument Valley, but this type of blue/green/red landscape common in Utah is lovely to look at.
This soft, shallow stuff is really fun to drive on. It’s very forgiving.
I can’t wait to go back to Utah again. This is a decent taste for what I can get behind my desk, though!
Schnebly Hill & Broken Arrow (Sedona, AZ area)
Sedona’s got some wild red rocks and natural formations, many of which you can see on this trail ride. Parts of this trail are on the tight side. So, at least you don’t have to worry about prairie pinstripes ruining the paint job on the side of your truck by watching the run on your computer.
Willow Creek Trail (Lake Arrowhead, CA area)
The high-elevation forest areas east of Los Angeles, namely the area near Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake, is lousy with trails ranging from gentle dirt roads to fairly harrowing rock-crawl ordeals.
The path taken in this clip might not be at the upper end of that extreme, but it’s still nice to look at those tall trees. Man, I really miss… everywhere.