After working hard in the food industry and watching my finances, at age 44, I decided I was old enough to buy a brand new car. That car was a 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee 65th Anniversary Edition. After 19 years and 240,000 miles (EXACTLY!) it was time to let her go.

Although basically trustworthy over those 19 years, we did have some “adventures,” such as when the alternator died while I was on the Navajo Reservation, the starter died while up at the Boulder Creek cabin and two years ago when Joel took it in for emissions testing …

Joel (laughing) … “Seems like a joke, this emissions testing stuff, do you ever get cars that don’t pass?”

Technician … ” Yes, yours just failed.” $1900 later we had a new exhaust manifold – YAY

Through a program that WRCNU is enrolled in, a vendor will pick up the vehicle and either sell it at auction, sell it for parts or try to sell it outright to a private party. Although 100% running and zero body damage, due to the miles it will most likely go to auction. Once that happens, the proceeds will be donated to WRCNU. We might have been able to get more out of it by selling it ourselves but this lessens the hassle. All together, with signing up online and arranging the pick-up, it only took about 1/2 hour to do the donation.

For the last few years we have been looking for some type of replacement. Joel was very specific in that it had to accommodate his 51″ shooting bench and he must somehow be able to sleep in the vehicle laying down … don’t ask! We did look at the new Jeeps but they were twice as much as we wanted to spend and they were actually much smaller so his bench would not fit inside.

What we found was a used 2023 Toyota Tacoma that has the smaller access/extended cab and a 6′ bed. Anything larger than that wouldn’t fit inside the garage so a lot of measuring took place. I found it online one day after there had sort of been a lull in searching. Apparently these have a very low turnover rate and are hard to find. They discontinued the access/extended cabs in 2025 which meant that anything newer would not fit in the garage.

We also ordered a cap for it which should be completed in about 5 weeks. Everyone seems happy now!