Day 1, 10:30 am. We figured there was no better place to start a Jeep trip like this than where it all began-at Jeep truck Engineering (JtE) in downtown Detroit. Located at 14250 Plymouth Road, this facility is home to the team of engineers that design, test, and develop Jeep and Dodge trucks. It's where the magic happens. If this building could talk, the stories it would have to tell.
According to google maps, It'S 2,289 miles from Detroit to Los Angeles. that's 33 hours of being on the road if you average 70 mph for the whole trip and don't stop to buy fuel, eat, or sleep. that's not the way we usually like to tackle road trips, but in order to get our new '08 Jeep Grand Cherokee to SEMA for its big debut, that's almost what we had to do.
Our banzai road-trip plan was simple. take the diesel-powered Jeep Grand Cherokee that Diversified Creations had just built for us and drive it back to Los Angeles in three days. Along the way, we were going to make a pit stop in Golden, Colorado, to have 4xGuard install its latest rock sliders on the Jeep so that we could get feedback on the new design at SEMA.
On The Road AgainThe route home looked easy enough. Head west out of Michigan on I-94, skirt along the southern edge of Lake Michigan, and then drop down onto I-80 to avoid the Chicagoland traffic. Our goal was to make it from downtown Detroit to Omaha, nebraska, on the first day. that would leave us a short 560-mile drive on the second day to get to 4xGuard.
On Day 2, we'd get up and drive 350 miles on I-80 and then drop down I-76 for 200 miles into the Denver area. If everything went as planned, we'd have time to grab a few hours of shuteye that night before we headed out on the longest leg of the trip (1,016 miles) to get back to L.A. on Day 3.
Luckily, the weather didn't look too nasty. there was a large thunderstorm moving across Iowa, and the possibility of snow loomed in Colorado right about the time we'd be pulling in there. We're from California, so we don't really know anything about thunderstorms or snow...but hey, we were in a Jeep. they're made for these kinds of adventures!
Our Grand Cherokee Limited left the factory with the "MyGig Multimedia Infotainment System" with built-in GPS navigation. Basically, it's an integrated touchscreen display that controls the satellite radio and GPS. It also has a voice recognition system that works with our Bluetooth-enabled phone. At $900, it's the second-most expensive option on the Jeep (the diesel engine is $1,655), but on a road trip this long, it was worth every penny | 
Just outside of Romulus, Michigan, on I-94, we passed over telegraph Road on this $14 million bridge built to coincide with 2006 Super Bowl that was held in Detroit. See the footballs? | 
In northern Indiana, we got stuck in a traffic jam for what must have been 15 miles. turns out that this huge section of steel was taking up both lanes. |
The Jeep's 3.0L averaged over 20 mpg at 80 mph. | 
Getting tired near the nebraska border. | 
Day 2, 8:15 am. After six hours of sleep in Omaha, we were back in the Jeep. At breakfast, we had to pop the hood to prove to the locals that our Jeep was, in fact, a diesel. |