A lot of people dream of driving across the country, from sea to shining sea, visiting the extreme points of the United States. But if you take Canada into consideration, your eastern terminus of the continent moves a lot further east. It was the temptation to go as far as he could without taking a ferry that took Jacob Silberfarb and his 2013 LR4 from Orange County, California to Meat Cove, Nova Scotia over the new year, returning via the Trans-Canada Highway.
Jacob, who’s known as @dscofever on Instagram, has become a bit of a known personality on social media since he bought his first Land Rover in July 2018. The truck he bought may be part of that – it was a 2003 Discovery 2, one of the few remaining event trucks used in the Moab/Nevada leg of the 2003 G4 Challenge. He drove it all over the west, including to the 2019 National Rally in Colorado. Tragically, the truck caught fire in November 2019, and was declared a total loss.
Jacob replaced the Disco 2 with a 2013 LR4, which he had vinyl wrapped to match the old G4 truck, as well as his father’s Defender 90 (a former company vehicle from UK accessories firm Southdown 4x4). With a few more accessories, it was ready to roll east for almost a month of trans-continental adventure.
As he was packing, Jacob’s next-door neighbor and friend Luke asked him what he was doing. Hearing the itinerary, he was onboard, and was packed in five minutes and ready to go for the first five days of the adventure. They rolled out of California and headed east.
The first stop was Colorado, where Jacob had befriended some Land Rover owners at the National Rally last year. From Colorado, it was a haul across the Midwest to Niagara Falls, with a diversion in Kansas to the Geographic Center of the Continental United States, and in St. Louis to see the Gateway Arch.
He also stopped in Ohio to meet Brendan Rhone, a Discovery 2 enthusiast who bought his burnt-out G4 event truck in the insurance auction. Brendan has aspirations to restore the vehicle to its former grandeur...an ambitious, but respectable goal. They also took the chance to take the LR4 deep into the muddy woods of Ohio.
Then it was across the Great Lakes states to Niagara Falls. Although the freshwater lakes freeze in winter, shutting down the tour boats into the falls for the season, Luke and Jacob still got to check them out from the overlook, 3,160 tons of water going over every second from Chicago and Thunder Bay.
Luke flew home from Buffalo, and Jacob continued on into Quebec, driving the Trans-Canada Highway through Montreal, Quebec City, then turned at Rivière-du-Loup to cross New Brunswick into Nova Scotia. He finally made it to Meat Cove at the northern end of Cape Breton Island just before midnight on December 31, 2019. With lightbars and headlights on, he took a picture at the northeastern terminus of easily accessible North America, then found a hotel just minutes before the new decade commenced.
He kicked off the 2020s driving the Cabot Trail, and driving along the Bay of Fundy down to Maine and Bar Harbor. Then it was back into Canada for the return journey, following the iconic Trans-Canada Highway. The deeper he went into the Canadian Prairies to the west, the colder it got.
At Calgary, he met up with more local Land Rover owners, and got to take an off-road run into the icy landscape. In the process, he managed to damage his rear airbags and dent two of his steel wheels driving through the ice. Thanks to the magic of the Land Rover community, though, they bent the rim back into shape with a bottle jack, and he sourced airbags from someone in Calgary at 10PM and had them installed by midnight.
Finally it was time to head home to California, both to get back to the real world, and to attend the 4xFAR Festival. Jacob got home with more than 10,000 new miles on the odometer, and a proper maiden voyage for his new orange Land Rover.
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