When I was 17, I desperately wanted a lightly-used JEEP. Probably thankfully, my dad refused (and I wrecked a car from a dirt road slide after that). Well! After years of watching, waiting, and even renting to try out – We finally bought a JEEP!

Last year? JEEP Wranglers were selling for $3000-$5000 over MSRP sticker price.

Enter 2023. A brand new 2024 announcement with new features like a much bigger 12" screen and Apple Wireless CarPlay (for the first time). Plus: new side airbags and optional power seats.

Over the last 4 years, we’d rented modern Wranglers in Hawaii and Cape Cod for a week each. Last year, we rented the new Ford Bronco, JEEP’s new surprise competition, for a 3-day weekend gravel bike race. We even rented the Wrangler’s cousin. the “Gladiator” pickup truck, for a 5 person + 5 bikes day adventure on Mt. Tamalpais.

The Wireless CarPlay + huge screen was what we were waiting for.

We had planned on a white Wrangler Sahara, but last minute the new “High Altitude” Wrangler had all the options we wanted, plus some interesting wheels & tires. A surprise “Earl” blue/gray color was tempting – but in person it didn’t quite look as compelling. However, the wheels & tires end up being more beefy and looked better in person. Hunter had found a dealer with two of the exact same white High Altitudes in stock. So on a rainy Sunday right before Christmas, we ventured out…

Turns out, with auto loan interest in terrible shape of 6-24% in 2023, showing up on a slow, rainy Sunday while the SF 49ers were playing, to a dealer with 2 identical cars on the lot (and turns out only 1 other car sold that day)… is a great way to buy a car!

We pitched “invoice” price (way below MSRP/sticker) that we had found for the exact dealer zip code, which is the cost to get it on the lot from the manufacturer…

(The nice dealer returns from talking to the manager…)

“OK, you gave us a fair offer, and honestly it’s a slow day with football on. I’m not going to do the the back-and-forth thing. We have a deal”.

WOW! 🤸‍♀️

We wrapped it up and got home at dusk. Excitedly, this is our first electric vehicle – a plug-in hybrid with limited range of only ~25miles pure electric. However, that’s great for most errands.

So on Friday we drove south to visit family for Christmas, so here we are visiting Hunter’s older brother, parking for a dog walk at the infamous “Pebble Beach” golf course.

You can see one of the two door NASA stickers (!) we put on to make it our “moon buggy”. 😻

Here we are driving though the Salinas area (Monterey County) “salad bowl” capital of the world, where Hunter’s brother works.

Enjoying the convertible top down in Orange County, CA.

On the way home from Christmas, we rode onto California’s premier (only?) off-road beach, for only $5!

Enjoying the sunset at Pismo Beach. JEEP LIFE!

The jeep just looks so good in the sand.

We truly loved our first 10 days, 10,000 miles and California highway 101! (Also tracey speaks binary).

I’ll post some more pictures once we get our surprise vanity license plate!