He’s been trying for 40 years to drive around the world; 2 Tri-Citians are helping him finish the trip

The Sand Ship Discovery has seen better days.

The red paint is faded. The decals on it are barely readable, and it needs to be rolled out of the Richland garage where it’s being repaired.

But Larry and Mike Merk are preparing the 1966 CJ-5 Jeep so Loren Upton, 83, can complete a dream that started more than 40 years ago — circumnavigate the globe entirely by road in an American-made vehicle.

All of this is being made possible by his nephew, Laurence Upton, the Merks — two amateur mechanics in the Tri-Cities who were caught up by Loren Upton’s tale — and a desire to help finish the journey.

Journey of discovery

Loren Upton grew up on stories of Victorian explorers like Ernest Shackleton, Robert Peary and Percy Fawcett.

He decided in 1975 that he would follow the men he admired into the unknown and around the world. He would drive from the farthest road north in North America (in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska) to the most southern in South America (on the island of Tierra del Fuego), and then from the most southern road in Africa (at Cape Agulahas) to the most northern in Europe (at the Sletness Lighthouse in Gamvik, Norway).

It was a journey that would cover more than 56,000 miles, and would require numerous attempts. A journey that, all these years later, still is a few miles from being complete.

It took four attempts over nine years for Upton to cross the Darien Gap, 125 miles of jungle, bandits, swamps and rugged terrain that connects North and South America. Upton’s wife, Patty, chronicles the journey on the couples’ website, outbackofbeyond.com.

Upton’s first attempt in 1975 ended when he went for supplies, only to come back and find his partner had been shot and killed. Two years later, his Jeep tumbled 300 feet down a slope in the Andean Mountains in Ecuador. Upton was thrown from the Jeep before it went all the way down, and “sat in stunned silence, watching the Jeep’s headlights cut through the misty darkness as it flipped end over end,” Patty wrote.

A third attempt in 1979 ended when he refused to pay a bribe to a Colombian park official. He and his compatriots left without the Jeep, which was confiscated.

Upton was not deterred. The former Marine and builder of bridges was going to conquer the Darien Gap and make it around the world.

For the fourth try, he got the 1966 CJ-5 Jeep. He slapped an “Upton and Sons” decal on the side, and one on the front with the name: Sand Ship Discovery.

He made dozens of other adjustments to the vehicle, Patty wrote. Wrenches were mounted inside the door. A shovel was positioned above the engine on clamps. Spare gas cans were set underneath the seats. And he put a hook on the ceiling where he could hang his campaign hat when he went to sleep.

Upton — who is 6-foot-4 — even raised the top of the cab by six inches so he could fit comfortably inside.

He was ready to set sail.

On the road again

On June 15, 1984, the Sand Ship Discovery set off from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, for what would become a five-year odyssey. When Upton crossed into Panama, Patty joined him for a journey that sits in record books.

For part of the first year, while they were in Panama, Laurence joined them in the jungle.

“I got a phone call from my mom saying, ‘Hey, your uncle is in Panama on a Jeep expedition. Do you want to go?’ ” Laurence said. “I said, ‘Sure, why not?’

“So I quit my job and I headed down there.”

For most of the dry season, Laurence joined their expedition, helping winch the Jeep through steep terrain where the motor wouldn’t take them.

“There was one time where we had an oil leak, and Loren sent me to the nearest village and it took me two days to get back with more oil,” he said.

And what he returned with often needed to be filtered before it could be used.

Laurence left before the second rainy season, but Loren continued his expedition, finally coming out of the Darien Gap after 741 days.

“He’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for the first all-land crossing (of the gap),” Laurence said. “There are some other people who have done it, but he was the only person to strictly go by land.”

They continued through South America, finally stopping at Tierra Del Fuego before taking a ship to South Africa in August 1987.

As they headed north, they survived malaria, a trip clinging to the side of a makeshift raft on the Nile River, and sandstorms.

To make their way into Europe entirely on land, they needed to cross into the Middle East.

The tensions between Israel and its neighbors were at a high at the point, but their path took them from Israel to the West Bank and finally into Jordan.

They got within a mile of the Jordanian border before troops stopped them, Laurence said. They were told to turn back. What weather, sickness and mechanical problems hadn’t been able to do, soldiers accomplished.

Loren and Patty had to backtrack and take a ferry into Jordan. From there they moved swiftly from Syria and Turkey to the Soviet Union. It was at the USSR border in October 1988 that their trip was put on hold by Soviet bureaucracy and the approaching winter. As Patty wrote, “... we certainly did not want to travel above the Arctic Circle this close to the onset of winter since all our winter clothing had been stolen ...”

They parked the Jeep on a farm in England, and Patty flew back to Seattle. “I wrote at least a hundred letters seeking sponsorship to help us finish our expedition,” Patty wrote. “After four and a half years of traveling, our finances were dangerously low.”

The couple left England the following June, and on July 4, 1989, completed their journey.

But those few missing miles near the Jordanian border have always been a bitter disappointment.

A nephew’s journey

Loren Upton brought the Sand Ship Discovery back to Salmon, Idaho, where time took its toll. The brakes were gone. The wiring was shot. It leaked fluid.

Then Laurence spotted it near the house last summer and suggested getting the Jeep fixed.

“I went back a few weeks later with the trailer and drug it home,” he said. “My goal was just to repair it, and they blossomed the idea of trying to get back to Israel.”

Except for a short trip to a Jeep showroom in Spokane, the project lingered.

But Loren copied his Victorian heroes in another way.

He had each member of his expedition keep a journal — journals that Laurence showed to Mike Merk, his co-worker at the time, along with telling tales of his uncle trekking through the jungles.

“He told me the story about seven or eight years ago,” Merk said. “A couple years beyond that, Laurence was moving and he was doing some digging, and he found all of the journals that he kept. ... He brought those in and let me read through them.”

Having heard the stories, when Merk found out about Laurence’s plan, he offered to help. He roped his father, Larry, to lend a hand.

When asked what needed to be fixed, Mike Merk jokingly answered, “What hasn’t needed to be fixed?”

They hoped to get it running before the new year, and then get it repainted in time for its Feb. 5 departure date.

Laurence is looking for an author to compile his uncle’s story from the journals, and to find a final port for the Sand Ship Discovery.

“I’d really like to find a museum that would display this,” Laurence said.

People can donate to the repair efforts by going to bit.ly/GuinnessJeep.

This story was originally published December 23, 2017 at 3:44 PM with the headline "He’s been trying for 40 years to drive around the world; 2 Tri-Citians are helping him finish the trip."