Off-Road Astronomy at the Ford Bronco Off-Roadeo (2024)

NASA offers November 30, 3340 B.C. as a possible date for the first solar eclipse humans made a record of, thanks to petroglyphs at the Loughcrew Megalithic Monument in County Meath, Ireland. The space agency then suggests the event didn't go so well for the viewing party, writing, "Archaeologists found the charred remains of nearly 50 individuals." What NASA doesn't mention is that Loughcrew was a tomb complex that also happened to be a solar-focused viewing spot, at least one of the passage tombs aligned with the equinoctial sun. Neolithic North Atlantic folk had a thing for combining their graves, gritstone, and graffiti.

Fast forward about 5300 years, and 5000 miles to the east, to Ford's Bronco Off-Roadeo Texas, about an hour outside Austin. Built in 2021, it is now one of four locations where Bronco owners can get a free day of off-road driving instruction with the purchase of their new SUVs. It is also where Ford invited me to camp out and view the eclipse, the site's 364 acres and 15 miles of trails serendipitously located in the heart of the eclipse's 89-mile-wide umbra. It's all but certain I enjoyed a livelier viewing experience than those Neolithic people. Yet, by the time the event was over, I'd be simpatico with our ancient ancestors in unexpected ways.

An extremely delayed flight out of LAX put me in Austin at about 10:30 p.m. the night before the eclipse. I retrieved a Race Red 2024 Bronco Heritage two-door with a seven-speed manual at the airport Hilton, stopped by Walmart for last-minute camping gear, then headed west for the 52-mile drive to Horseshoe Bay. By the time I crawled into the sleeping bag in my tent at Bronco Off-Roadeo, it was past 1 a.m.

The next morning, I awoke to Broncos parked all over the grassy hill. This event marked the first time a Bronco Off-Roadeo allowed camping on the grounds; Texas visitors normally stay in the Horseshoe Bay Resort a few miles down the road. Ford had capped attendance at 150 Broncos, each owner allowed to bring up to three guests. The posse of rigs with rooftop tents and awnings, camo vinyl wraps, aftermarket wheels and LEDs, vanity plates, and an Amazon warehouse worth of mounted gas cans showed this wasn't a gathering of people who happened to own Broncos, these were Bronco People.

Rows of trucks lined up at 10 a.m. for a two-hour trail drive. Some chose the scenic route, others the intermediate, I got behind the wheel of one of the facility's four-door Black Diamond Broncos to do the hard route. Fifteen miles of trails doesn't sound like much, but Texas Hill Country's rolling hills and mixed terrain singletrack abound in treachery. If the ruts, rock gardens, and mud pockets don't get you, steep geologic obstacles like the Texas Two-Step were made for recovery straps. A crew of excellent instructors carried our party through without incident, a triumph when dealing with private owners of unknown skill piloting their own vehicles. They want to know what their trucks can do but fear risking damage to their spendy investments. One asked an instructor about his Bronco Raptor before deciding to join the hard group, "I'm not going to hurt it, am I?"

Upon return, the eclipse had begun. Looking skyward through my eclipse glasses, I saw the curved edge of the moon eating into the sun, turning it frighteningly black. I felt the touch of doom, intimating some kind of slow extinction that might soon see me fighting to the death in a freezing eternal night over a can of tuna and some dead guy's boots.

The eclipse process from first to fourth contacts takes a while, giving the assemblage time to have lunch and gather on the lawn before the anachronistic twilight. I was a first-time viewer and didn't do any research, preferring an innocence perhaps akin to those Loughcrew watchers in 3340 B.C. The slow burn gave young kids in the audience time to light the fuses on their parents' patience. Most kids had no idea what was going on, a few were old enough to be rambunctious and provocative, their exasperated parents saying things like, "I already told you why it's so dark," "Take your negativity elsewhere!" and "TURN THAT OFF!" when one kid kept playing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on his portable speaker.

The sky filled with scudding cloud banks as the eclipse's climax neared, turning the totality into peek-a-boo. The thrill of catching bucket list moments like a solar prominence or Bailey's Beads through gaps made every moment even more precious. However, standing among the gathered families gone silent, darkness and cold snuffing out what had been a bright and humid Texas afternoon, a fine silver ring of fusion reactions turning the moon into an oculus that peered through a moody sky… well, that's when I realized why pre-science civilizations would have thought, "This seems serious. We're going to need some virgins and some enormous rocks ASAP."

Then it got bright again, seemingly much quicker than it had gotten dark. I enjoyed every second. But truth be told, I was more excited about the beginning of the eclipse than the totality. Watching that black disc swallow the sun felt like the beginning of a Marvel film.

When nature resumed its Tuesday-in-April routine, Ford rolled out the Bronco Raptor Black Appearance package. Afterward, I spoke to another guest, Jordan, an Austin local, who was living proof that the Bronco Off-Roadeo works. Last year, he owned a Chevy Camaro and wasn't into off-roading. When a friend bought a Bronco, he joined the friend for the free day at Off-Roadeo Texas. "We did the eight-hour experience, and I fell in love with it. I was like, 'I gotta come here.'"

He ordered his own truck, and six months after his taste of Bronco life, Jordan swapped his Camaro keys for a 2024 Bronco Black Diamond. He said that's when his mother told him that his great-grandfather and his grandfather had both owned original Broncos, his great grandfather's dressed in the yellow paint that inspired today's Yellowstone Metallic Heritage Bronco.

The capstone was another Off-Roadeo first, a two-hour night drive. This time I took the wheel of the Heritage I'd been loaned, working the manual transmission's three lowest gears: crawler, first, and second. At one point, one of the instructors walked by me on her way to trucks behind and said, "That crawler gear's perfect for the drive-through. I do it all the time. Pretend you're at Whataburger." I say Ford should make camping and night drives an optional part of the Off-Roadeo experience.

Ford has made Bronco gatherings part of its community-building plan. Regular offerings include a dedicated camping area next to the start/finish line at the King of the Hammers races in the California desert, with guided off-road drives during the week. This year, Ford hosted a multi-day overland drive before the race from the Mojave Preserve in Nevada to the Hammers, and I'm told Ford plans more overlanding trips for this year.

I'm more focused on planning for the Northern Hemisphere's next total solar eclipse, penciled in for August 23, 2044. I've already started looking for enormous rocks. And a chisel. Maybe my own boots and can of tuna, too, just in case.