Overland Expo 2015: a view by an outsider

jefe 4x4 wrote:
I'll have to make a disclaimer here. I posted a piece on the ExPortal how I thought this "Expedition" thing was entirely in your mind and had no basis in the here and now; with so many trying to get the "Expedition" look over any practical considerations and nowhere to take said rigs out to see if they really work, short of another Overland Expo. I was nearly drummed out of the corps with comments like, "you have an old beat up camper on an old oil burning truck: how can that be a good idea compared to my shinny new JK Rubicon with a roof top tent", etc. That's fine. I resemble that. The fact is Overlanding and Expeditioning are in the past. There are no places left yet to explore, unless you follow in the tracks of most of the truck campers on this forum. The new tack is, "Adventure Traveling". Isn't this what we've done for many moons? It must be the mystique of the term Expedition, only to be wistfully done in a 1965, Perkins diesel Land Rover 110. The best part of the ExPortal is the off-road camping trailer page; simply the most outrageously inventive people out there. Another great aspect is the world-wide allure of expedition travel. It's good to read about other folks solutions to staying out there, self-contained, for a length of time from Goler Wash to the Gobi. I cannot call them poseurs because they ARE living their dream.
regards, as always, jefe

Agreed 100% Jefe... I have a core group of friends that can appreciate that I drive an 11 year old truck, with a 27 year old hard sided truck camper. They all can respect that, as we all enjoy the same places. There are a few I've camped with, outside that core group, and I get laughs and snickers from the lot of them, but they are driving shiny new rubicons with roof top tents, that have been opened and off road, maybe twice. It's all about image for them, and I'm not about image, I'm about adventure and enjoying the outdoors.
Scott