Trip report, part two: Overland Expo 2013
The general purpose of the Expo is to equip, instruct, analyze, stretch, refine and inspire your own overlanding experience; whatever form that may take. What is overlanding? In the purest sense, it has to do with some kind of philanthropic discovery of a remote place. Alas, the halcyon days of discovery are almost gone. There are few places left that can be considered an overlanding experience. So, the current description of Overlanding is Adventure Travel. This certainly covers most of the folks who attended. There were two levels of participation: one was the high bucks/hands-on experience where you got to try out the winch on your loaned Land Rover, or try driving the obstacle course, either in the 'company' rig, a Rover, or your own rig. Mark Simonov drove both over the obstacle course which lifted a lot of wheels off the ground. He did loosen the rear tie-downs to keep from pulling his rig apart. For those that didn't need a lot of commercial engineering, the day pass was the way to go: Mucho barrato. There was a bewildering flow of information directed through an on-going Adventure film festival with far-flung venues; roundtable panel discussions with experts; seminars on a variety of subjects-Overlanding; Family (for kids) games and hunts; an art festival; cooking demonstrations; etc. Too many choices to see it all.
In addition, many 'camping' vehicle and accessory manufacturers were there hawking their wares. It's too late for me, but for many, there were things they could buy and use in a camping setting to defray any discomfort in adventure travel. XP Camper was there showing off their newest mid-sized camper. I live only a few miles from Mark in Nevada City but had never met him. Here are some of his products:
Mark is in the blue work shirt;
A group pic with owners attached.
I have no association with XP campers except I like the design. However, I am not about to delete my kids inheritance to get one. The other issue was the E-W bed, a no-no for older TC-er's.
This last one on the right, had two spare tires between the cab and the camper, which I thought was cool for long range, remote travel.
Queen Jean (now momski4x4 on the forum) and I walked all the exhibits and found very little we could use. The only thing we wanted was a fancy Overland T-shirt to mark our passage, but they only had a few in white; not what we were looking for. Olive green would be the color.
In general, the event was fairly well organized, considering almost all the staff were freebees and were, at first, totally overwhelmed by the sheer amount of querries from the maybe thousand people that were camped on the meadow.
Jeanie and I attended a lot of films and show-and-tells. We saw two on taking jeeps across the Sahara: some of THE most remote places you can still get to. Great. We attended a presentation on circumnavigating the U.S. with the presenteur having done it time after time, every which way for three decades in a converted transfer ambulance. (it's the real tall one)
It was windy almost the whole time, and you had to wonder what tolerance those living in those tiny nylon tents had to the constant buffeting. For those with a somewhat more substantial structure, there was no problem:except when sitting around the imaginary campfire. Rules is rules and we had none. Eventually the cold evening wind drove people into their mobile domicile.
I learned a few things in preparation for our circumnavigation of the U.S. We need an auxiliary fuel tank with dummy-proof changeover. Mark and Bryan convinced me to get at least 100 amps of Solar for an extended trip. That way, we could leave the Honda IE2K at home. There are lots of places to stealth camp around the U.S. Our presenteur noted how to find them. Nat Geo has a new e-map set with all the states in detail for much less $ than the state-by-state maps available in the past. What ever trip you are planning, someone has already done it and you can learn from their experience.
I'll leave you with some pix of interesting rigs not in our group.
The common thread here is outrageous one-off:
This was an F-550 w/Phoenix custom pop top, 18K pound winch, metal garage on the back with an electric lift to put the motor cycle therin on the ground. Dana 135 rearend.
Part three will be a fun run down the pasture showing many of our own truck camper examples.
Until then,
regards, as always, jefe
In addition, many 'camping' vehicle and accessory manufacturers were there hawking their wares. It's too late for me, but for many, there were things they could buy and use in a camping setting to defray any discomfort in adventure travel. XP Camper was there showing off their newest mid-sized camper. I live only a few miles from Mark in Nevada City but had never met him. Here are some of his products:
Mark is in the blue work shirt;
A group pic with owners attached.
I have no association with XP campers except I like the design. However, I am not about to delete my kids inheritance to get one. The other issue was the E-W bed, a no-no for older TC-er's.
This last one on the right, had two spare tires between the cab and the camper, which I thought was cool for long range, remote travel.
Queen Jean (now momski4x4 on the forum) and I walked all the exhibits and found very little we could use. The only thing we wanted was a fancy Overland T-shirt to mark our passage, but they only had a few in white; not what we were looking for. Olive green would be the color.
In general, the event was fairly well organized, considering almost all the staff were freebees and were, at first, totally overwhelmed by the sheer amount of querries from the maybe thousand people that were camped on the meadow.
Jeanie and I attended a lot of films and show-and-tells. We saw two on taking jeeps across the Sahara: some of THE most remote places you can still get to. Great. We attended a presentation on circumnavigating the U.S. with the presenteur having done it time after time, every which way for three decades in a converted transfer ambulance. (it's the real tall one)
It was windy almost the whole time, and you had to wonder what tolerance those living in those tiny nylon tents had to the constant buffeting. For those with a somewhat more substantial structure, there was no problem:except when sitting around the imaginary campfire. Rules is rules and we had none. Eventually the cold evening wind drove people into their mobile domicile.
I learned a few things in preparation for our circumnavigation of the U.S. We need an auxiliary fuel tank with dummy-proof changeover. Mark and Bryan convinced me to get at least 100 amps of Solar for an extended trip. That way, we could leave the Honda IE2K at home. There are lots of places to stealth camp around the U.S. Our presenteur noted how to find them. Nat Geo has a new e-map set with all the states in detail for much less $ than the state-by-state maps available in the past. What ever trip you are planning, someone has already done it and you can learn from their experience.
I'll leave you with some pix of interesting rigs not in our group.
The common thread here is outrageous one-off:
This was an F-550 w/Phoenix custom pop top, 18K pound winch, metal garage on the back with an electric lift to put the motor cycle therin on the ground. Dana 135 rearend.
Part three will be a fun run down the pasture showing many of our own truck camper examples.
Until then,
regards, as always, jefe
