Is "Overlanding" a thing in your area yet?

When done bashing overlanders and mall crawlers - let‘s get right back into 17 pages of 20 -vs- 30 …
 
I hate it when they break down the banks as looks in this pic, and rip up the place. We're down to 1/3rd of the 'wild places' over the 'lived on places' (33% left) and that's being destroyed w/ppl who wanna stay ina "car'n" travel over it. I do not leave a trail or ruin the 'outback'. I use a light duty ('66 bronk) 4WD and stuff U might have round the house, no huge expenditures, fancy/weird specialty stuff. I go yr round, am the only 1 I see and just use the vehicle as a means to get where I couldnt otherwise get (time, distance, my age, number/weight of coolers'n other camp stuff). I lost my house in the boonies to the Great Recession & this is 1 way I recharge my batteries. I admitt I dont go 4 a month, more like 3, 4 days 25, 30 wks/yr.

That trail that you don’t leave was a part of the “outback” before someone ruined it and made it into a trail. So many of these creek crossings have been around for ages and hasn’t ruined anything.
 
To have that much money tied up into that much equipment, I would believe that one would have to be a “true” adventure traveler,….as in long, extended expeditions to justify the cost of it all. To do this for the occasional weekend out in the bush seems a little extravagant and unnecessarily hard on the rig because of all the added weight that it’s tugging around.
With that said, if it makes them happy and they’re paying for it, kudos to them. Who knows, for the ones that don’t really use all the gear, it may be the thing that gets them motivated to take that leap, join a group, and go for it. I follow a group based in Arkansas called ‘Ozark Overland Adventures’ and they have some nice rigs decked out for overlanding and they use it. They show a lot of the beautiful places in Arkansas, but they also travel all over the country filming as they go. Having these rigs decked out like this for them makes perfect sense, as it’s their lifestyle, but now it’s also a means of making a great living.

His current rig, a Gladiator Rubicon. His wife has a JL Unlimited decked out very similar to his Gladiator.
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Did he make it??
 
True camping is sleeping on the ground next to the fire like Clint Eastwood in his cowboy movies. “Truck camping” lol. All the hipsters here in Portland fell for that fad. There’s a sucker born every minute.

-$45k Tacoma ✅
-$5k lift ✅
-$4k off-road wheels and tires ✅
-$3k tent ✅
-$2k deer lights✅
-$200 shovel ✅
-$800 snorkel✅

Man you look good.
 
True camping is sleeping on the ground next to the fire like Clint Eastwood in his cowboy movies. “Truck camping” lol. All the hipsters here in Portland fell for that fad. There’s a sucker born every minute.
Absolutely!

Spent some of my time in light infantry and can’t imagine how some of those folks would react to it. Training was relentless and looking back at it I have no regrets— at the time it sometimes seemed rough. Often we’d be busting brush for hours following a compass heading. Sun would start to set, whomever was in charge would sort of look around and declare that we we would be stopping there for the night. Call in our position on the radio, out comes the chow, draw for watch hours, then go to sleep right where we stopped.

When you’re packing so that every milligram of weight counts, there’s no sleeping pad or extra blankets. Woobie or a minimalist issue sleeping bag is all you had. The little one gram packet of freeze dried coffee in an MRE was the height of luxury in the field— if you had time and were in the right place to heat water and add cocoa powder to it, that’s Ritz Carlton level of comfort for an 11B!

Now that’s some way to “camp”!
 
True camping is sleeping on the ground next to the fire like Clint Eastwood in his cowboy movies. “Truck camping” lol. All the hipsters here in Portland fell for that fad. There’s a sucker born every minute.

-$45k Tacoma ✅
-$5k lift ✅
-$4k off-road wheels and tires ✅
-$3k tent ✅
-$2k deer lights✅
-$200 shovel ✅
-$800 snorkel✅

Man you look good.
Welp, you can still buy all those things and spend your weekends in your mom’s basement playing video games. :D
 
Welp, you can still buy all those things and spend your weekends in your mom’s basement playing video games. :D
Exactly. Vanity is a cruel mistress and popularity is over-rated. So many with the trendy mindset. Be cool, unique and special by jumping on the badass bandwagon, everyone is doing it! :D
I know a LOT of people who have spent many thousands for specialized off-roading equipment, yet their rigs have NEVER seen serious dirt, not once in over a decade. All the places that my dirt biking friends and I have gone camping over the years, most of them with giant 4x4 pickups, my lowly 2wd 4-cylinder open diff Tacoma gets there just as well. With a fully loaded bed. With lower operating costs and arguably better reliability and resale value. Good thing my identity is not tied up in my super cool over-accessorized vehicle lol.
 
True camping is sleeping on the ground next to the fire like Clint Eastwood in his cowboy movies. “Truck camping” lol. All the hipsters here in Portland fell for that fad. There’s a sucker born every minute.

-$45k Tacoma ✅
-$5k lift ✅
-$4k off-road wheels and tires ✅
-$3k tent ✅
-$2k deer lights✅
-$200 shovel ✅
-$800 snorkel✅

Man you look good.

I'd like to know where you can pick up this $45K Tacoma! They're getting ungodly expensive now adays!



This is a joke for the most part... oooor is it?
 
Like most truck trends, I think many people with trucks like that are more into the look of overlanding than the actual practice of overlanding.

Here in the midwest and Great Lakes region, you'll sometimes see trucks outfitted for overlanding, where there literally isn't any place to overland. There's no BLM land in Michigan. I suppose maybe you could find some forest roads to drive out to and camp on some state land, but it's nothing any off-the-lot Subaru couldn't do.

It's always kind of funny to see that type of truck in a state campground. A Tacoma with recovery boards on the rack, a bunch of jerry cans mounted all over, with a roof-mounted tent... parked between a $100,000+ 40 foot fifth wheel on one side and a family tent camping with their Grand Caravan on the other.
Tent camping in the Caravan is my style! There is a YouTuber Softroading the west that overlanded in his dads Camry when his Subie was totaled.

Yes we have RTT’s and traction boards around here. Only wheeling we can do is on gravel, or private Jeep rides.
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True camping is sleeping on the ground next to the fire like Clint Eastwood in his cowboy movies. “Truck camping” lol. All the hipsters here in Portland fell for that fad. There’s a sucker born every minute.

-$45k Tacoma ✅
-$5k lift ✅
-$4k off-road wheels and tires ✅
-$3k tent ✅
-$2k deer lights✅
-$200 shovel ✅
-$800 snorkel✅

Man you look good.
there is a guy that lives in the apartments close to my neighborhood; he drives TRD 4Runner I think, with that fordable tent on the top of his SUV; I can see him going back and forth to a local lake on weekends, and suppose having fun of camping at the lake

also I see him driving the SUV to work daily, it makes me wonder why, who do you trying impress to; why simply do not downsize it, I don't get the hype
 
YouTube has a young lady overlanding along the coast of Australia; I can watch in air conditioned comfort.
 
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I saw one of these ridiculous rigs in a public campground in the foothills of the Adirondacks. The crew was sitting on the roof for some reason. Most of the other campers were in regular RVs, and some in tents. I don't get camping on the roof.
 
We have those lumbering around here fairly often. Just hard to fathom that kind of big money to drive around dirt roads and camp out. Figured they were euro trucks but it looks like the dual axle has a Florida(?) plate.
 
Both had Florida plates. Lots of great off road terrain and spectacular countryside in Utah. Those rigs were huge, though, which really limits where they can go.

I much prefer something the size of an old 4 Runner. Not something the size of a fire truck.
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