![]() They’ve just touched down, and he’s got the hood up, a rag on his shoulder. He gunned it out here with his two uncles and two kids in his 1993 Toyota 4Runner. Nearby is Nate, a thirtysomething Latino dude from Houston. He’s got no interest in heading into the actual expo, it seems he’s mostly just here to get content for his YouTube Channel. “Literally picked it up on the way here, bro,” he tells me. In a trucker hat and overalls, he cracks jokes with friends and employees as he cooks T-bone steaks out front of his brand-new EarthRoamer (which starts at $490,000-before add-ons). When I come upon him, he’s posted up solo in a camping chair, sipping a Coors Light, staring into a propane-powered fire.īack at the campground I chat up Johnny, the owner of a vehicle air-conditioning company he’s here to promote. He’s dripped out head to toe in RealTree, his headlamp perched over the snakeskin “A” on his Arizona Diamondbacks hat. “Saved my life, anyway.”Įarly in the expo I also meet Mark, a retired NBA referee in his fifties who drove here from Phoenix in his custom-painted steel gray Jeep Rubicon towing his Expedition 2.0 Off-Grid Trailer. Getting folks that are really hurting out there back on track-this saves lives,” he says, downing the handful of pills his wife hands him. He gives them a free tent on one condition: They come on a trip with him. His thing is finding other vets dealing with trauma in the Hot Springs area and taking them on overlanding expeditions. Today it’s the domain of every Outdoor Bro you know with an off-road pickup brimming with gear.Ĭhris is actually leaving first thing the following morning-he camps for the quiet and the solitude, and the expo has too many people and too much noise for his PTSD. ![]() The modern phenomenon has its roots in the military the first overlanding vehicles, domestically, were surplus Jeeps made for World War Two later made available to the public. ![]() In recent years, it’s become an industry, a lifestyle, a sort of quasi-libertarian offshoot of the #vanlife movement. Originally an Australian term for herding livestock long distances on foot, overlanding has evolved into a highly mechanized mode of adventure travel-one that takes its adherents into remote destinations, typically by 4x4 or motorcycle, where camping is the main form of lodging and the journey is the principal goal. It’s check-in day at the 2023 Overland Expo West-Burning Man for dudes with trucks-and, after a week-long cross-country trek, I’ve arrived. A smattering of propane campfires-no real fires allowed. Folks in safari hats and cutting-edge outerwear sitting on fold-out seats sipping from eco-friendly vessels. There are side pull-out awnings, those double-sided wraparound awnings mounted directly onto rigs. Standing mesh tents-four-doors flanked by ground tents and freestanding awnings. An astounding number of rooftop tents, some approached by little ladders. There are sleep shelters-canopied and hard-shelled and freestanding. There are Jeep Wranglers and Rubicons, Land Rovers and Land Cruisers, Mercedes Sprinters and G Wagons, a good number of which are towing trailers, some towing trailers towing bikes. ![]() On the eve of May’s new moon, I turn my Tacoma down the roughly paved road that leads into Fort Tuthill County Park, a 600-acre fairground south of Flagstaff, and find myself in a Mad Max-like convoy of drivers who all seem to be rocking Marmot or Patagonia.
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