Overlanding is a popular term, but what does it mean? Like many things, I guess it depends on who you ask, but to me it means to take-in or experience a large geographic area by traveling through it, over an extended period of time. Indeed, the journey itself becomes a significant part of the overall experience. I am more partial to the term “adventure travel” because my wanderings are mostly off-road, or incorporate off-roading side excursions, but I am sure that for many the two terms are interchangeable. My sister and her husband are on a multi-year sailboat excursion, currently somewhere off the coast of Mexico, which I guess could be called “overwatering,” but also in their case I think “adventure travel” is a good description of their life. Is van life, another popular pastime, overlanding? I think it fits the bill of experiencing places by traveling through them. Where adventure travel differs is in experiencing the places that few people get to see. In my homebase of Oregon, most people only experience the Interstate 5 corridor which bisects the state between the Coast Range and Cascade Mountains. With apologies to the Bend-Redmond metro (population 260,000) on the eastern side of the Cascades (on Highway 97 which predates Interstate 5 by 43 years), all of Oregon’s major population centers reside along this corridor; Ashland-Medford, Eugene-Springfield, Salem-Keiser, and the Portland metropolis of Portland-Beaverton-Hillsboro (and many would say Vancouver, Washington!). Oregon and the other western states have so much more to offer than their respective interstate corridors, and this is what drives me to take the road (or trail) less traveled and experience a west that has changed little over the past century.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.— Robert Frost
If overlanding is about the experience of the journey, then it makes sense that these journeys take place off the beaten path, if not necessarily on unpaved tracks. I am reminded of traveling across Arizona and coming out of the Coconino National Forest at the tiny town of Winona. It lies on what is now Interstate 40, but it was once Route 66 and pieces of the old road and a bridge still remain, in Winona. Who knew that one of the great experiences of the journey would occur along a major interstate highway? Not me. Overlanding is a journey of discovery; discovery of little-known places, discovery of forgotten history, discovery of one’s own abilities.
That is not to say that overlanding is necessarily a solitary pastime. Traveling in groups adds a level of security in that if one vehicle breaks down or becomes stuck, assistance is available. I have yet to run into a situation like that, but I have driven home with a broken swaybar link after the end of my Arizona trip (and home was 1,000 miles away!). On the same trip, another vehicle broke a shock absorber mount, and we had to divert into Flagstaff to get it welded. It is good to have friends around when these things happen. There is something very Zen about a solo venture, though. I enjoy traveling at my own pace, as opposed to the group’s. I have also seen much more wildlife when traveling solo. In either scenario, traveling in the backcountry for a week or more does require a level of self-sufficiency. My roots are grounded in traveling the National Parks with my parents and sister in a 1966 dodge van (it was used, I am not that old!) with the consummate Coleman stove and ice chest. I do not remember much from those years, but the smell of burning Coleman fuel still takes me back to that time. Years later I would experience the same nostalgia when boarding a C-141 Starlifter for my first parachute jump out of a jet plane. Evidently naphtha and jet fuel smell very much the same when burned. And evidently, one can still wax nostalgic about their youth when they are half-scared out of their mind! My stint in the 82nd Airborne would teach me even more about self-sufficiency, with remote operations in Honduras, Panama, the Arctic, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Travel these days is more about comfort, but I still weigh heavily towards compact efficiency due to the shear miles of travel that these adventures require. Overlanding, adventure travel, whatever adjective one wants to use, is more about travel than it is about camping in one place. I value a hot meal before the sun goes down and a quick early morning departure, much higher than an elaborate campsite. Your style of travel may differ but just know that whatever you setup has to be torn down and packed away in the morning, and every hour of daylight is many miles of trail. I have a garage full of camping gear that seemed smart at the time but proved too cumbersome or unnecessary for the type of traveling that I do. If anyone wants a hammock, I have an unused one in my garage. Solar panels? Yes, I have several of those in the garage, too. Solar is not very useful when you stop late in the day and leave early in the morning. The bottom line is that you do not need a lot of gear to hit the trails and see one of the western states, the way it was meant to be seen. Think like a backpacker, with a tent, a stove, and freeze-dried meals (which are fabulous!). Will you get tired of sleeping on the ground? Maybe, but my good friend Mark Doiron has traveled a lot longer than I have, and he uses a backpacking tent. Adventure is about the experiences, not the gear.