Cheapthrills wrote:Thanks guys some good input and good ideas.
I'm aware there are all different breeds and understand the difference in them all (I think) . My reasons are there are places I want to see and things I'd love to experience meeting new friends and testing my skills that I'll learn and ones I already have. I'm not trying to be a die hard survivalist or anything like that.
Being in a position to assess risk vs time and recources and saft,with a group of friends and or family sounds like a terrific experience on top of experiencing new culture both here in the stats and across our borders.
I know there's a lot to learn and it's not an overnight preparation to departure in my case it will be a dream for a long time before I can even think about assembly of these several week trips to where ever. But I've dreamed of doing this in fsjs for a about 2 years now since I bought my first fsj.
Thank you for your input and suggested research direction. You guys are awsome hope to talk to you guys more about this and maybe meet someday.
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Here's some more resources for you. Our local overlanding forum has a lot of the "nuts and bolts" info more condensed that expedition portal. Also, EP has a lot of over the top extreme end mods, gear and write ups that are just unrealistic for those who are not independently wealthy or without corporate sponsorship. I feel it pushes the median away from the actual mean and mode of the overlanding population. This forum has real people with real jobs and families still living the overland life, and they show what they have and how they use it in real life.
http://rockymountainoverland.com/forum/index.php
I was serious earlier with the comms, they are all HAMMs. IN addition to the useful range of the radios, APRS is a huge deal. It's a free open sourced GPS mapping deal that ALSO allows you to connect to the internet to send messages or allow friends or family to track your location on the internet. For extended trips into the wilderness it's 1000x better than a CB and tomtom, in fact it's not even in the same league. For those who've been to the sandbox, it's Blue Force Tracker for civilians.
http://rockymountainoverland.com/forum/ ... video.594/
And since the spirit of overlanding is the adventure I really want to impart the medium-core nature of my adventures. I hope that I can show that the dream doesn't have to start with the once in a lifetime drive from the Yucatan to Nova Scotia , here's some medium-core pics!
I mentioned earlier all the Colorado state parks. It was Christmas of 2013 my wife (GF at the time) and I were at Cherry Creek state park dog park and we decided that our New Years resolution for 2014 would be to visit every state park in Colorado. There were 44 state parks (because Colorado River state park has 3 locations), which meant a LOT of weekend road trips. I made an adventure board to track our progress:
We were both working a lot so obviously, 2015s resolution was to finish what we started! In that time one state park went away (Bonney Lake), but fortunately they added a new state park to take it's place (Staunton). Both years we made it to Ouray, too! We did some of the trips in my J-10 and some of them in her Honda Fit, and after a heavy dose of reality we learned that the best was to prep for a 4 day trip was a lot of 2 day trips, and a weeklong trip by taking lots of 4 day trips. Since we wanted to spend our time adventuring rather than wrenching we got a Cherokee Trailhawk and I couldn't be happier with it. Locker, low range, and hooks front and rear right out of the box as well as a quiet comfy ride over the thousands of paved miles. Some of my favorites from those little trips:
Castlewood Canyon
San Luis state park. It's an empty reservoir. The post apocalyptic feeling was amazing!
State parks weren't the only adventures. We also went to the Bonneville salt flats.
2015 Ouray was our "baby moon". My wife (fiance' at the time) was a real trooper driving the trailhawk!
Adventuring dialed down a bit with the arrival of my daughter, but we still adventured. Our first adventure with the kiddo was for ourwedding in Grand Lake, Colorado...IN FEBRUARY!
In the summer both my ladies were troopers for a week long adventure to/in/back from Ouray. My daughter napping at the KOA
It's time to wheel dad, get me out of this sleep sack and lets go!
Drunk on apricots in Hotchkiss, CO on the way back.
Sometimes I had to split the party and send my wife and daughter by plane and drive with the dogs. This was searching for an overland route from Bend to Eugene, OR
And sleeping in Sinclair, WY after they closed the highway to Laramie. -10 with wind chill. Glad I had my dogs!
In the famous last words of Calvin, "It's a big world out there Hobbes old buddy, let's go explore it".