Journey with no boundaries
Magazine | December 2020
Overland Adventures Magazine
Winter 2020
www.OverlandAdventuresMagazine.com Editor: Mary Beth Ebnet Designer: Rich Johnson Contributors: Helene Raynaud, a very special thanks for all your help! Photographers: Vill Van Merwe (Covers), Hailey Jean (Pages 30-31) Miguel Rangel (Beth Head Shot)
Main Features 8
Team Overland, Robert Raetz (SSgt USMC)
34 The Longest Journey of Me, Adimasu Gebeyehu
Personal Overland Journeys 5
MISSION STATEMENT Our mission is to connect and inspire people from all around the world who have a common passion for adventure and overlanding. Sharing adventures that just might be in your back yard and inspiring you to expand your bucket list!
VISION STATEMENT Our Vision is to help build an overland community across the globe where everyone’s perspective, knowledge and passion can be shared and valued.
CORE VALUES It doesn’t matter what kind of rig you drive, or how much money you have spent building that perfect rig. We are all here for the same thing…. Adventure, a journey and maybe, just maybe, an amazing destination! Whether you’re a family making memories with your kiddos or are a group of friends enjoying a weekend together, or sharing an amazing trip with that special someone; we want to feature you! And let your journey expand our minds, help us learn something new… and soar into something amazing and life changing! We want to give our passionate community a voice. If you would like to submit a story contact us at beth@overlandadventuresmagazine.com.
Our Lives as Overlanders, Andrea & Mike with Aimee
10 Our Approach to Overlanding, Will & Kate Fowler 12 Becoming an Overlander, Mike Buell 14 Overlanding 101, Joseph Tucker 16 Off-Grid and Off-Road: Touring Mongolia without a Net, Dean Karalekas 18 Family Overland During COVID-19, Eric Mowell 21 In Case of an Emergency…Be Ready, Matt Mercado 22 Stand Out Where It Counts-The Hi-Vis Story, Brad Self 24 Overlanding Loop-A 6-Day Adventure, Jeremy Bailey 26 The GOAT (Go Off-road Armor) Story 28 Thick & Thin-Overlanding, Right? ,Austin Head 32 When Gear Fails, There are Helping Hands, Karin-Marijke Vis & Coen Wubbels 38 Overlanding in Hungary, Ferenc Elekes 41 Kansas Overlanding, AJ & Sarah Williams 42 The Enchanted Rockies Trails and the End of Rumble, Michael Hyden 44 Flyover State, Cullen Powers 46 Adventures in Minnesota, Angel Hinkley 48 Overlanding the Lone Star State, Ross Aguirre
Technical Corner 37 How-To: Service (Cleaning and Rebuilding) Hi-Lift, Dan AdventureTaco 50 The Best Digital Map for Overlanding on GAIA GPS 4
MEET OUR EDITOR – BETH EBNET
Hi – my name is Beth! I have been an avid camper, traveler with a passion for adventure my entire life. I grew up on a hunting club-game farm in Minnesota with 9 siblings! The most fun I had growing up was going on adventures and camping in the backyard. However, our back yard was over 500 acres! There were lakes, ridges, wild animals and large mosquitoes. I learned how to navigate through the woods without maps or a compass, spending years exploring the land by using landmarks. If we didn’t make it home by 9:00pm, my mom would ring an old, huge school bell that could be heard miles away! That was our homemade GPS. I remember the joy and excitement of my early traveling adventures with my family. We went to Itasca State Park once, where the Mississippi River starts. We had a yellow Chevy truck with a camper top where my parents slept. All the kids shared a very large army green tent. I remember waking up one morning and stepping outside the tent right onto a pile of bear poop! Then try sleeping in a tent for the next 3 days… We were catching fish to eat, hiking the trails and swimming in the river. Another memorable trip was heading to Snowball Lake up in the Iron Range, traveling in a rented RV. We slept on top of it, under the stars. That’s when I learned how to cook on
a campfire. I have many more memories, but these truly stick out the most. As a hard-working small business owner, I understand the need to escape to new destinations and find ways to have an adventure – even close to home –. Once in a while, I like to venture to Western Maryland to Green Ridge State Forest, or spend a long weekend in Davis, West Virginia or drive up to Pennsylvania to meet up with some friends. That’s one great thing about our overland community: you can always find a group to meet up with! Do a quick post on social media asking if anyone is going out for the day or weekend. Sure, enough you’re onto your next adventure! What I currently drive and my current set-up… She’s a 2015 stock AWD Honda Pilot with almost 200k miles on it. She works perfectly for what I enjoy doing: hitting the National and State Parks and doing some light water crossings! I have an ARB fridge, a large/small tote for my cooking and other gear. A Coleman 10x10 instant 60 second tent, that’s about 5 years old. An Aero queen air mattress with a Vector Maxx Power Inverter that plugs into my cigarette lighter to pump it up. My trusty propane buddy heater. AND the most important gear of all: my dog Bella - my travel buddy that is always up for an adventure! She gets more excited than I do pulling out all the camping gear! My dream rig will always be that beautiful old classic FJ44 Toyota Land Cruiser with four doors and a pop-up tent in bright yellow! From the very first time I saw one, it was love at first sight! My favorite destination so far? Definitely Davis, West Virginia. I went there for the first time in November 2019 to relax, after working non-stop for months on various large projects. It was colder than we thought, with a little snow on the ground and crisp fresh air. We camped at Red Run by the river and hit a couple trails there. Then, we went off to the West Fork Road & Trail. To some people, it’s not that spectacular of a place to go. It might seem like a simple little place, but to me, it will always be a special place to visit. My dream overlanding trip would be heading to Ethiopia, to see the Oma Valley Tribes, as well as to Kenya and Namibia. There are many more places I dream of going to, but these are the top picks. I have met so many wonderful people around the world through the overland community that I would love to visit them all! What I am trying to accomplish through this new endeavor – our magazine – is to connect regular people, share their adventures around the world, introduce you to places that might be in your backyard. And that you can put on your bucket list and say…I can actually do that!
Our lives as Overlanders When Mike and I met 12 years ago in Zürich, Switzerland, we found out pretty quickly that we shared one dream: to travel the globe in our own vehicle.
Since then, we have explored over 50 countries in two completely different vehicles covering around 180’000km (111’846 miles). We have tried to summarize 10 years of overloading across the globe in this article, highlighting different experiences we have had throughout our journey. Only a year after we met, we had sold everything we owned and shipped our Land Rover Defender from Switzerland to Boston where we started a three-year journey through the Americas. We started out with a roof top tent which we sold on Craigslist once we reached Seattle and started sleeping in the Defender instead. This change happened due to one evening in Utah where we were just climbing into our roof top tent and Aimée, our dog, smelled something in the bushes, growled and something growled back. We have never climbed that ladder faster. In the future, we didn’t want to encounter a situation where we would have to get out of the tent in order to get into the driver’s seat. To this day though, we don’t know what animal growled back. We drove along the Rockies all the way to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. The weather wasn’t very pleasant, and we
kept switching seats to cover the distance. It was summer and the days were really long, it was hard to keep track of time. One day, I remember driving, the watch was showing 3 o’clock but we didn’t know if it was pm or am. So, we had to force ourselves to pull over for a break and tried to sleep a little. Nature up north totally amazed us. We encountered plenty of moose, bears, eagles, caribous and arctic foxes. We looped back through Canada, visited several national parks in the States. To this day, Moab is one of our favorite places on the globe. We could not get enough of the seemingly infinite red rocks and sand. Also being allowed to drive trails though this landscape was fascinating. Coming from Switzerland, we are not used to being allowed to drive off-road. So, we really enjoyed those liberties in the US. 5
Becoming an Overlander I remember vividly the days of pushing my stock 1990 Nissan Hardbody to its limits. Looking for the deepest mud and the toughest climbs we could find. Trucks were only $15k new back then, we were young, and we were carefree. We loved to go “off-roading” on the back roads of Vancouver Island, British Columbia and while those days back in the 90’s were tons of fun, they were mostly day trips with some buddies around our hometown. Fast forward a few years to the mid 2000’s and I was once again sporting the Nissan logo in my 2005 Nissan Xterra. What an awesome vehicle, such a unique look with tons of capability. I added some mud terrains and a small budget lift - it looked awesome! I liked my Xterra so much, I started a club. The Southern British Columbia Xterra club (SBCX). We had 14 members, decals, and did monthly runs in the Fraser Valley of BC. This was a great group of guys that came from all walks of life, and we all loved our Xterra’s. We held meet & greets as well as our day trips into the back country where we pushed the limits of our rigs. At that time, the aftermarket for the Xterra was very limited, so all of our rigs looked very similar. It was nothing like the Jeep and Toyota after-market. I think I got my first taste of overlanding, not that we used that word back in 2008, when six of us from the club decided to do a multi-day trip up to a mountain lake called Cabin Lake. It was at 6,000 feet and for us, there were 12
some challenging trails to overcome to get there. Once we arrived and I saw this amazing little lake with a fantastic grassy green rec site to camp in, I believe I became hooked. I may not have known at that time what it would be called or what it entailed, but I believe it was the moment that a seed was planted. Almost 10 years, later that seed has grown and become my passion. Fast forward to today, many vehicles later, and onto my second Jeep Wrangler, I am fully immersed into the world of overlanding. My overlanding vehicle is a 2018 JLU Rubicon with many modifications made to make it my ultimate overlanding rig. My Jeep, aptly named Ferris the Jeep, is my daily driver which means that, when building
the rig, I needed for it to be practical for daily use yet very functional for overlanding. The Mopar 2” lift with Fox shox was the first task which was quickly followed by 35” Falken Wildpeak ATIII All-terrain tires mounted on 18” Fuel Beast wheels. I ordered my Firecracker Red Rubicon from the factory with all the options including the steel bumper package as I knew I would be adding a Warn 10S Zeon winch. I don’t look for deep mud pits anymore, it’s fun in the moment, but I do not enjoy the cleaning process. And as a result of avoiding unnecessary mud pits, my winch is yet to be used. But it’s ready! Next was to install the Rhino-Rack Pioneer Platform and Backbone system to allow me to add a Roof Top Tent from Wild Coast Tents. There are many other additions to Ferris, but the last one, which I personally built, was my overland kitchen drawer system. It tucks nicely into the back-cargo area of the Jeep and has really completed my overland build. Well, are we ever really done?
who have the same passion as I do and believe that I have influenced some of my friends to join me in the crazy world of overlanding. My wife and kids all enjoy getting out into nature and are slowly learning to like “wild” camping. I love the challenges of preparing for our trips and I am always looking for ways to make the experience better, more efficient, and more enjoyable. I am an Overlander. I may not go on overlanding trips for weeks, months, and even years, but I am an overlander. I may not get out every weekend of the spring and summer, but I am an Overlander.
Mike Buell The love of vehicle-based travel regardless of the duration of the trip burns inside me. Whether it’s a weekend trip or a couple weeks of vacation, I enjoy it all. The challenge of finding that epic camping spot in the middle of nowhere. Having the ability to survive in the back country for days and weeks with only what we have in the Jeep is exciting! I have made so many new friends
Vernon, BC, Canada Okanagan Overlanding www.instagram.com/okanaganoverlanding www.facebook.com/okanaganoverlanding www.okanaganoverland.com
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