Overland Expo began in 2009 as a single gathering with just 15 exhibitors and 500 attendees. “Customization is a big part of the culture: outfitting your vehicle for what you envision your off-road adventure to be.” “Building your overland vehicle is an experience,” said Lindsay Hubley, managing partner of the Overland Expo, an annual event series for outdoor adventure buffs. If you have deep pockets, bunking in a camper van can be a bit like staying in a five-star hotel on wheels.Īs the vehicles have evolved to become work-life spaces, and as some pandemic travel bans and restrictions remain in place, outdoors-oriented retailers and accessories makers are targeting the fast-growing DIY community with more sophisticated aftermarket products. Try ‘roughing it’ in a tricked-out camper van It’s meant for, like, you’re at a remote oil rig and someone’s arm has fallen off and you need someone to show you a video of how to put it back on.” “You could burn through thousands of dollars of data charges in one afternoon. It just gets really expensive really fast, like, un-usably so, to the point where I couldn’t turn the thing off fast enough,” Jacobson, the eighth employee at Facebook, said. “We learned a very expensive lesson with satellite internet connectivity. Still, he noted, a reliable signal can be hard to come by. We’re talking about shipping it to Iceland or shipping it to the Florida Keys. “We felt so lucky to have it during the pandemic. “We were in the mountains near Bryce, beautiful, and I had my iPad and I was doing a Zoom call,” said Jacobson, who lives in Manhattan Beach. That’s the way Matt Jacobson uses his EarthCruiser, motoring it around the Southwest and Montana over the last year and a half while still putting in his hours as Facebook’s creative director of augmented reality. Working from home will become the norm for many employees even after the pandemic ends. Technology and the Internet ‘Work from anywhere’ is here to stay. Some enthusiasts consider overlanding a long-weekend hobby others orient their personal lives - and now, thanks to policies allowing remote work, their day jobs too - around chasing the next epic adventure on wheels. There are budget do-it-yourselfers who make incremental modifications over several years, and a growing crop of vehicle outfitters who will do it for you. The parameters, already wide, are broadening as newcomers flood the market: Enthusiasts can purchase top-of-the-line turnkey rigs that cost $2 million, or convert their four-wheel-drive Subarus and Toyotas into overland-capable vehicles with rooftop tents, off-road tires, portable fridges and suspension lift kits. Not quite #vanlife (which is more bohemian) or glamping (rooted in opulence no car needed) or touring in an RV (cushier and confined to paved roads), overlanding is loosely defined as a self-reliant way to explore rugged terrain and undeveloped areas in a specialized vehicle for a sustained amount of time. “The kids are young and they’re not in school yet, and we have this limited amount of time where we can do this and not be grounded.” The $6,000 transatlantic shipping fee is “a big barrier to entry,” he acknowledged, but the family is earning income from their rental property and saving on hotel bills. We’re going all in,” said the 36-year-old Standish, who retired after founding and selling a Los Angeles clothing manufacturing company he is now a commercial real estate investor. “At this point, we’re in the vehicle full time. They plan to take the EarthCruiser down the Baja California Peninsula in December and then ship the 6-ton rig by boat to Belgium so they can use it to traverse Northern Europe next year. Their snapshots from the journey - the EarthCruiser perched on a rocky ledge at Vermilion Cliffs in Arizona, or blending in against the brilliant white expanse of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah - look like something out of a Patagonia catalog. So far the Standishes have driven 10,000 miles, visiting large swaths of the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest before crossing the Canadian border, where they’re exploring British Columbia. Starting price for the boxy behemoth: $439,000. The family’s new digs for the next four years or so: a luxury overland adventure vehicle called an EarthCruiser FX that combines premium accommodations - albeit in 88 square feet - with hardcore off-roading capabilities. Last holiday season, Tom Standish put nearly all of his belongings in long-term storage, leased out his Oregon house and, with his wife, toddler and newborn, traded in suburban life for one on the road.
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