Fake Overlanding?

[Billiebob]

If the space is 20 x 20, why cant they be parked side by side ?

Most CrewCabs are 7' wide... plus mirrors.
Most trailers 8' wide.
Leaving 5 feet for 3 aisles, 20 inches between units.

Plus CrewCabs are at least of 20' long.
And an 18' trailer has a 4' hitch.

The guys organizing the events pick their target market and run the event accordingly.
I don't regard a 5th wheel or Prevost Bus towing a 24' Tow/Jeep Hauler an overlander.
There are plenty of events for bigger units.

 

[Buckaroo]

back on topic, and a question back at the OP.
Is there such a thing as 'Fake Overlanding' now?
as I see it:-
Vehicle
Travel
Camp
...ad infinatum

in computer programmers terms:-
10 Vehicle
20 Travel
30 Camp
40 GOTO 10

 

[Billiebob]

I'd say, Overlanding....
The vehicle and gear are a means to the end but
Overlanding is

Learning about
Culture
Food
Language
Challenging your comfort zone

Overlanding does not need to involve a vehicle
It is the challenge of meeting new people
Otherwise you are just camping

Which is what most of us do most of the time.

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

Yep. BC Overland I stayed 1 night. They had guided trail rides, 40 vehicles going down a dusty trail... no way.
Kinda fun tho, the Warn Guy from CA used my Jeep for his winching seminar since it had an old M8000.
Lots of interesting overlanding vehicles too. Like the two in the background.

View attachment 118663

Still I was there less than 24 hours.... and camping alone on a beach the next night.

View attachment 118664

I agree they can be fun and I do enjoy seeing others peoples stuff. It's the expo atmosphere that irks me. Too commercialized with the fad junk or exotic elitist gear IMOFWIW ! It's the comradery and seeing the varies inventiveness of the participants that interest me. I like the educational events and participation events. You don't have to go to an expo to experience those things though and pop out $300 + for someone else pockets. I think we should have four regional jamborees twice a year instead of expo's.

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

I'd say, Overlanding....
The vehicle and gear are a means to the end but
Overlanding is

Learning about
Culture
Food
Language
Challenging your comfort zone

Overlanding does not need to involve a vehicle
It is the challenge of meeting new people
Otherwise you are just camping

Which is what most of us do most of the time.

I don't know about you BB, how can you go overland without a vehicle if your destination is 200 miles from home. If you use your rig to get there and get back, that's your overland adventure. What you do when you get there is another adventure seperate from the overlanding. In other words you overland for the adventure of the destination. Right ??

 

[Buckaroo]

what Lubber said ^^

 

[Motoboss]

Ughhh

 

[Billiebob]

I don't know about you BB, how can you go overland without a vehicle if your destination is 200 miles from home. If you use your rig to get there and get back, that's your overland adventure. What you do when you get there is another adventure seperate from the overlanding. In other words you overland for the adventure of the destination. Right ??

Why can't you overland hitch hiking? By bus, train, the overland experience is meeting people, experiencing different cultures, not the drive. I don't think camping with a bunch your peers is overlanding regardless of how remote the road. That might be exploring but it sure is not overlanding.

Overlanding has become new way to sound cool when really we are just going camping. Or driving a fitted out rig with an RTT, camp kitchen, solar refrigeration, so you can impress the relatives when you arrive to "camp" in their driveway while tweeting 500 selfies along the way. Social media is killing all the great classic adventures.

 

[Billiebob]

I think we should have four regional jamborees twice a year instead of expo's.

But that takes volunteers to organize and..... real world guys like us old farts.... who enjoy just the fellowship.
Pretty rare today to get a bunch of people together just for the social venture without the need for twitter likes and selfies.

 

[Patriot]

Looking Over the Land....in the Blue Ridge.

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

Why can't you overland hitch hiking? By bus, train, the overland experience is meeting people, experiencing different cultures, not the drive. I don't think camping with a bunch your peers is overlanding regardless of how remote the road. That might be exploring but it sure is not overlanding.

Overlanding has become new way to sound cool when really we are just going camping. Or driving a fitted out rig with an RTT, camp kitchen, solar refrigeration, so you can impress the relatives when you arrive to "camp" in their driveway while tweeting 500 selfies along the way. Social media is killing all the great classic adventures.

View attachment 118721

Your condemnation of overlanders dosent sound like anything I would do. You assume a lot that is not true for a large majority of OB overlanders. Do you want me to condemn you because you have your trailer or a jeep instead of a P.U. truck. I dont have either, dosent that make you a fake overlander to me ?That's the same kind of comparison you are using on other overlanders. You have an opinion, but it is yours to own, and I disagree with it. You have a rig built to your satisfaction with kitchen, ref and everything you need for your camping, overlanding, tripping, call it whatever you will but you do it the way you want to do it, so why do you condemn others for doing it there way. Your being a hypocrite about it and you can't even see it. Weeks ago I quoted from Webster's dictionary the definition of overland on this thread. The conversation should have ended there but it didn't. As far as I am concerned I am tired of hearing all the complaints about how others view overlanding, it is already defined in the dictionary very well.
P.S. I still like you man and you are an asset to the forums IMO !

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

But that takes volunteers to organize and..... real world guys like us old farts.... who enjoy just the fellowship.
Pretty rare today to get a bunch of people together just for the social venture without the need for twitter likes and selfies.

I think you under estimate your fellow OB clan.
Church groups do it all the time as well as other organizations. It takes leadership I agree. True organizers can find ways to make it interesting enough to draw hundreds if not thousands to such an event. I'm just trying to plant the seed.

 

[RescueRangers]

Why can't you overland hitch hiking? By bus, train, the overland experience is meeting people, experiencing different cultures, not the drive. I don't think camping with a bunch your peers is overlanding regardless of how remote the road. That might be exploring but it sure is not overlanding.

Overlanding has become new way to sound cool when really we are just going camping. Or driving a fitted out rig with an RTT, camp kitchen, solar refrigeration, so you can impress the relatives when you arrive to "camp" in their driveway while tweeting 500 selfies along the way. Social media is killing all the great classic adventures.

Social media only kills it if you let it. When we started out we watched Youtube videos but it didn't take long to see that most were more interested in content than Overlanding. Now, there are only two or three people we watch on Youtube. Mostly I learn about other Overlanders from those that have taken the time to sit and write about their travels, articles or, mostly, books. The only social media we have is a FB page we post pictures from our trips. Why, so if we want to show someone a cool picture we can from our phone or table. We don't advertise it and really don't care if people follow us or not (we do like to share photos and talk about our trips though).

Not everyone is out for cool points. Yes, we have a Jeep with a 3 inch lift and 35's with a roof rack but that is it. At Jeep beach we fade into the background as soon as we park. When I do talk about what we have in the Jeep people get confused because they really don't see anything special. We have to explain that 80% of the mods we have done are on the inside or underneath, where its important. I don't care how cool my rig is, I care about how organized it is, what our range is, and how quickly we can get food on the table or back on the road.

Yes, we are guilty, we have an RTT, frig and camp kitchen. Burn me at the stake. We wanted to get away from staying in a hotel every night but don't want to sleep on the ground. We don't want to drag a trailer because it makes it hard to get in and out of parking spaces in town. And, visiting towns is a mandatory part of our Overland style. We have a frig because we got sick of water in the bottom of the cooler and wanted to extend our range by doing away with the need to stop every day for ice. And the kitchen. My wife loves to cook and I love to eat her cooking. Firing up the stove and having a great meal at the end of the day is one of the biggest enjoyments of Overlanding for us.

We enjoy our set up, it gets us to where we want (or may want in the future), helps us enjoy what we are doing, helps us save some money, and keeps us speaking to one another. Am I wrong. No. Do we have room for improvement. Of course. But the one improvement we don't need is knowing not to tell others they are wrong.

 

[Billiebob]

You assume a lot that is not true for a large majority of OB overlanders.

Thats because most of us, me included are just campers, latching onto an ancient tradition because "overlanding" is the new cool. No different than mall crawlers in fitted out Jeeps pretending to be rock crawlers. Overlanding is, always has been a rare experience, but camping in a well outfitted rig has been common for 80? years.

Overlanding is risk taking on a social, cultural scale. Not just driving to the edge of a cliff.

Many thanks for the open, honest discussion....

I'm gonna find the definition, which I disagree with.

But I have never said anyone was doing it wrong, Someone asked how can you overland without a vehicle, it is easy. Homeless people are overlanders every night. I only said we are mostly just camping. Overlanding to me is not a new word for camping.

found a websters definition...
"overland - traveling or passing over land; "an overland journey"; "the overland route usedby Marco Polo"

When you throw in Marco Polo.... you end up with my interpretation... definitely a cultural, social adventure with language and food challenges. Not just a way to get from point A to point B. But a challenge to everything you know and are comfortable with.

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

Thats because most of us, me included are just campers, latching onto an ancient tradition because "overlanding" is the new cool. No different than mall crawlers in fitted out Jeeps pretending to be rock crawlers. Overlanding is, always has been a rare experience, but camping in a well outfitted rig has been common for 80? years.

Overlanding is risk taking on a social, cultural scale. Not just driving to the edge of a cliff.

Many thanks for the open, honest discussion....

I'm gonna find the definition, which I disagree with.

But I have never said anyone was doing it wrong, Someone asked how can you overland without a vehicle, it is easy. Homeless people are overlanders every night. I only said we are mostly just camping. Overlanding to me is not a new word for camping.

found a websters definition...
"overland - traveling or passing over land; "an overland journey"; "the overland route usedby Marco Polo"

When you throw in Marco Polo.... you end up with my interpretation... definitely a cultural, social adventure with language and food challenges. Not just a way to get from point A to point B. But a challenge to everything you know and are comfortable with.

I'm sorry I disagree with your concept, but I do.
Marko Polo would have driven a jeep with an RTT on top had it been available to him. Our ancestors would have loved to have a jeep for their travels instead of covered wagons. The point is we do have these things today and are no less overlanders, less the Indians and the hardships. A couple hundred years from now our future my be space or time travel in a time machine. They also will be overlanders in a modern way. It's all in how you look at it. Many views on this and we must respect them all regardless.

 

[Billiebob]

I'm sorry I disagree with your concept, but I do.
Marko Polo would have driven a jeep with an RTT on top had it been available to him. Our ancestors would have loved to have a jeep for their travels. The point is we do have these things today and are no less overlanders, less the Indians and the hardships. A couple hundred years from now our future my be space or time travel in a time machine. They also will be overlanders in a modern way. It's all in how you look at it.

100% on the space travel thing, remember "Lost in Space".... not about travel, all about challenge. Even Star Trek, the show was not about the vehicle or the travel, it was about the journey, the challenge of the unknown, the cultural, spiritual growth seeing, meeting unknown, strange cultures.

But time to end this discussion, I am not critical of anything we do, just saying most of what I do is camping. Every few years I get closer to overlanding, lik walking into a diner in Little Rock, sitting down at the bar and noticing I am the only white guy..... It was a great evening once they all realized I was a foreigner from a long ways away..... but that first realization that I was in the wrong spot.... working with those strangers challenged by my presense.... that was the overlanding experience, not driving from Canada to Arkansas.

 

[Lanlubber In Remembrance]

100% on the space travel thing, remember "Lost in Space".... not about travel, all about challenge. Even Star Trek, the show was not about the vehicle or the travel, it was about the journey, the challenge of the unknown, the cultural, spiritual growth seeing, meeting unknown, strange cultures.

But time to end this discussion, I am not critical of anything we do, just saying most of what I do is camping. Every few years I get closer to overlanding, lik walking into a diner in Little Rock, sitting down at the bar and noticing I am the only white guy..... It was a great evening once they all realized I was a foreigner from a long ways away..... but that first realization that I was in the wrong spot.... working with those strangers challenged by my presense.... that was the overlanding experience, not driving from Canada to Arkansas.

Been there done that myself.

 

[RescueRangers]

When we started in Overlanding, and started to get an understanding of what Overlanding is, we read it as "a road trip with camping". As we started reading about people who travel the world we started to see there is a whole lot more to it. Defining Overlanding as "a road trip with camping" or just camping is about as far from the true as you can get. Yes, several people I follow have RTT's. Several have ground tents, mostly because they are on dual sports. There are some that have some type of RV or truck camper. But the most common thing they all have with regard to overnight stays is they stay in some type of lodging from time to time. Sometimes its because of security issues, or there is a lack of available camping sites, or they just want a hot shower and a nice meal. Are we to say these people are not Overlanders because they don't camp every night? Sorry, I can't support that. I have read about what they have done, and gone through, and not about to dismiss anything about their trip. I have the diary from a couple who traveled from 1914 to 1938. I would say that the majority of people on OB went through what this couple did on their first trip would never Overland again.

Which brings up another point. That couple, who visited every National Park during a time when there was no road system to speak of, few gas stations, few places to resupply, no GPS, crappy maps, no RTT or frig, didn't call them self Overlanders. Why? You can pull out your Webster to define Overlanding but the term did not exist during their time (go look up what the word Faggot meant in the 18th century, you won't see anything mentioned about sexual orientation). The term they used was Autocamping. What we call Overlanding today comes from a trendy thing that started in South Africa. But, they didn't call it Overlanding, they call it Touring. Everywhere else in the world what we do tends to be called Touring. We call it Overlanding, and because we do the term seems to be replacing Touring. But even in South Africa Touring is a fairly modern term for traveling to remote areas. Overlanding as we know it does go back a bunch of years. People started traveling the world in automobiles by at least the 1950's but I have yet to see any of them put a name to it. They just did it.

I've been in various FB Overlanding groups for several years. During that time I have not seen one person ask what Overlanding is or its definition. The overwhelming discussion is boarder crossing procedures or documents. Next would be vehicle shipping information or advice. All of the people in these groups are concerned with how to Overland, how to improve their Overlanding. We are not world travelers but we aren't weekend Overlanders either. We don't concern our self with defining Overlanding (we did that years ago), we concern our self with how to do it better, get the most out of our Overland trips. I understand there is an endless stream of people new to Overlanding coming on OB who are curious about it. And many of these want their voice to be heard but don't know what to say. I see a lot of this as the "is that a real fire" question in 18th century living history, a questioned asked to break the ice and start a conversation. The problem comes when we let our bias dictate our response. When we respond, are we giving the established, accepted, definition or are we giving our definition based on what we do? Are we responding to help the hobby to move forward or are we just trying to move our self forward socially?

In every definition thread I have seen on OB one thing becomes clear. There are folks that understand what it is, are doing it (or are working towards doing it) and are more concerned with improving them self than worrying about defining it. And then there are the folks who have to down play Overlanding in an attempt to raise them self up. If you just want to go out in the woods to camp and call yourself an Overlander, that is perfectly fine. Just understand that the majority of Overlanders don't agree with you no matter how much you try to push your version of Overlanding.

 

[grubworm]

When we started in Overlanding, and started to get an understanding of what Overlanding is, we read it as "a road trip with camping". As we started reading about people who travel the world we started to see there is a whole lot more to it. Defining Overlanding as "a road trip with camping" or just camping is about as far from the true as you can get. Yes, several people I follow have RTT's. Several have ground tents, mostly because they are on dual sports. There are some that have some type of RV or truck camper. But the most common thing they all have with regard to overnight stays is they stay in some type of lodging from time to time. Sometimes its because of security issues, or there is a lack of available camping sites, or they just want a hot shower and a nice meal. Are we to say these people are not Overlanders because they don't camp every night? Sorry, I can't support that. I have read about what they have done, and gone through, and not about to dismiss anything about their trip. I have the diary from a couple who traveled from 1914 to 1938. I would say that the majority of people on OB went through what this couple did on their first trip would never Overland again.

Which brings up another point. That couple, who visited every National Park during a time when there was no road system to speak of, few gas stations, few places to resupply, no GPS, crappy maps, no RTT or frig, didn't call them self Overlanders. Why? You can pull out your Webster to define Overlanding but the term did not exist during their time (go look up what the word Faggot meant in the 18th century, you won't see anything mentioned about sexual orientation). The term they used was Autocamping. What we call Overlanding today comes from a trendy thing that started in South Africa. But, they didn't call it Overlanding, they call it Touring. Everywhere else in the world what we do tends to be called Touring. We call it Overlanding, and because we do the term seems to be replacing Touring. But even in South Africa Touring is a fairly modern term for traveling to remote areas. Overlanding as we know it does go back a bunch of years. People started traveling the world in automobiles by at least the 1950's but I have yet to see any of them put a name to it. They just did it.

I've been in various FB Overlanding groups for several years. During that time I have not seen one person ask what Overlanding is or its definition. The overwhelming discussion is boarder crossing procedures or documents. Next would be vehicle shipping information or advice. All of the people in these groups are concerned with how to Overland, how to improve their Overlanding. We are not world travelers but we aren't weekend Overlanders either. We don't concern our self with defining Overlanding (we did that years ago), we concern our self with how to do it better, get the most out of our Overland trips. I understand there is an endless stream of people new to Overlanding coming on OB who are curious about it. And many of these want their voice to be heard but don't know what to say. I see a lot of this as the "is that a real fire" question in 18th century living history, a questioned asked to break the ice and start a conversation. The problem comes when we let our bias dictate our response. When we respond, are we giving the established, accepted, definition or are we giving our definition based on what we do? Are we responding to help the hobby to move forward or are we just trying to move our self forward socially?

In every definition thread I have seen on OB one thing becomes clear. There are folks that understand what it is, are doing it (or are working towards doing it) and are more concerned with improving them self than worrying about defining it. And then there are the folks who have to down play Overlanding in an attempt to raise them self up. If you just want to go out in the woods to camp and call yourself an Overlander, that is perfectly fine. Just understand that the majority of Overlanders don't agree with you no matter how much you try to push your version of Overlanding.

ha! well, the trending social fashion now is being "inclusive". if you define something and then have to include EVERYTHING to fit in, then logically there will be issues like this

 

[RescueRangers]

I don't see the term as inclusive. To me, based on the accepted definition, its anything but inclusive. Vehicle reliant travel to remote areas where the journey is the destination.

Vehicle reliant: we have 4x4 cars, SUV's, trucks, vans. 4x2 cars, SUV's, trucks, vans. Then you have the various motorcycles. I have even heard people refer to folks bicycling North to South America as Overlanders. Based on the vehicle part we have RV'ers, Vanlife, Overlanders naturally, carcampers, even the minivan crowd.

Remote Areas: That is even more vague. What is remote is largely dependent on who you talk to. We went to Big South Fork National River and didn't see but a handful of people. Remote can also mean far away. For me, Canada is remote. Or that tourist rarely go, which is what we tend to take it to mean.

The journey is the destination: Every journey has a destination so what does this mean. How about enjoy the ride. Ok, but that is about as vague as it gets.

So, based on this, who is an Overlander? The retired couple traveling full time to all the National Parks in a Class A. Vehicle reliant, remote areas, and that whole journey thing. Ok, a couple takes off a year to travel South and Central America. Are they Overlanders? According to them, no. They go under Vanlife even though they fit the definition exactly. How about the guy who explored almost every country in the world driving a Mercedes 200 series sedan, and stayed in lodging most nights? Hate to say it, but he got more respect from the Overland crowd at Expo West than all the Youtube stars put together.

Its not a thing, its just a term used to quickly explain what you do. Where vanlife tends to be people trying ri find a cheaper way to live while still having a life, Overland is more about finding challenges, learning, and getting out of one's comfort zone. The term is simply an umbrella which covers a number of different hobbies centered around or involved in exploring the natural and cultural world.

It is only inclusive when one person is intending to raise them self above others. And that has nothing to do with Overlanding.