Just curious how far yall go, what's the single furthest you've gone overlanding, as in longest offroad trek without using the pavement?
Logest offroad trek?
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There's a spot in southern Utah identified as the furthest from pavement in the lower 48, and I've been there. But your question can be answered a lot of different ways. 99% off-road, just crossing one when needed, Time off-road, raw distance, lower 48 vs Alaska or global, etc., so it will be interesting to see what answers you get.
Off-Road Ranger I
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Furthest for me is Padre Island National Seashore. It's the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world. If you drive to the end, you're 66 miles from pavement.
I have not been to Desolation Canyon but I have been close by there. However, 20 years ago when I did it the spot I'm talking about was in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and was between 89 (paved) and west of Hole in the Rock Road (un-paved). But I can see where the exact spot would move around based on ongoing development.
As always, it depends on what's meant by "offroad"; however:
In terms of "off-pavement" I guess this would be the Dempster+Tuktoyaktuk road so, that would be 2012 km / 1256 miles from the start of the Dempster and back.
Another long run - the Gibb River Road, 1005 km / 624 miles from Derby to the junction with the highway to Kununnurra.
If the question is about routes where there's not even an unsurfaced route - nothing more than the tracks of previous travellers, then I guess the two which come to mind are:
Crossing the Simpson - 613 km / 381 miles from Mount Dare to Birdsville (the last few km are surfaced, so about 600 km "off-road")
Crossing the Salar de Uyuni and Parque Eduardo Avaroa - 524 km / 326 miles.
A circuit around the Erg Tiguentourine - 425 km / 264 miles.
In the lower 48 we spent over a week out in the Sawtooth Recreation area of Utah, ~280 miles. We too drove the Dempster but it was before the extension to Tuk was completed so that was something around 950 miles. Longest would be in Peru but it was a complete accident. Our paper map listed a road as paved that would connect us to a remote track we wanted to drive through a national park highly recommended by a couple of friends. The first 10 Km were paved and when it changed to gravel I pressed on with the assumption that we would hit pavement again, as that is quite common. It ended up turning into a mining road that we drove alone for a few days to reach the start of our remote track. My estimation is around 1,200 miles but we didn't use our DeLorme to track any of our exact routes like others do. If you have never rolled into an entirely dirt road town to buy fuel, it's quite the experience. By our estimation, we drove around 20,000 miles off pavement during our Americas trip. We know others that drove much more than that along the same route. We both grew up on dirt roads so driving dirt just to drive dirt has no novelty for us. We drive it if it is the more beautiful route or if there is something we wish to do but not just for the purpose to say we drove it. It's possible we drove something longer but nothing comes to mind. We did realize that since we prefer smaller towns over cities we drove an entire year never breaking 45mph.
So, I was reflecting and recall also:
Kazungula to Maun to Francistown to Selebi-Phikwe (now a lot of this is tarred but when I first covered this route it was all unsurfaced - I din;t record the distance however it would have been around 1200 km / 750 miles. If I include the outbound route, which was at that time "partially tarred" (i.e., strips of tar but mostly dirt - if someone came the other way you each gave up one strip) then this was a 2600 km / 1600 mile trip.
When we first drove the southern half of Ruta 40 most of it was unsurfaced - we covered around 1800 km / 1100 miles on this section.
Kazungula to Maun to Francistown to Selebi-Phikwe (now a lot of this is tarred but when I first covered this route it was all unsurfaced - I din;t record the distance however it would have been around 1200 km / 750 miles. If I include the outbound route, which was at that time "partially tarred" (i.e., strips of tar but mostly dirt - if someone came the other way you each gave up one strip) then this was a 2600 km / 1600 mile trip.
When we first drove the southern half of Ruta 40 most of it was unsurfaced - we covered around 1800 km / 1100 miles on this section.
We ended up driving a large portion of the 40, starting at the northern end. Our issue was we rarely stayed going in one direction so it wasn't uncommon to drive 4-500 miles off pavement, join the pavement to head off to a particular point of interest, then back track to pick-up where we left the off pavement. If would have run things continuously we'd sure to have a 2,000 mile stretch if the cobblestone sections that only ran through the small towns isn't considered paved. We were quite known for ridiculous routes, as in erratic, and drove over 1,100 miles during our first time through Belize, roughly 60% was off-pavement.
Yes I understand completely. We've covered a fair proportion of Ruta 40, but not all in one run. As you do, we rarely stay on a specific highway, and in the case of the longest trip during which we were on this route we crossed the northernmost section, then headed east for a while, crossed again further south, and then even further south drove some of the actual Ruta 40 off and on for the remainder of the route, leaving it several times and coming back to it further south, so not at the same point as we had left. ...and so on. WE had driven some of Ruta 40 in the north on previous trips, and have subsequently filled in some of the gaps in the south, although never simply to "check the box", always because we wanted to explore an area and Ruta 40 was the way to do this.
In the same vein, although it's not even close to "off road" we've driven lots of the Pan American Highway, but always advise people to stay off the actual highway as much as possible.
Advocate I
The longest I've done off road was about 800, though there was some pavement in there. It was something like 1200 miles of pavement to/from so the whole trip was ~2k. I want to do much longer, further trips someday...
-TJ
-TJ
Exactly, most understand what the Pan-American is so that's what we all say we were/are doing but most who drive it chuckle when they actually end up on it.
Advocate I
Went 3 days aired down in Oregon, with a few 5 or so mile treks on pavement here and there to fuel up and cross through towns. Unknown on the miles, didn't keep track. 5 Days in death valley off pavement, again didn't keep track.
