Six Lessons of Overlanding Life

Overlanding puts a different spin on your world, causes you to think differently about ‘life, the universe and everything’. After seven years overlanding, we’re on a covid-induced hiatus in Canada, skiing our socks off through the winter. Yes folks… the struggle is real. But we can’t ski every day. On foggy days we get chance to ponder little overlanding nuggets like: why is it really so terrible to be a fast traveller? Is 15 minutes bartering with a third-world trader over $1 really time well spent? Will Officer Sanchez really arrest us if we don’t chip-in to his coffers? And why is orange jam called marmalade?

cuthbert in tanzania jungle
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Overlanding 2020 – Covid-style

2020… what a palaver that was! Who’d have thought, as we celebrated entering 2020 a year ago, that the world would look like this today. We’re lucky that we have been safe and suffered no more than a bit of disruption to our overlanding lifestyle, but it’s been a roller-coaster year. So we thought we’d end the year with a little round-up of our overlanding 2020 – Covid style!

iveco daily 4x4 in snow overlanding canada
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Back to BC: Island Life

A pandemic isn’t a great time to be overlanding, but if that’s where you find yourself, you could do worse than be overlanding a place like Canada. We spent a chunk of the autumn around Vancouver Island where it was (relatively) easy to stay safe from the dratted ‘rona virus…

Iveco Daily 4x4 on Vancover Island
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Alberta Road Trip: Quirky Stuff

An Alberta road-trip means touring the Rockies, right? But wait… if you limit yourself to the Rockies, you’re missing out on some seriously quirky and unique stuff!! How about some fancy-dressed gophers? A Star Trek town? The world’s largest whatever? Or a jumping buffalo site? Also, in the news… Cuthbert poses for his first ever professional photo-shoot (yup!!!). Here’s our latest from western Canada, still waiting-out the ‘rona virus palaver…

alberta road trip
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Rocky Mountains

Rockies or Andes… Andes or Rockies? Hmmm… tough one.  We like mountains. Glaciers and snow-capped peaks reflected in crystal-clear mirror lakes will get us out for a hike anytime. A couple of years ago back in South America, we zig-zagged the whole length of the Andes including Chile’s iconic Torres del Paine, Argentina’s legendary Ruta 40 and Bolivia’s spectacular altiplano Laguna Route. The Andes are full of awesomeness, but now we’re in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. Moraine Lake and Lake Louise are bucket-list spots and driving the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Banff is one of the world’s Top 10 ‘Must-do Drives’. So, Andes or Rockies? Discuss…

rocky mountains
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British Columbia and the First Law of Overlanding

If you’re clued-up on the jargon, ‘BC’ stands for British Columbia: a huge province in south-west Canada. We passed through BC on our way north before the ‘rona virus palaver kicked-off. Now, after four months in the Yukon, we’re back exploring BC. We also inadvertently prove the First Law of Overlanding: ‘only the vehicle part for which you don’t carry a spare, will break’. So we haven’t seen quite as much of BC as we’d hoped. Yet.

British Columbia bison
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South Yukon: the Kluane Icefields

In normal times, the Alaska Highway would take us (funnily enough) to Alaska, USA. But in these Covid-border-closed-times, we can go as far as Kluane National Park then we have to turn around. Sounds a bit ‘dead-end’, but the spectacular mountains, lakes, glaciers of the Kluane icefields make it worth the schlepp. And whilst we’re out there in the Kluane wilderness, the local ‘rona virus palaver turns a positive corner – a whole new world of Canadian possibilities starts to open-up for us again…

kluane icefields
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Klondike and Arctic: Land of the Midnight Sun

For many, the Klondike conjures up images of weather-beaten old prospectors in the Gold Rush days. If you came here to get-rich-quick on gold, you’d be kinda disappointed. But what you wouldn’t be disappointed with is the fabulous remote, desolate wilderness and wildlife – there’s plenty of that ‘round here. After 11 weeks of ‘rona virus lock-down in Whitehorse and our plans taking a few hits, we could finally cross the vast Yukon Territory to the Klondike and the Arctic Circle, do a bit of grizzly spotting, fail miserably at getting-rich-quick, see the midnight sun, enjoy a pretty ghost town, and reach the end of the road not once, but twice!

the klondike grizzly bear
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5 Observations from Brits Overlanding USA

‘Two cultures divided by a common language’ is often used to describe the UK/US relationship. So far we’ve spent most of our six years overlanding in countries with cultures and languages obviously very different to our own. But Americans speak our language, so overlanding USA would be familiar, right? Well, yes… and no. During our ‘rona virus stay-cation in the Yukon, Canada, we’ve been taking a look back over our time in the good ol’ US of A.

overlanding usa
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Cold Weather Overlanding in Cuthbert

Way back on the Bolivian Altiplano at around 4,000m asl, we had an overnight low of -18°C on our thermometer. Oh, how naïve we were to think that was cold! Here in the Yukon for our corona virus stay-cation, we’ve had temperatures as low as -31°C (without the windchill!). Now that’s nippy. We’re sure there are many out there with far more experience of seriously cold weather overlanding than us. But this real cold has been a new thing for us. By lucky happenstance, we did give cold-weather stuff some consideration when we ordered Cuthbert, so we’re not totally unprepared. 

cold weather overlanding
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Canada: Overlanding in Corona Times

Blimey O’Reilly! How the devil did it come to this? One minute it’s social distancing and hand-washing, next minute… the world shuts down. Like everyone in these strangest of times, we’ve had some decisions to make. Somehow, we ended up in the Yukon. But first let’s wind back the clock just a few weeks, to very different days, when we arrived from the USA to start overlanding Canada.

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The Pacific North West: Murk and Mechanics

The Pacific North West USA is a ‘great if you get the season right’ kind of place. Somewhere behind all the murk that we saw, is a stunning countryside just bursting to get out and show us its stuff. But are we moaning? Noooo. Despite the murky weather we found whilst overlanding the Pacific North West, we had a great time. We had glimpses of scenic fabulousness, alpacas, huskies, snow, cool cities and… errrrm… a bit of mechanical work required on Cuthbert.   

overlanding north west usa
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Overlanding California

Everyone knows California, don’t they? It’s pretty good at self-promotion and has a familiarity acquired from decades of movies and TV.  There’s the odd ‘nugget of wonder’ to be found, but overlanding California isn’t really a surprise. If we have one Top Tip for California it’s ‘winter’. In winter we find crowd-free parks and coasts. We also find hippy-nirvana in the desert, TV sets, elephant seals, a super-cool city, very big trees and a winning streak at the casino!         

golden gate bridge
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South Arizona: Snowbirds and Mexican Crowns

It’s 2020. Blimey. How did that happen? We end 2019 and kick-off 2020 in the south US desert with some expensive food, a piece of England, a biosphere, a nuclear missile, a war hero, many overlanding snowbirds and two new Mexican crowns. Howsaboutthat for variety?

overlanding snowbirds
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South West USA: Park-Life

The parks of south west USA are splendid things. They conserve spectacular natural treasures and this place was certainly at the front of the queue when it came to dishing-out spectacular natural treasures. This part of the world has more than its fair share of spectacularity (okay… I made that word up, but I think it works). Park-life in south-west US is excessively spectacular; around almost every corner is some kind of awesome park, each with a ridiculous number of wow-factor views. So after the alien-geekery of New Mexico, we thought we’d better get exploring the south west’s park-life.

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New Mexico – The Geek State

Aliens, space and rocket-geekery is a thing in New Mexico. We decide to investigate. But there’s much more to overlanding New Mexico, so we do check out a bit of the other stuff too: some sand, a Chloride time-capsule, a ‘Truth or Consequence’ and some wolves. But for us in New Mexico, geekery is where it’s at.

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Go West!

Dashing from east to west across USA we have acquired new knowledge. We learned that not everything that looks like space-junk is actually space-junk; there is such a thing as too much steak; and there is no Forrest Gump bench in the Savannah square. We found no yellow brick road in Kansas and not even a lineman in Wichita. We did however, find the Choo choo in Chattanooga. At some (undetermined) point we were 24hrs from Tulsa, and someone did show us the way to Amarillo, so it’s not all bad, going west.

go west
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