EP1 Croft Solo Series: A Long Time Coming! Exploring Montana w/ The Kids in a Full Size Overland Rig

for over 10 years my wife rachelle and i have been filming our overland adventures overlanding has provided an incredible roadway into the world we have seen amazing places encountered incredible cultures and conquered daunting challenges with the greater expedition overland team one thing is for sure it's a metric ton of fun to be out there exploring in this big awesome world but all that travel has come at a bit of a cost the cost has been the time apart as a family while we built our future and because of that we have found ourselves for years longing for a special time when we can all explore together as a family that time has come and we have finally set off on our croft family trip we will be together in one truck traveling across our home state of montana as a family solo [Music] we don't know for sure how long we will be gone a couple weeks or a month we'll just let the spirit of travel take the lead so yeah we have three boys so that means we should probably have parenting goals with that said i suppose we should take this trip as an opportunity to teach our kids as much as we can to help them become more independent all while under our watchful eye of course and you know maybe we as parents just might learn a thing or two as well as far as our family as a whole i do hope this trip will strengthen our bond more than ever if not maybe it will be a solid starting point for future counselors to help the kids overcome their misguided childhood our montana solo adventure is presented by general tire and the grabber x3 the official tire of the craft solo adventure available at tirerack.com and in association with patriot campers toy haulers and peak horror systems our travel story begins here in the farthest northwest corner of montana known as the yak this is one of the most remote regions and its vast forest provides one of the world's finest smelling air no exaggeration we are camped high to catch the mountain breeze to help ward off the thick population of mosquitoes there are many species of them in montana but we are certain we are dealing with the most aggressive breed of all they are small but vicious despite the army of bloodsuckers the mood tonight is bright for today is cyrus's 15th birthday his birthday dinner is a dutch oven pork rib with barbecue sauce that sadly we have already burned while trying to film and cook at the same time but like any good parent you just tell them it's supposed to taste that way and thankfully they haven't seemed to notice anyway it's a birthday that cyrus will not likely forget [Music] as far as sacrifice goes cyrus has probably given up the most to be here on this particular trip he gave up going to driver's education to be here pausing his ability to get his license for another year from today and speaking of forgetting his birthday we forgot to get a cake so we need to improvise happy birthday cyrus [Music] [Applause] [Music] nights like these are few and far between i look forward to as many of these types of nights in my life as possible perfect or not montana is our home our whole family was born in the treasure state but for being montana natives it's one of the states we have traveled in the least despite it being one of the best montana is slightly larger than japan with an area of 147 000 square miles it is the fourth largest state in the united states it's full of mountain ranges rivers valleys forests and prairies it's rugged and unforgiving and that's why we are taking our summer vacation to experience it in our preparations for this trip in true ex-overland style we have had the opportunity to build our dedicated overland vehicle for personal adventures in the years to come i wanted a setup where i could take my whole family out to work play and live out of for extended periods i wanted a heated unit so i can travel into the montana winters as well so that's what we did our cabin on wheels is built on an epic foundation a 2018 aev diesel prospector with a pecor flatbed from patriot campers standing on three inches of lift and 37-inch grabber x3 tires this truck can go a lot of places with respect to its size to assist if it ever gets mired it is equipped with worn winches that's right two of them a 16 ti in the front and a 12 000 pound in the rear air lockers will help keep the wheels turning and max tracks are placed on the roof for easy recovery and truck leveling communications include an icom 2 meter hem radio a cellular signal booster and an inner reach mini connected to our garmin overlander navigation device that allows us to communicate and navigate completely off the grid mounted on the p core is a four wheel campers hawk flatbed model camper inside the hawk camper is a queen bed a 26 gallon sink with hot water stove a table and 200 amp hours of lithium power from battle-borne batteries that house power is completely managed by the redarc red vision system it allows us to control all systems in the camper everything from distributing the overland solar panels on the roof to turning on water pumps powering the refrigerator and activating outside lights in addition the bluetooth connection allows me to control the camper inside and out from my phone and gives me a perfect readout of what's happening to the power system at any time the truck has a range of 500 miles while towing it carries 44 gallons of water and can be out in the field for up to one month without a restock behind the truck is our coveted patriot camper th-610 toy hauler this is a workhorse of a trailer that provides us with a full galley with an additional 30 gallons of water it hauls the kids easy on rooftop tent camping gear and stores and charges our production equipment that is also managed by redarc manager 30 system its weight ratings easily transport our polaris general 1000 xp the upfitted general allows us to explore beyond camp to do our favorite activities like fishing and wheeling through the tough stuff or to simply run to town if we need to with its 150 mile range but now it's time to start putting all of this to work excited eli yeah where are you going canada canada over huh let's go see canada eh hold on to that for me okay [Applause] now i'm not sure if it's obvious yet but eli loves adventure so much so that just a couple years ago he asked about what happens when mom and i die and if we do does he get expedition overland so anyway we are sleeping now with one eye open cool [Music] so we'll run in here and i'll show you what this radio site is we'll walk in okay so what you got here is a national forest weather station if you've never seen one of these they're pretty cool this is not where we get the internet this is where the forest service gets a lot of weather data so you got a radio broadcast tower broadcast transmits the uh the data and then here is the snotel site so you don't step on this because it's full of liquid see how it's full of water kind of like a water bed or something anyway it feels senses pressure these are all over the country and you can go on their database and see what's the snow like how deep is the snow how much snow did they get what temperature is it what are the wind speeds up there that's what this site does and there's like these are all over the world they're all over the country yep they all share like a certain distance i don't know that's a good question they put them in certain places that they want to know the data from pretty cool all right oh man walked a total of 1.4 miles as the crow flies to the canadian border we got pretty close canada united states i know i've been fun to set a foot in another country huh already the road is being reclaimed by nature it would be fun to explore it further but we must get back [Music] [Music] good little exploration let's pack all this up and head down the mountain we're gonna find another campsite for tonight yeah we're just gonna drive this down right now oh you think so huh yeah all right let's go down the mountain all right is everything all right it's our goal to make it down near the river tonight for camp we will be moving just about every day on this tour in an effort to see as much as we can in the weeks to come tomorrow we'll get geared up and hit the river okay and that's going to be tilted up [Music] [Music] bringing it up uh [Music] well we got our boat built and we're going to go explore and float a couple mile section of the yak river i've looked at this and it looks epic to fly fish we've got the right boat to do it and today really though is about rider he's learning to fly fish he loves to fish and he's hopefully we can get him on something today because he really needs a win to get the boat in the water upstream and allow us to retrieve the truck later we use the side by side to create a shuttle system and we'll take the truck back later to get it after we take out let's get your rod out now what do you call this lake this is the yak river i think you go with this one okay yellow belly caddis or something yeah yellow belly caddis [Applause] stay left okay going left oh i got some water in here well here we are yak river montana have a lot of fun on this river fishing swimming boat riding on a boat i'm having a great time there you go that's good put it right in there not bad there you go line up there you go nice and easy nice and easy nice and easy get the uh get the net give me the net okay there we go keep your rod up hand me that net and keep them in the water keep them in the water just bring them in bring that rod up bring that rod up that's your first fish on a river and with the fly rod [Music] oh boy you got the bug now oh nice fork tell the world that's how you catch a fish no that's how you catch a fish nice now that it's how you catch fish yeah that says the pro all right nice sweet is that good ryder should we keep heading down river we keep heading down the river back in the boat all right now we're gonna spin all right and we're off nice work rider that was awesome are you gonna tip me for being your guide no oh wait oh i thought you said tip me over oh that's actually warm see you later get out here and your troubles just melt away i put so much effort into all these other things well why do i put the same amount of effort to being in places like this what if you know would my life be better if i actually put more time into actually getting here you know i bet it would it'd be a richer life we have an amazing job and we hope to inspire people to get out and do these kind of things and it's really hard for us to actually get out and do it yeah a lot of times we work for 11 months out of the year to be gone for one or six weeks and that's that's not a good uh that's not a good uh ratio either we love what we're doing but yeah we this is what we started all this to go do it more of and we we need to do more of it yeah we need to make it a priority yeah we should probably take our own advice probably should take our own probably take our own advice here we go good day yeah i caught my first fish in the whole entire year going at it for one year trying to catch one and i finally did today awesome thank you for all applying rule number one which is don't die don't die all right let's go eat something so mom and dad just let's go grab a side by side after really awesome fun time on the boat so just lost three putting away all these boats pulling these boats [Music] if you're going to eat something at a restaurant in yak montana your options are limited [Music] you'll be faced with the decision to eat at the dirty shame saloon if they're open or take the alternate at the yak river mercantile whatever you decide they are both delicious [Music] and we all make gluttons of ourselves after a solid day on the river [Music] we should all sleep well when the sun finally sets which will be about 10 o'clock tonight we're up early to head east toward eureka montana there's a special place where rochelle and i got engaged many years ago now after we set up an early camp our bodies are itching to get out of the truck and take an evening look at pinkham creek falls in grizzly country i've found ourselves out of the yak and have wandered over towards eureka montana and today we're going to take a late evening hike up to a very special place called pinkham creek falls and this is the place where rochelle and i got engaged 17 years ago good job so we've got both locations marked on the gps we're ready to go that's smart okay cyrus got a question for you bear spray or firearm definitely you're going bear spray you're going probably far around okay my answer both uh here's why with bear spray every single person needs to have one obviously because the if you're being attacked you need to be able to spray at the bear he's probably coming at you with spray i can't necessarily interact or stop somebody else's attack from happening but with a gun with a firearm i can i can shoot a bear over there and stop them from running or you know getting after my kid or something like that i have the ability what i'm getting at is i have the ability to interact with that bear from a distance when i may not be the one who's being attacked so i carry a firearm for that reason we have friends that have been attacked i have one in particular joe who was attacked one day while carrying a rifle and bear spray he was unable to get to his rifle in time when the bear attacked him and it was his bear spray that saved him the next day when he went in um to recover the elk that they had uh put down uh they walked in there with a with a rifle again so anyway the answer is really both both of them are good both of them are very effective and having both of them with you not a bad idea just takes a little training with firearms and uh you've got the best of both worlds doesn't feel right it would have been right here raging no this can't be right well bummer yeah because from what i remember i could go for a flight real quick it was tight oh yeah let's do that okay a quick flight solidifies our suspicion the falls are nowhere to be found up or down river from our position but oh well right it's just good to be the gps says it's here it is not here i don't know what's going on so we'll have to sort it out tomorrow but it is 25 minutes 20 25 minutes till sunset and it's gonna get dark quick now i told them all to bring their headlamps and they were like are we going to be going that long well i said i hope not but i think we are going to be gone that long now yep so we're ready we got a little food got a fire starter i got a little shelter if we had to and uh got some water purification we could be out all night if we had to be a cold night but we could do it well honey when i was 20 or 21 i don't think i'd have been out of breath right now we were different kind of animals back then we were mean and lean yeah shelly was 19. i was i just turned 21. i don't feel like i'm 21 right now but i'm still doing it still out here doing it there we go came in from the back back at camp we have a quick cold dinner that's nothing to speak of and turn in tomorrow we will try again the boys are getting really good at packing up their tent i've been grading them every morning if it's an a awesome anything less is 10 push-ups per grade let's just say that it took one day and since then it's haze for days we're all packed up ready to go we're gonna head out find this elusive falls we have a hunch that the real pinkum creek falls is a little bit of the way and i've also concluded that the locals like this area labeled wrong on the map so we will keep it that way and keep its location hidden [Music] [Music] when i see that girl now [Music] and i feel like oh this is cool it's cool to be back here who knew our legs were hanging off and you started talking well you got really nervous and started talking about how far we've come and how long we dated been through a lot together and i was like why is he saying all this doesn't make sense and you were trying to find the ring in your bag you're like shuffling behind you and i was like what's doing ever since the moment i pulled out a ring in this spot i had still to this day second guessed my decision because had i dropped the ring that would have been that and i was nervous so i didn't want to drop the ring but i was very careful and i wonder if there's any more of those down there [Music] i have to say it's a little funny to be here again it seems as the last 17 years has gone by in a blink i guess i feel more humble than thankful than anything i'm a fortunate man to be here some 17 years later with my bride and best friend [Music] and who knew all those years ago when we sat here that we would sit here again while our three boys played in the water above us already these boys are closer to being men kids no hope they have as many adventures and more as i've been fortunate to have but most of all i hope god blesses them with a wife that will help them become far better men just as rochelle has done for me so here's to the unknown road may lead us here again or not we will just have to wander on to find out [Music] and i stared the darkness in the face and i know the heavy rain and every sweeping scarlet blade you

Channel: Expedition Overland

Views: 151,148

Rating: 4.939878 out of 5

Keywords: xoverland, expedition overland, overlander, overlanding, truck build, full size truck build, family overland, family camping, family road trip, camping trip, montana overland, montana road trip, 4x4 offroad, offroad ram

Id: HUuxEQbJPX0

Length: 32min 3sec (1923 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021