Ep2 Croft Solo Series: We Find An Epic River Campsite and Take a Polar Plunge in Devil's Glen!

we are on a montana adventure we have moved out of the yak and into the rocky mountains it's the morning of day 9 and we are heading along the 49th parallel the official parallel of the u.s and canada border this is perhaps just a little closer than eli and i's attempt to see it just a few days ago now it's nearly in front of us the parallel was established as an easy boundary but it was a boundary that didn't take into account any homesteads or indian nations or regard for topography it was simply cut into the mountains on the 49th parallel straight as an arrow down the road one can see the ancient sea floor deposited and eventually lifted up as the mighty rockies form we are working our way to the west side of glacier national park 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 forest road 114 is a narrow winding road that the prospector occupies with pride the 17-mile crossover road is very remote and pristine a few hours later we have found a beautiful spot along big creek and setting up camp has seemed to find its rhythm camp is set up in near silence dinner is on the grill after a full day of dirt roads i've come to realize i should have brought the cover for the side by side the fire has been started without me and life finally seems to be slowing down it's always these last bottom ones yes it is the simple moments like this that remind us to enjoy every precious minute together because all too soon our boys will be young men and it will be these moments that will be cherished forever got up to do my normal chores and uh it's day 10 so i actually do a little bit more chores uh beyond just looking the truck over right i'm gonna get into the air filter clean it out blow it out diesel's like really clean filters so uh yeah so i went to do that and uh popped my hood and found this oh no so what that means is that there's a mouse in there or a pack right and uh there's some simple ways to avoid this uh the easiest way is just to pop your hood at night if you think there's critters around which is almost a guarantee that you should assume that i guess you should pop your hood last night i didn't i didn't do it for whatever reason and it just took one night and i had critter in here now i'm inspecting what he packed out and as far as i can tell it's nothing that from my wires or anything like that other than potentially an air filter like an in-cabin air filter from in my truck or something when you're out and about for a long time bring an apron having an apron will help you keep your clothes just a lot cleaner when you're doing stuff leaning over dirty trucks i've been out here for 10 days haven't washed a truck really in 10 days when you're cooking keeps a keeps your just your clothes cleaner so bring one and it does it all anyway i'm going to pull the air filter out blow it out clean it up look over the rest of the truck and hopefully we don't find any other problems it's getting dirty not too bad how much i'm towing and everything i might get a new one while i'm in town there you go sorry put it back in straight up and down like there it goes well hopefully the truck starts i hope they didn't chew up a wire that was like so tasty they had to have it better cover that up before dad sees it once camp is all set down we head out but before continuing south we drive back up the road to visit the notorious pole bridge mercantile the polebridge mercantile was established in 1914 and has been serving the north fork community in remote northwest montana for over 100 years polebridge is a quaint historic community known as the gateway to glacier national park the mercantile general store and bakery serves all kinds of goods and we highly recommend trying their delicious before continuing south we grab a quick lunch and the burgers are on point as we leave paul bridge mercantile we head south to columbia falls where we put on a bunch more fuel a lot more food and resupply our water for the next week ahead a bit of a hard landing tonight the first campground that looked epic had somebody in it that's the whole reason we're trying to go this way is for less people but anyway we went back up the trail to a second spot smelled real bad frankly we're not going to stay here very bad all night smelling this so uh yeah sometimes finding a campsite can be [Music] tough this is where the rule of having equipment that serves more than one purpose comes in max tracks are excellent extraction devices but they also serve a double purpose of truck and trailer leveling if a certain piece of equipment doesn't serve multiple uses or one mission critical purpose it probably doesn't belong in your outfit i'm glad that we're out of the glacier area there's just frankly so many people there that's not the experience that we're looking for on this trip we want to be isolated we want to be out and about on our own so we're hunting for it now and that's why we've moved as far south as we have and we'll move even further south tomorrow with camp set up everyone goes their separate ways after being in the truck all day mom and i head into the camper to work on tomorrow's plan with our plannings changed we have to kind of reroute some stuff and i like to use paper maps for the big route planning this is the delorme atlas gazetteer for montana these are these are great i basically have run my whole life off of these here in montana and that gives you the big picture and then once you start finding what you want then we go in and we start plotting it if we have service we'll even we'll use satellite imagery and look for roads and all i mean we just kind of use a bunch of different resources several apps and then eventually we find what we want and then we start plotting it on our main gps unit this is a garmin overlander and then we can start nabbing it from there yeah and the cool thing you've been doing too is you've even when we go to bed at night you've got your little foldable i've got a little foldable map that i found yeah and you've been studying that at night in bed like it just kind of takes time to get a grip on the area and the big picture and then to start picking out those places you want to explore yeah so it's not a quick process if you really want to dive in it just depends on your style and your trip but it's fun to pour over maps and figure it out um and then as you start driving by things you're like oh i remember that i remember i saw that on the map okay i kind of know where i am and it just really helps you learn an area yeah so yep well tomorrow we will see how far south we can get and we'll let you know what we decide on where we're going gonna go in the morning can you show us on the map where we are and and describe where we are whitefish columbia halls yep columbia falls that's where we restocked right and then we moved where we went through west glacier and followed underneath glacier right the national park to the south side and then we dropped down in here and we're here right from yep to here in five hours okay shall we yeah so let's go eat breakfast frecky then we're out [Music] today we are heading to devil's clinton and though the drive is going to be a long one we'll be driving through some of the most epic landscapes and scenery montana has to offer we are traveling through maria's pass which is a high mountain pass that traverses the continental divide in the lewis range the pass had been used by blackfeet and other tribes long before it was engineered for the railway at the bottom we have stopped to observe their theodore roosevelt monument which was established in 1930 when the highway through the past was completed it was dedicated to him in commemoration of his leadership in forest conservation and as i look back i can see my kids doing exactly what i used to do when my parents made me stop and look at these dumb signs but now i kind of know why my parents did it it's all pretty interesting maybe they'll feel that way someday too we are now entering the rocky mountain eastern front where the planes wash up into the eastern slopes of the rockies that rise up high into the big montana sky in route to devil's glen is an ancient geological formation known as egg mountain since the discovery of juvenile dinosaur bones at egg mountain in 1977 this area has since yielded the largest cache of dinosaur eggs and baby skeletons found in the western hemisphere which is how this area got its name the site has also yielded one of the largest concentrations of adult dinosaur skeletons in the world [Music] paleontologists have interpreted the accumulation as a gigantic herd of myosaurus dinosaurs that died in some sort of a catastrophic event millions of years ago the rocky mountains were just beginning to form to the west and a shallow ocean existed 300 miles to the east [Music] moving closer to camp we see a spectacular western view [Music] we arrive in camp and set up next to the river with the vast wilderness all around us okay boys let's go help set up camp mmm [Applause] it is a land rover land rovers break down a lot can we fix it no you can like the wheels like bent well it's you know it's bent but it's still a land rover so feed it to fit paint it to match try that [Music] [Music] for tonight's dinner jelly is making backcountry pizza 2 [Music] if you're camping with the kids this meal is perfect [Music] rose a little bit this is an awesome meal for families and it's surprisingly simple to make while off the grid [Music] nailed it how often can you say you've had backcountry pizza not everybody does that it's a lot of fun to make even more fun to eat i'd give it a beef a bee [Music] i'm hard on myself the chef's always the critic but this is pretty damn good it's my turn for food how's that look pretty good good it is a beautiful night right now beautiful sky this compared to that what's the trailer what's inside that as the sun sets behind the mountain we enjoy the peace and quiet of the evening in each other's company as we listen to the timeless sounds of the fire cracking in the battling of the river flowing by today we're headed into devil's glenn all right well this morning we're heading up to devil's glenn it's two and a half mile hike 11 a.m and it's already 85 and uh by the time we get in there we're gonna be ready for a dip come back out and keep moving tonight okay let's go one two three go [Music] [Applause] [Music] go eli come this way bud nice work man challenge complete [Laughter] how was it that was brave that was some good stuff right there what do you think eli let's go i got this good job oh yeah a little chilly jay makes your ankles hurt this kills my ankles killing my ankles my cankles i'll get in there i'm gonna ease in oh he went again oh yeah there you go breathe through it atta boy nice work i think it was colder it was colder oh it's been a very long time been in a river that cold that's pretty cold it's awesome though it feels good one of the amazing things about this whole adventure has been the many opportunities for the boys to learn develop and grow both together as a team and as individuals it's amazing to watch them grow right before our eyes as they face challenges overcome their fears and get out of their comfort zone all while having fun in the process in the great wars splashing this is cool enough for me but it feels amazing wow been out of the water for five minutes and it's already hot again you guys ready to head back all right let's head out stay with us as we head further south into this treasure state and dive deeper into the history of montana next time on solo [Music] da da

Channel: Expedition Overland

Views: 66,227

Rating: 4.966805 out of 5

Keywords: xoverland, expedition overland, overlander, overlanding, solo series, full size truck build, full size overland, family overland, family camping, family road trip, family show, travel, adventure show, 4x4 offroad, 4x4, side by side, polaris

Id: OzXRl5gD3ws

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021