What is Overlanding? (And why it doesn't matter!)

what is over landing over landing is where you sit at home on the internet and grumble about how you used to do this before is cool and you didn't need scuttles and fridges back in my day seriously though there are lots of ideas about what overlanding is and isn't and there are a ton of gatekeepers out there especially on the facebook and the youtube comments i'm not here to do any kind of gatekeeping i'm just going to tell you what overlanding means to me if you don't do exactly what i do that's okay as long as you're out there enjoying yourself i don't really care what you call it one of the best descriptions of what over landing is that i have seen is on the overland journal website and they have a really long definition on it but the key part for me is the part where they describe over landing as self-reliant travel to remote destinations where the journey is the primary goal when i travel i mainly travel to explore just to kind of see the sights the scenery the landscapes the history and there's no real end goal to my traveling either given enough time and if i didn't have a day job i'd happily just travel indefinitely often along the way i end up visiting a tourist trap i'll stay at a campground or two attack with some obstacles it's all part of the fun but it's also all part of the journey and because over landing is about the journey the way i see it is you don't overland to a destination you know you don't overland to land between the lakes in kentucky uh a week in moab isn't necessarily over landing either you know one of them's about getting to a destination and spending time at that destination and then the other one's about just tackling obstacles and wheeling of course both of them could be part of a larger trip in my overland movie which was two and a half hours long i spent a couple of days in moab and there are certain destinations like when and i travel too specifically for the purpose of seeing them and visiting them and i'll say it again if that doesn't match up with what you do that doesn't matter as long as you're out enjoying yourself i don't care what you call it i do think that over landing is definitely an overused word or overused phrase i know i'm partly to blame for that it's in the name of my youtube channel it's in half my videos that i put out it's not actually a word that i use a whole lot when i talk about it i usually say i'm going out on a trip like i'm going out on a trip and i'm going to go to these states i don't say i'm going out over landing and i think because it's such an overused phrase there are some people that kind of make fun of it and a lot of people equate it to car camping but i think there is a difference between over landing and car camping and obviously they're not entirely wrong because you are camping with a car or camping with a vehicle but what sets over landing apart is that you are going out to these remote destinations i've gone camping out of my car before i've got a mazda 6 that i daily drive i've gone camping out of it before but it's not going to make it out into the middle of the utah desert or up into the north main woods it can barely make it out my driveway and going out to these remote destinations means there's a certain level of self-reliance with over landing there've been times i've gone out where i haven't seen another person or vehicle or town or gas station in several days this means i need to have the equipment with me to camp and feed myself for often a week or more at a time and i end up taking a lot of cookware and things like a fridge are well worth having as a side note if you don't have a fridge that's fine coolers work too but fridges are awesome i also need to take recovery equipment with me and that's recovery equipment for a bunch of different scenarios on my last big trip i started down in the sandy deserts in utah where i had to recover myself and i ended up in the snowy forests of idaho where i had to recover myself ultimately what that means is i take a lot of stuff with me when i first started out i would take a lot of useless stuff i was definitely one of those people that wanted to just go out and buy all of the things and now these days i still do take a lot of stuff but everything i take has a purpose and what i found is the further you go from civilization the more stuff you need to take with you and that is why you see people out there with those vehicles with stuff strapped all over the outside now if you're watching this and you're just getting started definitely check out my uh i can't even name the video it's like how to get started over landing i'll put a link to that in the description but ultimately don't do what i did at the start and see people with all this gear and think you go out and they have to go out and buy all of it i actually recommend getting started with small trips close to town with friends with some basic recovery gear something like a kinetic rope or snatch strap i prefer those to toe straps and you know camp close to tower close to home so if you do find out you need something or you've forgotten something you can run in and grab it in town and from there you can go on larger and larger trips and slowly figure out what you do and do not need and if you are new to over landing you can also go check out some of the expos and i think that's something that a lot of people enjoy whether they're new to or not i just got back from moore expo in springfield missouri and i really really enjoyed it it's really cool to go out and see all of the new gear new ideas from some of the industry pioneers uh it's also cool to meet a lot of like-minded people and they have classes offered a lot of these things like navigation or outdoor survival skills so there's a lot of things that you can learn at these expos and you can see a lot of the gear and how that can make your trips even better of course that's not really overlanding either but it's fun and while there are people who go out there with gear strapped to every inch of their vehicle there are also people who have mastered the art of minimalism people who seem to get by with just a ground tent and a case of drinks and you know what they have just as much fun as the rest of us one thing to remember though is that the less recovery equipment you take with you the more likely you are to have to rely on someone else there are no vehicle requirements for landing either there are plenty of vans trucks suvs even cars that do the job just fine just not a mazda 6. that means you could head out on an over landing trip with a two-wheel drive or an all-wheel drive vehicle i'd estimate that about ninety percent of what i do could be done with two wheel drive and about 95 of what i do could be done with an all-wheel drive that being said an all-wheel drive or a two-wheel drive vehicle is not going to get you as far from civilization as a four-wheel drive vehicle would and you need to know your limitations so you don't get into a situation where you are gonna get stuck and you are gonna have to rely on someone else another misconception i see a lot of in the youtube and the facebook comments is that you have to be miserable or uncomfortable to be over landing and that's not true you can take as much or as little as you want to make things comfortable on your trip i personally take a hairdryer from my wife if her hair gets wet it's long it stays cold all night long so she likes to be able to dry it and it's funny how popular it is when i travel with other people with their wives and their daughters if you're not enjoying yourself on your trip there's no rule that you have to continue doing what you're doing either i saw a video on youtube a couple of years ago it was a guy who'd been out camping he'd been out for four days and it rained all four days and all of his clothing and his camp equipment ended up getting soaked and he went home i don't blame him we got a lot of hateful comments on there about how he's not really over landing if he just gave up that easily you know if you're not enjoying yourself you're allowed to go home just last week i decided to cancel a trip because of the cold it was minus 22 degrees celsius which i think's negative eight fahrenheit and even though i've got a tent heater i would have been finding the tent i just decided i wasn't gonna have any fun you know i wouldn't be able to stand around socialize cooking would have been pretty miserable i just decided to stay home instead i'm not telling you to give up every single time things get difficult some perseverance getting over some challenges can be fun it can be rewarding it can be a learning experience too there have been times where i've been cold wet miserable exhausted and i've kept on going and i've been glad that i've kept going whatever you do you know your own tolerances do what makes you happy i feel like there's a common theme going on here and while you're out traveling you don't just have to do driving and camping you can do other things you can enjoy things like fishing or hiking one of my hobbies is taking video that's why i started the channel i actually once got a comment on one of my videos that said i should put down the camera and actually enjoy myself on these trips which i had to laugh at because i that is what i do to enjoy myself i will say with the channel sometimes it does get to be a bit of a chore especially when it comes to editing the really long videos but i enjoy taking the video i actually probably enjoyed taking the video as much as i do the actual traveling the actual over landing side of things and i've been videoing and i've been into cameras since long before i could drive ultimately my message is that overlanding is simply the independent travel to remote destinations how you travel how long you travel what you take with you when you travel and what you do while you're traveling that's up to you as long as they're not hurting you your wallet the land don't worry about what other people are doing how they choose to spend their money or what they call it just get out there and enjoy yourself however you want

Channel: Revere Overland

Views: 13,446

Keywords: revere overland, overland, overlanding, off road, offroading, off roading, 4x4, 4runner, how to, how to start overlanding, how to get into overlanding, guide, getting started, start, getting started guide, start overlanding, how to get started overlanding, how to overland, camping, what vehicle for overlanding, overland guide, overlanding guide, overlanding how to, getting started overlanding, roof top tent, what is overlanding

Id: 4UeprFteug8

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021