The Overland Movie

Overlanding has been described as self-sustained travel to remote destinations where travel is the primary objective. It has always been a fantastic way to travel and see more of the world than those who simply visit beaches or cities. Land travel also presents new challenges that the average traveler will never experience, some of which will push you to your limits, most importantly landing takes you away from the crowds. 2020 was the year for land travel more than ever in June. This year, my wife and I were ready for an epic adventure. We've been stuck at home since March and finally packed our things to head west.

This is our journey. Look at those views behind me. We're in Sedona, Arizona, where we're just outside of Sedona, Arizona. We're here for the revered Overland 2020. The summer series starts here, we head north to about the Canadian border, that's the plan. Red Rock country is truly beautiful, with hundreds of miles of hiking, biking and off-road trails, it attracts many visitors. Driving through Sedona was slow. and it was already late when we went out and started looking for a place to spend the night. There are thousands of campsites but all the best spots seemed taken so we finally found a campsite just west of Sedona in Lincoln Canyon in the Coconino National Forest and there are some great views here, this is just a great little place beautiful, it was actually a struggle to find this place because it was pretty much all the little campsites along the road that went out into the canyon.

The national forest was taken but we went down a little side road and right at the end we found a little clearing and it's actually very private here there's no one else around, it was a little difficult to set up, had to be a little creative. You can see that leveling up was difficult, but it's a great place. I am very happy with it. I'll be sure to bookmark it on Gaia so I can upload it to Patreon subscribers so you can find it yourself. So we're taking a short walk to a place called Robbers Roost, which is apparently cool, my parents are, they're tracking me using satellite messenger.

What are you filming? I thought you were talking to me, no, you tell the world these interesting things. facts but not your wife yes, you know the deal? you know what happened I don't know anything about this I'm not going to say anything about it I'm telling you how we found out you know my parents sent me messages so while we're here I have my satellite messenger, uh, following us and I made a little page to share that I share with my parents so that they are back in England, following us to see where we are going and one of the things I love. the thing to do is just check out some of the attractions around and last night they sent me a message saying you are very close to this cool trail called Rubbers Roost or even a cave called Rubbers Roost you should go check it out so we drove around some trails uh ohv to get here we took a little shortcut that probably ended up taking a little longer just because it was a rough road and we're on a bit of a hike it's about half a mile or three miles if you don't have four wheel drive, but we're doing the lazy man's walk here where we drove the furthest distance, so let's see what the height looks like, oh, dangerous and slippery, this is, this is Robert's shelter, is the idea behind the name.

This is where thieves would come to hide to escape the law. You can see why it is a great natural shelter carved into the side of this rock. It's hard to get there. It was a pretty sketchy trail that went around the edge and then of course. I have great views here behind me, you can see them for miles and the little natural window there, after about 24 hours, mostly off the pavement, we air out and head back through Sedona along the scenic Oak Creek Canyon North to Flagstaff, we're in ashes. hills outside of Flagstaff and this place is cool you can drive like anywhere you see behind me this is uh ash lake I think it's called it's very flat and you have the hills behind me like big mountains and I just saw someone go There at least I saw the trail of dust.

I don't think I'll be able to get there in the precursor, but we're going to turn around and explore and I think the driving might be a little difficult. We definitely have to do it. air down if you take a look at things, I mean, this is just how you count. I guess if I need to air down it will be like sand or maybe even worse, so air down and then let's explore these things. awesome to drive it it's fantastic to drive around here it's really cool to be on this old volcano this whole volcanic area and it offers a different type of driving it's a different type of challenge that I haven't had before sometimes it's very grippy which I wasn't expecting because They are like beads, but if I feel it, as long as you go in a straight line, it has a lot of grip, but as soon as you try to turn or go up a slope diagonally, you lose everything, you just go to the side. of crab and you sink and you just lose it, but we're going to vent now, we're driving at uh we're at just under 15 psi, which probably helps a lot, we're going to vent and then we're going. hit the highway and head north to reach a camp on a lonely rock that has a bunch of sand dunes you can drive on and different types of driving up there, a whole new challenge should be a lot of fun from Cinder Hills .

We drove north through the ever-changing landscape, one of my favorite things about this part of the United States. When we get to the page, we find a problem. Is closed. It's really disappointing because I really wanted to spend some time at the lake. the coast and then the sand dunes so I guess now we have to find another place to camp because that was the plan for the night so we'll go out and try to find some dry land somewhere and set up, hopefully we can find a nice place. and i

overland

er ended up finding a place less than half a mile off the road right on the border of arizona and utah so last night we went in the dark we managed to find that little place that you see behind me and it actually ended up being it's a really nice place well because it's very sheltered, we've got the cliffs behind us and we're actually in a kind of creek bed and when the wind picked up last night, it got pretty windy, we were pretty well sheltered, you know, we could hear it, but it just made a fuss. the store a little.

The plan for today will be a sort of resupply and reorganization day. We have been on the road. I think so, this is the fifth. day and obviously I've only shown you the first technique, this is on the second night of the video, but we had to get here to Arizona, it took us a couple of days to get out here, so the back of the vehicle is a little bit of a mess. to rearrange it and put it back in its place and we need to get more food and especially water, we have very little water, so we'll go to the page, we'll do that, you'll probably check out some of the things on the page as well. so I'll show you what we have up to today, just a short distance from Paige, is the horseshoe curve, described as a beloved horseshoe curve of social media, it went from just 4000 visitors a year to over 2 million and fortunately, the growth is attributed to Instagram, unlike Sedona.

There were very few people there during our visit, so we stocked up on the site. We got all the food we need for the next few days when we will be away from civilization. I was also able to fill the water tank down here. Got some free water on site so I was able to take a shower too, very nice and clean, ready for a few days on the road. Starting here, I think it's a big wind ladder. I'm heading south towards the Grand Canyon and I've got some rough roads ahead of me, some very sandy roads, so I'm just freshened up and ready to hit the trails.

What is a door? Okay, I'll go get it for you. Well, here we are at White Pocket. I'll just pan with the camera. around so you get an idea of ​​what's going on around me you just have some amazing rocks bright colored wavy rocks strange scaly patterns I guess it's from the mud that used to be here and it's so fun to drive to get here all this It's soft dirt and you have very, very soft sand roads, so if you come this way you definitely need to have four wheel drive and make sure you have inflated your tires, so we'll camp around here.

Somewhere I'll go out and try to find a nice, sheltered spot to camp, probably behind me in that kind of direction, in the meantime I'll set up the drone and let them see around me, so okay, we found the perfect spot. A little place is just up the road from White Pocket that is over my shoulder and it is this one. I'll show you that little sandy path. You go down and there is a sign at the top that says dead end. Very soft sands. I don't think a lot of people can come back here so we should have this place to ourselves and it's basically this big rocky area, a very flat rocky area, so when we camp here we don't have to worry about having sand. on our feet so let's go make dinner, call it a night, this is a beautiful spot and I think having it there will help keep us out of the wind and should block the sun in the morning which can be nice so maybe.

We can sleep a little more. This is a great place. I'll post this on Patreon so all my Patreon subscribers can get the exact location here. So, wow, you can't even go out. Look at that, will you come help? I can't understand how you managed this. I don't know skill, luck of the best driver, come on muscles, I'm trying to break it without destroying the paint and too much, maybe use your chainsaw. You know, that's how it seems. inadvisable well, it's like the most flexible branch oh, maybe it will come out this way now I'll bend it oh, how long has it been there? this is what you picked up, yes it is blocking you and doesn't damage the paint too much. some scratches sounded horrible, it sounded pretty bad but it matches some of the other kentucky scratch filled scratches.

This is a good one from Kentucky, so normally when I make these videos I like to walk, but this time I'm staying. pretty much where I am because I'm right on the edge of the grand canyon now we couldn't go to the north room into the national park itself because it's closed although technically just a few feet from there the grand canyon national park starts but I'm not going to visit it because it is quite a steep entrance, in fact, it is a very long way down. If I stand on the edge there, no, you know, I'm not going to do it, it's really a long way down, so we're here at this viewpoint, I think there are saddle mountains right over there and we're going to try find a campsite somewhere along the ridge up here, preferably somewhere with some views, it's a national forest right up there. there, so if I can find a good spot I can place the drone just as the sun sets.

It's a beautiful place here. I don't know if you heard that, but Elizabeth is scared of bees. She absolutely hates bugs to the point of In fact, she opened the car door to get out of the car while moving with her seat belt still on because there was a bee in the car, so I'm worried she's going to do the same kind of things here with the bees and the edge don't jump it would be rational yes she has an irrational fear of bees and bugs so I wouldn't be surprised if she jumped off the edge just to avoid a bee from the vantage point.

It was a short drive north to a place I had seen on the satellite map layer on gaia gps that looked like a great campsite, how's this for a campsite? It's got views now, they're not views of the canyon, the canyons that are on the other side of those hills, so you can't see the actual grand canyon, but you can see it for miles away, you see a lot of the places we've been, so the day before yesterday we drove along those cliffs in the distance to go up to the page that is somewhere up there and then from the page you went behind the cliffs that you can see there and then you stayed let's see somewhere up, it's a little hard to see on the camera somewhere up there and then you went down these cliffs this morning and up to the plateau there the next morning.

We drove north from the Kaibab Plateau and crossed the state line into Utah. We're back in Utah. We just crossed the border from Arizona. We're in Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park and I don't know if you can tell. on camera but the reason it's called coral pink is because of the very pink color it is, it's not like the sand or the other sand dunes I've been to and at this state park they are actually allowed to both. You're allowed to fly a drone and you're allowed to drive over the sand dunes, so I'm hoping to do a little bit of both.

The woman at the front desk told her not to drive over the sand dunes. She said thatI would be stuck. because the sand is too soft so I hope that doesn't happen let's figure out the low range because I don't want to get stuck no I haven't said that I hope they don't stop crazy it took off like a hurricane with spotlights the dogs hit the whole thirty feet of breathing down my neck and gasping for breath, but two weeks on a wild chase through highways, mountains in seven states I met a man at the port who said he could take me across the ocean somewhere far away, lord, forgive me on the trigger, but take me down just as she was learning to drive on the soft sand, Elizabeth took a dune that was a little bigger than She hoped she had panicked and slammed on the brakes, bringing us closer to what closest we had ever been to rolling a vehicle.

Just look at this okay the back end is dug out so you're going to have to put in very little gas so away from the brake yeah okay very little okay you're out you need to start turning now I don't want you to have Time for you to drive, okay, let me take the drone and then I'll finish off the coral pink sand dunes, maybe it's about a mile from the Utah backcountry, in another mile, Elizabeth was back in the seat of the driver and driving down sandy trails like you're racing the Baja 1000. Uh, so no, don't go any further, don't just keep going like you have.

Got it, no, just drive very slowly forward, no, no, stop, stop, stop, ah, this is not good, maybe it's time to run the winch, okay, quick update on what's going on here. I've been running around shooting videos and somehow, Elizabeth I finished. getting too close to the edge and the sand is pushing it further and further away, so let's run the winch, there's not much to take out, I'm thinking there's a tree on the hill, it doesn't look like I hope it's enough to turn the front. Well, I'm stuck once again today. If I try to press the accelerator, I slide downhill.

It's not ideal. I was very happy that she married me and I am very happy that we. I bought this winch which I honestly thought was useless, but it's not useless. We are going to climb to the right to, hopefully, reach a tree that is up there. Apparently that's to prevent the strap from snapping back and hurting one of us, because that would be bad. As? How much do you love me right now? You're pushing it to the limit, especially with all this vehicle, so you almost drive it off the cliff. I'm having a good day, depending on the outcome of this tree, I'll decide whether to take it or not. you're home again, I hope it's a very tattered looking tree, but the trees here and the sand dunes have very, very long root systems, so I hope, really, I hope that lifts us up and places it right on the base anyway.

Great, I mean you won't have to take me home if I fall off the cliff, that's true, but I'll have to walk home and I'd rather take the time from my vehicle. Wow, okay, oh God, give it some gas. just keep it there except in the space on the left, okay, we did it, that was a little stressful. I'm very glad I put the winch on. I put it up a few weeks ago, like three weeks ago, two weeks ago, and I don't think we would have known without the winch, maybe the traction boards, but in that case I wouldn't want to rely on the traction boards, but the little tree that's up there held up as you can see those things look really old and really fragile but they have really really deep root systems here in the sand so they're pretty strong anyway I'm going to pack up and maybe we'll meet at camp.

I think I'm done, maybe even tomorrow we'll have a lot of laundry to do and uh, I had a lot of sticky situations today, so yeah, I think I might call it a day for the video, well, we did it, the winch worked, that's it the cliff right there that we almost slid off, you can see where the track started to slide um yeah, I can't drive anymore, surprise for the most part, the rest of the trailer was much easier, there is one notable exception, a sandy hill giant, if you are taking this trail heading west, be prepared to climb it. with a winch heading east we were going down so no problems once you get over the hill, it's flat firm and scenic with lots of stream crossings so good morning no spectacular views for you today.

We're at the High Road camp, just outside. from zion national park and there is nothing special about this campground, it is actually a little pricey for what you get but it is right next to the national park so it really is the location you pay for here. It also has laundry, so we're I was able to clean our clothes because I was out of my last shirt, so the plan for today is, uh, we're just going to spend the day driving around, seeing the sights, doing touristy things, no trails for you today, uh, and then We'll be back here again tonight and tomorrow we'll hit the trails.

It's about a 30-minute drive from High Road Base Camp to Zion Canyon and is an impressive drive that takes you through a 1.1-mile-long tunnel that was built in 1927. Once in the canyon, you'll typically You use a shuttle to enter the park, but they don't run when we visited. We were lucky enough to be one of only 400 vehicles allowed on the scenic road into the canyon. Well, we were very lucky here in Zion. They like that I said they only allow 400 people in the park at a time just because the parking space(s) is limited and just as we are about to go through the park entrance scenic road we notice the person start. waving at each other as we looked so we turned and went down and it was blocked halfway and we really wanted to go to the end of the strait and just as we got to the roadblock we stopped to look at the map when we finished looking at the map they took the roadblock away road and it's open all the way and we have one of the few parking spaces here at the end so we're getting ready to walk. arrows, which I love, especially on a hot summer day like this, you can probably see that I'm sweating, it's about 90 degrees, but it's going to be a really nice, cool hike and arrows, so were you filming when you fell?

Yes, it's still recording. Well, we're in the sand again, we can't escape here in southern Utah, so we're on a trail or on the trail to go to Peekaboo Canyon, a little slot canyon down here and, uh, it's about two miles away. away. On the way back, I really didn't want to have to vent down because when we get off the road at the end, it'll be back on the pavement for quite a while so we'll have to vent up again, but even on low it's struggling with the street pressure, so we're venting down. I'm going to try to go down to about 20 psi, which is not ideal for sand.

I usually go down to somewhere just below 15 for sand driving, but I hope it works. I'm working right now the trails I'll show you there they're a little crowded so I hope it's ok it's a good thing we aired out the split trail and chose to go left the further we go the softer the sand gets until we were driving over dunes again while in the canyon we met another couple who informed us that the other route from the previous split followed a wash and avoided the gentle dunes. We took it back to the road and drove the 50 miles.

Southeast to Cottonwood Canyon Road the trail started out dusty, hot, boring and hot, but the further north we went the prettier it got and the lower the temperature dropped by the time we reached the Dixie National Forest it had cooled down significantly and as we climbed to The hills. It became very nice when we got to the camp, all we could hear was the sound of the wind in the trees, so we set up camp here on top of a hill in the forest, it's nice and cool here, I think they are around 70 degrees compared to 100 degrees in the desert, you didn't see anything from the trip here just because we wanted to get here quickly, it's almost eight in the afternoon so we have to get ready, have dinner, shower, get to bed and I didn't want to spend all day filming, but we're sitting overlooking a reservoir behind me in the Dixie National Forest.

We have Bryce Canyon, probably a half mile to the east, so I have a good location here. I'll be bookmarking it on gaia as usual so you can find your own way here if you're one of my Patreon subscribers and tomorrow we'll head over to Bryce. The next morning we took a short drive to the trail shown on the national forest service maps leading directly to bryce canyon national park, well we were about a half mile from bryce canyon and I thought we could get in using the back roads. You can see the boundary line, but the gate is padlocked, so yeah, half a mile away. but we have to drive probably about 10 miles to get back to Bryce Canyon, unfortunately, so turn around and go back the way we came.

Almost 20 miles later we arrived at the park. Bryce Canyon is a beautiful, colorful amphitheater formed by Hoodoos. At 200 feet up there are fantastic views from the top, but one of the best ways to experience the park is to hike, so we filled up and headed down the trail to continue the theme of going down to places that aren't really there. suitable for video, we are on Wall Street and Bryce Canyon and it is obviously very high and narrow, which does not suit the view of the landscape, so we can rotate the camera. How about this if you're watching on a phone?

You can simply rotate. the phone for that, if you're on a computer, I guess just turn your head to the side from bryce canyon. We went northeast looking for a campsite along the bur trail, so this is an overnight campsite on blm land right next door. Burr Trail and I thought Bertrall wasn't paved but I guess I was wrong it was paved the whole way and it was still a cool road to drive because you go down through the canyons now they are in this quiet land with views of some sort of capital reef . in the background, which you can see there, and we drove around there looking for a slightly nicer campsite, this one isn't great, but as we go towards it, this road gets rougher and there are some places where it kind of slopes towards a ditch or into a creek and with all the rain we're having, let's say we don't have anything here yet, but there's a lot of rain there, I didn't want to risk having very sloppy roads. here because these are Utah roads, I think I've said this before.

The roads in Utah get really slippery when it rains and it wouldn't be great to try to get out of here tomorrow morning on this road if they were really slippery, so, and one more thing. We're pretty well protected here, we have this cliff behind us, so if we get thunderstorms tonight, we have shelter from the lightning, the rain and the wind. Sorry, it's a better camp, it would probably be cooler. on the cliffs near the cliffs there, but it was not a good choice. It rained that night, but not much. We packed up and headed east through Capital Reef National Park.

Capitol Reef earned its name because the large rock domes looked like capital building domes and like a reef, the area is so rugged that it prevents people from traveling from the main entrance to the park. We took Cathedral Road north across the Fremont River towards Cathedral Valley, so I feel like I need it. Wendy it's very windy 30 miles off the pavement we descend into the more sheltered Cathedral Valley. It's easy to see why they called it cathedral valley. The monoliths look like large cathedrals with buttresses within the valley. There are some obvious spots, but some like the plaster sump.

Not so much is noted that the sinkhole formed when water dissolved the gypsum that is buried underground. It's hard to get a sense of the scale in the chamber, but the hole is 50 feet wide and 200 feet deep and continues to grow as the plaster grows. It dissolved just as we pulled away from the sinkhole, we felt the first heavy drops of rain and the wind picked up dramatically. We left the storms as we headed up the west side of the valley toward the mountains, so we're finally breathing because we're about to hit the sidewalk to head into Moab.

We have this road you see behind me through the Fish Lake National Forest. A beautiful area. In fact, I love it. I love being here. It's cool, about 10,000 feet. I think so. nice up here beautiful hills snow capped mountains in the distance nice little area so let's hit the roads this is what I'm dealing with she's trying to distract me anyway about to hit this road and head to moab hello like You can see we are in a place that is green instead of brown earth and we are doing a little vloggy and I am trying to act and things that RobWe still had other problems out of our control, although, oh, there's another tree number four, oh, as far as we know.

I'll make it, I'll try something that's less than a mile from the highest point on the trail. We continue in conditions that we would normally have renounced. We spent hours crawling, dragging and clearing several more trees until it was finally there. Time to call it a night, well I got stuck in the snow again and it was going to be a winch job and we still have a long way to go, we're almost to the top of the hill and then it's all downhill from there but with the sun setting and the need to lift the winch and I'm exhausted, I know Andres is exhausted, everyone is tired of doing this and they're hungry too, we haven't had dinner yet so we stopped, I know I'm blocking. the trail, but the chances of anyone passing by here are slim.

The chances of someone passing by here in the morning before we leave are even slimmer because it will probably take them hours to get here. I know it took us all day. I marked a camp. The previous place was 3:30 when I marked it and it's almost nine o'clock now and they were about three and a half miles back so you haven't gone very far so set up camp see you in the morning it's already 3:30. The next day is July 1st to be specific and it's 36 degrees here in the middle of Idaho, it's basically cold and we slept well, it actually looked pretty good, I had quite a few layers on so we weren't really prepared for temperatures that low so Today we have to continue accumulating snow and we have made very little progress.

We were so close to the top of the hill and hoped for an easier descent. I made it through the last patches of snow to the summit where I quickly got stuck again so we are about 0.1 mile from camp and we have reached the top of the hill so it is no longer going up but in the past they have been like small patches of snow that we have that pass and then it's behind and with this on the summit you can see the precursors back there. I'm stuck, it's still uphill, so we have all this snow here, it's level, so we might be able to crawl.

I'm worried about sliding a little to the right, but just turn around, I'll show you it goes on and on and on and I think this is going to be the kind of thing we'll spend all day going on. a couple of miles if we turn around, which Andreas doesn't want to do, we turn around, it's all downhill and shouldn't be too hard and then we find another path, okay, so we walk maybe another 0.1 mile and It's still You can see behind me that's how we were going and it's still covered in snow and there's another tree right down there and all this, but focus on everything is leaning to the right down here, it's going to be too much. of a fight, I mean it will take us hours to get here, so I called him, I know, Andre still wants to try, right?

Yeah, I mean, I'm just looking. I don't know. I was fine on the straight snow all the way until we got to this slope here. I think I can see my The camper just picked a spot right there, yeah, yeah, and we also don't know how many other trees there are around here, so what we do know is that it's about two and a half miles before it started snowing, like this that we can return. path and take one of the other trails and turn around just 40 minutes after turning around, we climbed out of the snow a distance that had taken us five and a half hours the day before and continued backtracking to the next split in the trail. and I stopped to consult the atlas.

I always carry paper atlases with me and it is for times like this that we had several options for getting out, but all the routes to the south would take us on small roads through high altitudes, our best option took us. west and all the way back to Montana, so after yesterday's cold and exhausting adventure, we are settled in at Lolo Hot Springs and we are right on the creek here at camp. Global Hot Springs was right on the other side of the path we are going to trace. Last night we had a lot of condensation inside the tent because we left it probably too closed, so unfortunately the things in there are a little damp, like a sleeping bag, and the duvet and mattress are a little damp, so we're leaving. lay down.

Take all that out, let it dry, let it air out tonight too and soak in the hot springs. See you tomorrow the next morning. It was time to make some decisions. Elizabeth and I were running out of time and we had to do it. Home in a few days we could head back to Idaho and try to see as much as we could in a short amount of time and then rush home or we could take our time getting home and see the sights along the way. We decided to save Idaho for another time and Do It Right, it's been amazing to survive, see you all next year.

I left Andreas and his family to enjoy Idaho. Elizabeth and I drove through Montana and Wyoming to South Dakota. First stop was Bear Mountain. We're back in the heat. What is 80 degrees like? It's a nice change from the Idaho snow here and I don't know if it's that pretty. We are at Bear Mountain Lookout in the Black Hills of South Dakota and from here you can see why they are called the Black Hills. If you look at the hills with old pine trees behind me from a distance, they have this black appearance, so today we are going to explore around here and see some of the sights.

I think we have Custer State Parks not too far away. away from the wind cave if it is open and what else is there wasteland here? wastelands a little away to the east. Custer State Park is famous for its scenic byways and narrow tunnels along the Needles Highway, but what really sets it apart is its massive 71,000-acre bison herd. The park is home to about fifteen hundred free-ranging bison, so today is July 3rd and it happens to be my tenth anniversary of moving to the United States, but it's also the day they're doing what they do. kind of celebration tomorrow, not sure if it's anything big, apparently something to do with the 4th of July, so there are some fireworks at Mount Rushmore and apparently the president is flying in to see these fireworks, like As a result, the state park was completely full today. and all the roads or many of the roads are closed including everything leading to Mount Rushmore so we couldn't see it so now we will head east and try to camp as close as possible to the Badlands National Park next to the When we arrive to Badlands National Park it was early afternoon and instead of stopping and camping, we decided it was the perfect time to see the colorful formations.

We continued along the east side of the park and drove into the night until we found a cool bank of the river. camp on the missouri river we made one last stop on our trip visiting a place that elizabeth had wanted to go for a long time, a little house on the prairie.