Ep.19: Guide to Car Camping with Clay Croft

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
We're back with Clay Croft from x Overland, which is
a company that makes media around overlanding. We were with
him the last episode. Great episode. I learned maybe more
than I've learned on any gear Talk episode so far
as talking to Clay about how to get rigs unstuck

(00:34):
and how not to get him stuck. I gotta say, Clay,
I've told at least a half dozen people since we
chatted to never ever hook up to the ball to
pull somebody out. I mean, that's I think I've had
a dream about a ball flying through the windshield and
taken me out. Like that's scary stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Right on. If there was one takeaway, that's one of
the better ones, for sure. You know it's so calm.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Okay, So but we're just today we're gonna talk car camping,
car camping gear, how to do it in comfort, how
to do it right. But before I want you to
explain to people. You were just telling us how you're
trying to pack on some pounds because you're going on
a crazy expedition to Africa. Yeah, Southern Africa, and you've

(01:25):
been there and you're kind of expecting possibly having some
times of food scarcity.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Possibly, Yeah, there's Uh, it's funny when you go talk
to all the guides and they start telling you all
these different stories. And we're going to be in some
very remote locations for periods of time. So also, I'm
a picky eater. I wish I wasn't. I just wish
I was. I wish I could eat anything. I'm just
not that way. So I'll probably uh not eat as

(01:56):
much because I have spent time over there before, I've
spent months there before, and like I can get a
little you know, after so much post show and sardines,
I can't eat too much more. So yeah, put, I'm
just making it my excuse to put on a little
extra pounds right now, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Okay, are you camping?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, so we'll be in our expedition trucks for the
next sixty days as soon as we show up.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
How'd you get them over there?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
We shipped them in containers from New Jersey to Durban,
South Africa.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Dang.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, they've been on the water right now for forty
five days. They're just about to get there.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
That's nuts.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
And so I would to just thought that you guys
would have packed a crate of peak refuel and mountain
house with you to survive.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
We did, and yeah, we do have some we have
we have some backups. We have some staples in there
like dehydrated just basic dehydrated sausage, basic dehydrated you know, beef, eggs,
powdered milk, things like that, so that if you can't
find them, you can make them and that can help

(03:07):
round out your menus when you're in pretty remote scarce areas.
But we'll be eaten like the locals do for a
lot of it. That's cool.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
So you must have someone on the ground then that's
sort of helping you plan this and you end up
in places where you're going to be fed and sheltered
to or no, you'll be camping actually in your rigs.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, we'll be camping primarily, so I anticipate over the
next sixty days it will probably be in some sort
of a lodge or a hotel for maybe ten to
fifteen days at the most. Every now and then, it's
great to stop in once you've been living out of trucks.
You need a shower, you need to reset, you need

(03:50):
more groceries, you need a day in town. Just like
any other big kind of trip world you got to
go get reset. Sure, but yeah, we'll be living off
the trucks for the next two months.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
But every evening you sort of have a plan to
land in a town or in a village or something
where there's food.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah. Yeah, So we have the ability and we can
get into some of this with the car camping world,
because ultimately what we're doing is we're taking that to
the extreme in Africa and just living out of these
trucks for that period of time. But we carry refrigerators.
We can halt enough food for eight of us for
about ten days before we got to be in town

(04:31):
again and restock. Now, some of the interesting things about
the Africa Drip. We're covering four countries on this one,
so South Africa, Botswana, and to maybe a Lesotho, and
we might throw another one in there too. We'll see
what happens along the way. But those places, you can't
cross the borders typically with any food, food or produce,

(04:53):
so any uncooked meats, anything like that, you can't take
it with you. So you have to plan your food
according so you don't have waste, and then as soon
as you get across the border, you have to find
the next place that actually has good meat in produce
and restock again.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Wow. Yeah, logistical nightmare.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
It is. It's all logistics, and that to me is
really the fun because you're problem solving.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Right, And I mean, if you can carry ten days
worth of food, which we're going to get into that
when we talk about food later in this podcast, but
I mean, really for sixty days, then you're only looking
at five or six mandatory stops.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
If you can pick up good fresh food and then
carry it for ten for ten days, or supply a
group of eight for ten days, all right, But before
we get to food, we'll come back to that. We
kind of organize an outline here, and it's kind of
how I organize a lot of times. My gear list

(05:55):
is getting ready for a trip, which I'll started doing
more and more. And if i'd give anybody a tip
is when you make these from trip to trip and
year to year, don't erase them because for some reason,
I can be such an idiot and write out these
great lists and then next year I'm like, Oh, we're
going on our annual Montana family camping trip. Where's that list?

(06:16):
I erased it and I got to start from fresh again.
So yeah, make yourself a little folder. But anyways, I
organize it under like shelters, and that usually includes like
everything you need to be comfortable sleeping, and then cooking,
and then there's pretty much extras. I mean, that's really

(06:38):
what it comes down to, right You got to be sheltered,
and you gotta be fed, and then of course for
us there's always hunting gear thrown in. But we're not
going to get into hunting gear today. So let's start
off with shelters and car camping. And I don't know, Clay,
I mean, I guess start off wherever you want to start,
and then and then Jordan and I can kind of

(06:59):
pick apart and go because I mean, I'm guessing you
guys with your you know, fancy overlanding rigs, nobody's setting
up what I consider just a normal tent anymore.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Right, well, some people are, but typically right now, like
the I guess what's trending still is the rooftop tents,
you know, putting a usually a two man shelter. It's
just it looks like a ground tent that's mounted to
plywood essentially, or some sort of base that folds in

(07:31):
half and mounts to the top of a roof rack
and allows you to sleep on top of your car.
There's a lot of that's probably the most common thing
that you see associated with overland travel. But that doesn't
mean that a lot of people still can't overland travel
out of a ground tent. There are pluses and minuses
to rooftop tents, and there's pluses and minuses to ground tents.

(07:55):
So yeah, we could we could dive into those aspects.
And then there's the yeah, I think we just third
which is like live in systems, So I'll category categorize
it like that. So you have your live on, which
would be the rooftop tent. Then you have your live in,
which would be a camper or an alue cab or
at habitat solution of some kind of go fast camper.

(08:18):
Here in Bozeman, you kind of live. You can live
out of the back of a pickup with that, or
there's the ground solution, some sort of a ground tent
from backpacker tents all the way to a wall tent,
you know, very flexible. So a lot of people like
the rooftop tent. It's taken kind of taking the world

(08:40):
by storm over the last five years or so, They
are very convenient. They're set up when you get to camp.
You don't have to find a level ground. It's already
You just need to make sure your car's level and
take the bag off and open it up, and your
tent is set up and you're up off the ground,
which is pretty convenient. Let's free.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Let's talk a little bit about leveling because I know
that triople that you actually like when you if you
just pull a pop up trailer into a spot right like,
they have a leveling kid in there. So when you're
doing this in your truck, you can obviously just try
to park in a level spot. But if you don't
have that, how do you make the your tent level? Uh?

Speaker 2 (09:19):
There's uh, there's the there's the dirt bag way where
you kick a rock over there and you roll up
on top of a rock. Uh Uh. If you're in sand,
one of the techniques is to put it in two
well drive and uh gun it quick spin and gun
it a little bit and drop the drop the rear
axle into the sand a little bit. If you need
the level there, of course you re that's like sand sand. Uh,

(09:42):
you easily fill it back in when you leave in
the morning. Uh, we use our traction boards, the max
tracks a lot. We'll take a couple off and put
it under the wheel that's low to get it all level.
And then our higher, more advanced trucks actually have air
bag systems in them, so when we roll up, we
can drop one air bag and lift the other one

(10:03):
and get it all leveled up, which is really guccy.
You know, it's very sophisticated, very high brow if you've
got air bag systems. But most of all of our
trucks are. We're just finding rocks and just doing it
the easy way, you know, got it?

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Okay, So what's tell me? Like what because I'm still
on the fence with the rooftop ten I know I
know a lot of people that have them. You hear
in Bozeman, Montana. It seems like every other vehicle has one.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
But like, what is the big draw? Uh? There there
is a let's just say this. They're cozy, They're really
they're fun to stay in. You know, you're up off
the car, you're up off the ground. There's a sense
of security, whether it be real or not, perhaps false
sense of security and bare country, but you are off

(10:50):
the ground from the critters. You get good airflow usually
up on top because you're up off the ground. Sometimes
you get too much airflow because it's a windy nuh
right that That's one of my drawbacks to a rooftop
tent usually because when it's windy, it's it's rough, but.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
No way to shut it down to keep the air
from moving through you can.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
They're just loud, they have rain flies, and but it's
not really any different than any other ground tent or
something that's on the ground. You know, windy nights, it's
it's a tent. Sure at the end of the day,
it's a tent. It's going to flap in the wind.
There are some better than others when you once you
get into the wedge rooftop tents like the Go Fast

(11:35):
or the Alue Cab. There's some other the easy on
tents that are the clamshell they call them a clamshell
or a wedge, and they're the ones that that pivot
on the front and lift up from the back. They
are probably my most preferred rooftop tent and they flap
the least. They can actually take quite a bit of

(11:58):
abuse in the wind with and not keep you up
at night. But all of these tents have good mattresses.
You're not putting an air mattress in them. You can
keep your sleeping pad and your sleeping systems inside them,
so you're not stuffing sleeping bags and all that. Typically
with two people, that's never a problem. All your bags

(12:18):
stay up there, your pillows stay up there, and then yeah,
you open it up, you put some poles in and
crawl into bed.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
And I'm guessing that breaking it down is just as fast.
It's a little slower.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
It depends if it's a fold and half traditional rooftop
tent they take. You know, you lift the ladder up
and you fold it back in half, and you have
to tuck the fabrics het. It involves walking around the
truck a little bit. If you have a partner, that's
a lot easier because they're on the other side tucking
fabric as you fold it back. And then you've got
to put the cover on and stuff. So setting them

(12:55):
up is very fast. You're you know, three to five
minutes in your set packing them up, maybe ten up
to ten, got it. Yeah, And there's some things to
look out for on those on the typical. On the
let's see what you would say the classic rooftop tents.
I really try to avoid zippers on the covers. I

(13:18):
like the ratcheting systems. They're much better. Anytime you get
into inclement weather and really dusty, nasty conditions or icing,
those zippers just they get real tough. So the ratcheting
systems is what I prefer. So if you're out there
in the market, that's my suggestion. Find something with that.
Otherwise you'll just be fighting it.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
And that's the just for for like doors and stuff,
or for the actual like the when the tent closes down,
it's a ratchet versus a zipper. I'm trying to think exactly.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, so you fold it, fold it in half, and
then you're gonna put the cover on it so you
can you're gonna drive, you're gonna travel that day. And
uh so there's usually a like a heavy plastic or
what is it, like a really high end truck tarp
material got it that goes over it, and that's what

(14:10):
you want to have a ratchet system with it. Got it.
So if it's a hard shell, it just folds down
and latches and it is its own shell, it's its
own protective cover. That's That's why I love them so much.
The drawback to those is that they require almost the
entire roofline to make them work. So if you're wanting
to put more stuff on your roof, I wouldn't recommend

(14:32):
putting more stuff on them just to keep your center
of gravity down on your vehicle. You don't want to
put too much weight on top of your truck. It
makes it dangerous. You know, A high defensive maneuver, a
high speed defensive maneuver with a lot of weight on
top of your truck is not a good idea. That's it.
That's when you get in trouble.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Uh So, yeah, you've got kids, right, So I get
three boys. You got three boys. So if you go
out the whole family, five of you, are you going
to be using a rooftop tent or because I'm guessing not,
you can't fit everybody in there. So if you're going
one rig and the whole cross family, how do you

(15:13):
guys do shelter?

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, we do it all kinds of different ways. But
if so, myself, I do a lot of weekend Warrior
stuff just on my own. So I like a rooftop
tent that I can crawl in and crawl out of
It takes all the work out of the camping situation.
Then when I add people, Shelley, my wife and I
will stay in the rooftop tent. And then of course

(15:36):
you got to put the kids down on the ground.
You know, they haven't earned the right yet to live
in the rooftop tent. They're going to work their way
up there, you know, up to the high life, that's right.
So yeah, it just depends. Uh, we usually bring just
another good tent that we throw down on the ground.

(15:57):
That's the beauty of a ground tent. They way nothing
and they take up no space. They're built for backpacking,
most of them. You know, there are other really quick systems.
There's a tent called an os tent that we use
and it is six feet long, but it sets up
in literally a minute. It is so fast. You just

(16:19):
need roofline to be able to put it up on
the rack, you know. So that's kind of the middle ground.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Yeah. I've started seeing more rooftop tents that are integrated
into the topper that you're putting in, like a back
of a pickup or something that seems like it's like
a next step above traditional rooftop camper to or a
rooftop tent also.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yes, and I would say that is the sweet spot.
So if you have a pickup and you have a
truck with a bed in it, there's several companies now
that are making a canopy camper setup. So yeah, you
use the back like a like a topper or a
cap as the Australians would call it, and then the
top of it lifts up and becomes a wedge tent

(17:04):
and you can stand up in the middle of it.
So your bed hinges typically hinges with the roofline, so
if you want it out of the way, you push
it up out of the way, and then you can
live inside the back of your pickup and then what's
time for bed? You pulled the little bed down and
crawl up and go to sleep, and you still have
all that room underneath you. It really is the best
of both worlds. And two of our trucks right now

(17:26):
in Africa have that sort of system through aluecab on
the back and they are fantastic. That's when you get
into the live in system. It's kind of a hybrid
because it's a camper but yet it's a rooftop tent
that you've folded open. You can just access it from inside.
Here in town. Go Fast has built a really good

(17:48):
canopy camper topper system for like really good everyday use
because you still maintain your tailgate where some of these
other systems you would remove your tailgate and it turns
into a door and more becomes more of a full
time type of vehicle at that point.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah, for the person that's uh camping and hunting out
of their vehicle. And when I say hunting out of
their vehicle, like they're gonna they're gonna drive, They're gonna
leave their camp spot in the morning in the dark
to go somewhere else to park and then and then
go hunting. Would you still be in in the like

(18:30):
uh like favoring that rooftop tent because you can break
it down fast enough and just jump in the cab
and drive away, or you say, you know what, I'd
probably just rather you know, make a camp and and
then just come back to that same camp.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
That is one of the drawbacks to a rooftop tent
because once you set it up, your truck's not moving
until you tear it down, so that that that turns
into a personal preference. Uh, if it's fast like that,
the wedge tents and stuff, it really is no big deal.
Like you're you're in and out of that tent, packed

(19:08):
up and gone in five minutes, so you can have
all the comfort and the mobility quickly. H if you're
doing I would even say that's better than ground tent
because it's so much faster, so fast. Yeah, it really
just depends. If you're a guy on a budget and
you need to do all of it, a ground tent
is going to be the way to go. Sure, if

(19:31):
you've got if you're hunting a lot from the truck
and you're coming back to the truck, a rooftop tent system,
a canopy camper system is really a good way to
go because you can get back to the vehicle and
then you're in mostly a hard sighted structure and you
can really weather some bad wind and storms and cold
because you can heat them up and they're pretty once

(19:53):
you get there. Once you get into a system like that,
it's tough to leave.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
They're very even something that Yeah, even something as simple
as just putting a topper on your vehicle. We've got
a topper on Lea's pickup and we have a deck
system in it.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
And like with the deck, you could basically the drawers
you can fill them full of whatever and then have
your bed on top. And then when you get ready
to go, like move trail heads or something like that,
you just you jump out, close the tailgate, close the
topper lid, and like away you go. And you don't
there's no setup takedown like. It's just always ready to rip.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah, that's a great way to go, and I did
that for years and it's still a great solution. It's
just due to these headspace yeap, that's true. Yeah, how
you said you can heat it? How would you heat
that space? So anymore, there's a lot of different type
of heaters. There's Chinese heaters out there that use diesel

(20:50):
or gasoline. They're the cheapest version. But the best version
would be to get into like a a Wabosto heater system.
There's let's see, trying to think of propex, I think
is another one. The simplest way is to use like
an ice house heater, where you just got to make

(21:10):
sure that you are monitoring your carbon monoxide just like
you would in an ice house. You have adequate flow
of air, would you say ice house heater.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Sorry, when you say ice house heater, you're just talking
about like a propane Uh, mister buddy kind of a thing.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Like a mister buddy. Yep, mister buddy can work pretty good. Now.
The problem with mister Buddy's or direct directly heating the
air off of like a ceramic plate like they do,
is they build a ton of condensation. So they do
if you get into the closed air systems like the
Wabasto systems typically found in like semi trucks or campers,

(21:54):
you know, like a four wheel camper or any camper
off the RV lot, they have a closed system where
they're not directly heating the air, and that's that's what
keeps those campers dry. You heat them up and keep
them dry. But your mister buddy can go quite away.
But just be aware that you're gonna build a lot
of moisture inside a tent over time.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
So yeah, I'm probably don't sleep with them on. Yeah,
that's actually just don't sleep with it.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, by legality reasons, I would say, do not sleep
with these on. You know, uh, sure some people do.
But you know the best way to use them is
you turn them on, and you warm up the tent
right before you go to bed, and you get it
warm and you get all comfortable, and then as you're
crawling to bed, you shut it off. And then the
morning before you crawl out of bed, you reach down

(22:40):
there and you turn it back on, let it heat
up a little bit, and ten minutes later you crawl
out and you're good to go. You keep doing that.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Clear, you're gonna be so soft by the end of
your life that I don't know, the worms are gonna
have a problem digesting you because you're just gonna be
so soft.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
You canna be like jelly.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
No, I'm kidding, right, But our art day, our buddy Spencer,
our colleague here at Meat Eater. He runs the He
does a lot of you know, kind of truck based
camping like this, running solo and he's a big white
tail deer hunter. So he's hunting November. It's cold, and
he'll run I think just straight propane, but I think
that he actually runs two carbon monoxide detectors, so he

(23:20):
has like the one that he's using, but then he
has a backup as well, so that there's no question,
you know, about his air quality.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
That's he's a smart man because it's a silent killer, right,
Like you don't you don't know what's happening, and there's
no way he would.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
You just wouldn't know. You just slip into Yeah. Yeah,
you just start dreaming and next thing you know, it's over.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
That's okay.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, so yeah, you know, in all seriousness, don't mess
don't mess around with uh with that stuff, be safe
about it.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
So I guess we're we kind of covered the regular tents, uh,
rooftop tents, anything.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
All. We need to talk about what you called live
in systems or campers. Uh yeah, I would say that
be mindful of weight when you're getting into these camper
systems and any any time that you're looking at a
rooftop tent or definitely a camper or live in. The
weights on these trucks get out of hand pretty quick.

(24:23):
So just be thinking about what what your trade offs
are when you go to these different systems. Are you
are you putting the weight up too high? Is your
truck ready for that? Are you putting so much weight
with it back? How many campers have we seen going
down the road where it's sitting in the back of
that truck is just down to the bump stops on
the back, you know, and they say, oh, well, my

(24:43):
truck should be able to handle that, you know, Like now,
it's not really designed to handle that. You know, you
got to you got to think through it a little
bit more to make these systems safe and good. But
so there's the logistics side to think through. But personally
we use them all still. I'll be in a ground
tint this week with a trip that we're doing. I'm

(25:04):
going to be living in a rooftop tent this weekend,
and I'll be living in a live in system for
two months in Africa. So we do it all. It's
just kind of tools of the trade, okay.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
And so when you say so, just so we're not
talking about toe behind trailers. When you say live in system,
you're talking about when you just see the back of
the truck and it's basically gotta it's got a camper
that's just sitting in the bed. That's kind of what
your definition of live in system is.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, So if you could be living in the back
of a bed of a truck and you have walls
around you of some kind, that would be live in
and they live out systems would be rooftop tent where
you do all of your cooking and everything outside and
you never really crawl in. You would maybe a topper
system would even probably be considered mostly a live out

(25:54):
of system because you're just using the topper just to
store gear, but you're still doing everything outside. Got it,
got it? Got it?

Speaker 1 (26:02):
So yeah, I mean it's obviously we could go down
a huge rabbit hole. But I've I can tell you,
I've never even stepped inside one of these live in
back of the truck systems. So I am very curious
because when I look at it, I go, there's no
way there's enough room for me as a six foot
two human to go in there and then live comfortably.

(26:23):
So like, walk me through just the basic layout, and
I guess how you can do everything. I'm guessing you're
doing everything besides the toilet, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
We avoid toilets usually because you know, we still use
the good old nature to do that. But there are
a lot of systems in it out there that allow
you to use a toilet in these live in systems.
Really that's it. Oh yeah, there's there's so much stuff.
So a lot of this stuff comes from there's two
worlds that it comes from. It's interesting. There's the boating world.

(27:01):
There's a lot of stuff that comes from boats and
yachts and things like that that translate because it's all
twelve olt yeah, and it's small quarters. Small quarters moves
into a truck. And then there's those are like usually
your higher end system. There's there's always the bucket you know,
the bucket system that you can go anywhere and find

(27:23):
a bucket system of some kind, you know, Sportsmen's warehouse
or bob Wards or something like that. There's got to
be something there for this solution. But then it goes
all the way up into like the wrap on toilets.
They come from cranes. So the guys that are in
cities and they they came out of Japan. So the
guys that are up in these huge cranes that have

(27:45):
to do their business and they can't come down the cranes,
they have a twelve volt ceiling system that seals the
waist and they can stay up in the crane all day.
That's not being utilized in trucks all the time. It's
pretty cool. There's there's a lot of you know, ways
to skin that cat so to speak, and that allows
you to be more adventurous and extend your seasons. If

(28:12):
if that's a problem for you, for me, it's like whatever,
that doesn't bother me. I'll I'd rather not deal with that,
you know, because.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
I imagine you, I imagine you got to have a
really good ventilation system. I mean, if you're gonna go
number two inside of a space that I mean, I mean,
how many square feet is there inside one of these things?

Speaker 2 (28:31):
And the bet of a pick's like four feet by
six feet by six feet high probably roughly. Yeah, so yeah, yeah,
you gotta have your systems dialed, all.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Right, So walk me through. You open the door, you
step inside. I just don't understand, and really and again
I should just go and check one out. But walk
us through for other people that haven't been inside one, Like,
how does it work that you're gonna sleep in there,
You're gonna cook in there, you're gonna eat in there,
you're gonna hang out and play some cards maybe when
the when the weather's got you down?

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Like, how does the how does they? How are they
mostly configured? Sure? Well, we'll go with the uh the
four start with the four wheel camper type of system,
and I say four wheel camp because they've been around
the longest. There's there's other brands out there now, but like, uh,
so you this is a slide in camper. It bolts

(29:37):
to the four anchor points in the back of your
bed and you usually have a tailgate that comes off
and the camper has a door built into it, so
you open the door, crawl into the back, and you
lift the lid. So there's four latches on the outside
that allow you to just unhook those and then you
you go to the back and you push up the

(29:58):
rear and then you go towards the bed and you
push up the front of it, and it makes a
taller camper. It raises the whole roof. That's where you
get a lot more room out of them, usually over
the type over the cab because the camper sticks over
the cab that's where your bed's at. So it makes
room by putting the bed extending over the roof of

(30:19):
the truck, and then you have the whole back of
the bed to turn into couch and dining space, a sink,
a fridge, a heater, sometimes a bathroom in some sitting areas,
and they're extremely comfortable like I have friends right now
that are touring the world there in Scotland and they

(30:39):
don't know when they'll be back. They're planning on years
of planning of driving around the world in the back
of one of those, so they're extremely livable. So that's
like this the drop in slide in system. Right there's
the cap kind of like the go Fast or the
Allu cab havebing canopy camper type of solution where it

(31:04):
bolts to the top of the bed of the truck
and like a topper wood but then the roof wedges
up makes like a triangle up on top the back
of it. You just stand on your bumper, unlatch the
back latches and push it up and that sets your
tent up and then inside when you crawl inside, the

(31:26):
bed is usually on a hydraulic system, so you can
push up the bed out of the way and stand
in the back of the bed without the bed being flat,
and that gives you that whole access underneath. So we
have for example the one in Africa right now on
our new tundra. It has a refrigerator in there. It

(31:47):
has a drawer system from Goose Gear that allows us
to organize our pots and pans and plates. It has
a battery system in there, It has a wabasto heater
system wrap around seating. There's store where we put a
bunch of power units in there so we can charge
cameras and laptops and all kinds of stuff. And you
can sit there with the bed up and have tons

(32:07):
of room. And then when it's time for bed, you
pull your bed down, the bed platform down and throw
your sleeping bag out and you sleep up on top.
Because that tent now it's like sleeping in the rooftop tent.
You just have access to hop down into the cab,
so you're living in the in the truck. There are Yeah,

(32:29):
it sounds awesome.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Now, you didn't sell me on the rooftop tent, but
you sold me on this deal.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
And that's where I'm at. Yeah, rooftop tent a bunch
more accessible cost wise, and most people have the ability
to put a rooftop tent on their truck right now
without too much of a modification. But if you're really
looking at like especially your audience and things I like
to do too, like hunting and spending time fishing and

(32:58):
all that, and you want a place to retrieve, get
out of the bugs, and have a place to wait
out that storm or whatnot. This system is it. And
by the time you buy a topper and then a
roof rack and then a rooftop tent and you get
all that going there, you're not that far off from

(33:19):
being able to have a live in system if you
were to just pay for it that way. So that
there are more expensive, but they're a lot nicer, a
lot more functional.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Oh if I put I just looked up just very
quickly the four wheel campers dot com and if I
put one of their mid range models onto my truck,
my truck would triple in value. Yeah, yeah, that's no joke.
They're expensive, but it's you know, it's about what you

(33:51):
want to do, right and if you want to be
have that you know, place to Like you're saying, retreat
and I always say, as far as as far as
hunting goes, the more comfortable you can be, the longer
you're going to stay out, the harder you're gonna hunt,
you know, the more days you're going to add to
your hunt before you you know, throw the cards in
and try to decide to retreat. And as soon as

(34:12):
you retreat whether it's an hour drive to your house
or or half a day, you're taking time away from
being in the field, and it's probably gonna affect your success.

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, and that's just it. You know, there's we we
run into this a lot. Well, you're just not roughing
it anymore, or yeah, you're getting really soft. You know.
It's like, yeah, I guess I am, but uh, the
activity that I am intending to do has nothing to
you know. I want to thrive, not survive on this aspect.
I want to spend, especially in the overland world, and

(34:44):
I think it relates to the hunting world because it
has for me personally being able to spend really good
time out there and just like you're saying, and be
ready to rock and roll and hunt harder and do
the thing that you've put so much time and energy
to be able to go do and do it well
and sleep well, eat well. It just enriches the experience

(35:07):
so much more. Now, there's nothing wrong with roughing it.
I like roughing it. It has its place, right. There's
times where you're like, no, I want to go have
that type of an adventure. Awesome, But there's times when
you don't.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yeah, I've tried to tell people a lot too that
like if they're coming out and there are you know,
coming from back east out west, a lot of people
want to backpack hunt. That's great. One thing on backpack
hunting now is it if you're on a budget, it's
it takes a lot just to get into the camping
gear to go backpacking, and you're not even talking about

(35:45):
the hunting gear side of things. So I think a
good way to save a lot of a lot of
money if you're on a tight budget is just skip
that and just walk in and out every day, and
you can even go a step further and like a
lot of times for your vehicle camping type stuff. I mean,
you can go crazy with people that make really cool

(36:06):
things and they're really you know, pretty pricey, but for
the most part, like bulk isn't really an issue. Weight's
not an issue in your vehicle, and you can find
mattresses and stuff for pretty like cheap, pretty cost effective
and just live out of the back of your pickup
and like hunt from there. And that's I think that's
a good way people should think about that a little

(36:27):
more often.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
The range is incredible, So I would also say that
a lot of the time. If you do invest, you
can invest into the backpacking stuff and it applies towards
the car camping, so you can use them both ways.
So the kind of the buy once cry once get
into the things that allow you to spend the money

(36:48):
on the things that allow you to do the most
amount of stuff, So so you're not rebuying a bunch
of stuff. Yeah, you can go from just the simple
foam pad for your sleeping system in the back of
your truck that you'll use on the hunt as well,
possibly on an ultra light hunt, and you can go

(37:09):
all the way to owning an earth roamer, which is
a million dollar overland vehicle with granite countertops in there.
It's there's everything in between, you know.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah, we're not going to get into earth roamers, although
they are. I've seen one. I pulled up to a
trailhead last summer and it was I only saw the outside,
but it was impressive and I was I was guessing
how much it costs. I didn't quite reach the million
dollar mark, but now I'm glad I know how much
an earth roamer runs.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, well their top ends are a million. But yeah, anyway,
what about just really quickly. While I was showing shelters,
I see a lot of people. You don't have to
be an Overlander to have one of these. Seth used
to have one on his FJ.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
But a just like an like a rolled up awning,
this kind of on the side of your you know
rack that you can just pull out. What are people
using that more mostly for? Do you recommend them? Do
you do you find a use for them?

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah? Awnings are great, so yeah. It gives you the
ability to make shade or cover from sun or rain,
and they're probably one of the cheapest and simplest things
that you can mount to a vehicle that provides you
a significant level of creature comfort. A lot of these
even have like bug nets that drop around them so

(38:33):
you can sit and eat out of the bugs. A
lot of them have dropped down rooms that you can
attach to them, so if you want to sleep just
out of one of off of an awning, those are there.
They're a necessity for all of our trucks. We don't
not every single one of our trucks in a convoy
has them, but we of the three two of them

(38:56):
have them. And there's a wide range of awnings out
there for vehicles. Now there's the simple ones that just
unfold by hand and you set them up. Make sure
you always stake them. By the way, I've damaged so
many awnings over the years. There they're a parachute and
it just takes a you know, a puff of wind
from you know, down the canyon to fold it over

(39:17):
the top of your truck and you're replacing it. So
make sure you always stake any of these down. But
they go from a wide range of sizes, like just
a like a four foot or off the back that
goes over the top of your tailgate and extends back
to My favorite right now is the easy On two
seventy awning. It goes what called seventy degrees now it's

(39:41):
the easy On to seventy two hundred seventy degrees. So
it sits on the side of a truck and when
you unfold it, it has the arms that come out and
extends shade off the side of the truck all the
way back over the tailgate. So wow, fantastic. So yeah,
if it's hot, hey, like here in Montana in the summer,

(40:02):
it's hot, and if you're hanging out, that's where you're
gonna be sitting. You don't want to sit in the truck.
There's just not enough air movement. You can sit out
and picnic and make your meals, prep your rifles, prep
your packs and all of that in the shade, and
then if the weather gets bad, you're covered and you
have a lot more working space. And when you don't

(40:24):
need it, it all packs up, rolls away, zips up into
a bag that sits on the side of your roof rack.
They're pretty handy.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, I've been thinking about one for a long time,
mostly for napping. I feel like you come back for
the morning hunt and then it's just like you know
it's going to be hot for four or six hours,
and there's nothing worse than just sort of the whole
group is crawling slowly around the truck, chasing the shade
and trying to nap and awning.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
It would be a much better way to go about that. Yeah,
no more if you get an aunting like that, no more.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Do you have a mattresses that you really like to use?

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, so let's see the brands that we like. The
air mattresses that are great, Big, Agnes, Nemo, They're all
in the backpacking hunting worlds. As well. When it comes
to like a replacement mattress for a rooftop tent, there's
one that really stands out and it's Hest h e

(41:28):
st and they are not cheap, but they are fantastic.
So all of our trucks run Hest mattresses and they're
game changers because you sleep so well. Like I look
forward to sleeping in a rooftop tent with a Hest
mattress in it. And yeah, we're not sponsored by them.

(41:50):
They've given us a couple of them, but you know,
we don't make any money off that or anything. I'm
just telling you they're they did something right. It's magic. Okay,
So yeah, I'm gonna check that out. I mentioned it
before on this show, but for I just got into
the last couple of years. The Nemo Roamer, Yeah, which
I call a car camping mattress. Those things are pretty

(42:12):
dang nice. They're nice.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Doesn't sound like they're as good as a HESS, but
I'm guessing a HEST takes up a little bit more
room too, right.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Yeah, it's a full foam pad, you know, like a
mattress pad that you would have a kind of your house.
Sure it doesn't collapse. It's designed to stay in the
truck or the roof top ten at all times.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, Okay, what do you think, Jordan, Should we move
on to the organization right now or should we get
into cooking and then kind of finish with the whole
organization of everything.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
I think let's finish with the organization.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
So let's jump over to cooking. Where do you want
to start with with cooking and eating clay?

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Well, when you're when you're thinking of car camping or
using a galley system in a vehicle, you can think
of it like your kitchen at home. You need a
three point kitchen, good work surface that could be your
tailgate or a portable table that you bring with you.

(43:20):
You need your fridge and your sink, so prep fridge
and sink and that if you can. And then your
cooking surface usually is right there next to your prep surface.
If you can build a three point kitchen, you'll thrive
in the back country or on the trailhead so to

(43:42):
speak here because backcountry means when we're talking to hunters
and stuff that it means something different. So like at
the trailheads, when you're back in there wherever you are remotely,
if you have that, you're going to be able to
cook anything that you would really at home outside of
the oven. And even for that, there's shovens and techniques
to make whatever you want. So yeah, stoves, A fridge

(44:08):
or cooler is the cheapest version, obviously all of us
have used those from the dawn of time. Uh. And
then a table, good table. If you have that, the
world's your oyster. Start prepping like a stove. So the
stoves I see here? Is there always propane or what?
You know? How do we think about stoves?

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (44:30):
My favorite stove is the cook Partner stove. They're out
of Idaho and they were built for river rafters for
years and to take the river guide scene and have
a robust stove that would hold up to the punishment
of river guides there. Their stoves are fantastic. Ah, the

(44:52):
primo stoves with the pro propane primos, even the coalman's
are great. Like there's especially in the propane world, it's
definitely the simplest. If you're doing a lot of winter
or really cold camping, propane is not usually your friend
in the in the deep cold, you need to kind

(45:13):
of take care of your propane bottles. So that's when
you get back into white gas, and a lot of
hunters and backpackers will know, like the MSR stoves, the
you know, anything that takes a white gas pressurized cylinder
there they perform in the cold, but they're a lot
more volatile, you got, you know, it's just they're not

(45:34):
hard to use. You just got to know what you're doing.
You know.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Well, before canisters got real popular whatever that was ten
years ago, a little bit more now, uh, you know,
it seemed like everybody had a white gas stove and
that's just what I don't know, that's what I learned
to you know, cook on in the back country was
a white gas stove. And yeah, you gotta you know,
there's the big flame up right that happens when you're

(45:58):
always uh uh you know, putting too much gas in
there too. What's the term when you're when you put
the gas into.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
You're like pumping it up.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
You prime it, don't you Yeah, when you're when you're
priming it.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
But yeah, eventually, and the nice thing about the white
gas thoves is compared to a lot of the canister
ones is that you can actually regulate the flame and
the heat a little bit better.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yeah, and they last a lot longer.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
The the white gas stuff is really really efficient, you know,
versus and then what with a canister. Once you burn
up a canister in the back country, you know, you're
packing around an empty canister and you've got to have
two or three of them, whereas like a good bottle
of white gas will last you a week, you know.
But uh uh, they have their they definitely have their drawbacks.

(46:52):
We were in we were on a big Greenland expedition.
We were crossing from the southern side of Greenland over
the ice cap to the northern side of Greenland in
trucks called Arctic trucks, and we had a big tent
set up with a white gas stove in it, and
we had a we had a stove fire in the
middle of the ice Greenland ice sheet with with our

(47:13):
inside our only big tent, you know, through a fire
blanket on it and everything like. Yeah. So you know,
white gay it's the only thing that would burn at
twenty below when you're doing that stuff. But they have
their they have their drawbacks. So I prefer propaine or
the canister, the jet boil like jet boils or that
type of stove. We have one and all of our

(47:35):
kits always have one because it's still the best for
making quick water, hot water for coffees, teas, or you know,
whatever you need hot water for. That's that's like still
the most efficient and most convenient stove. But once you
get into cooking for the family or for a few
guys or out in camp, then a two burner is

(47:57):
what you want. They make three and four burners, but man,
we cook for nine people with two burner stoves all
the time. I will mention there's one more stove out
there that's gained popularity in the overland world, and it's
called a Scottle. Have you heard of a scottle before? No?

(48:17):
How do you spell that? So sko t t l
e is Scottle And so this is a South African
stove system. They're big into their Brie, right, It's called
the Brie in South Africa. They take a harrow disc
from a tractor that to turn the dirt up, and
they flip it on flat and make like a walk

(48:40):
out of it like a like a and then they
put a stove underneath it that looks like a jet
boil and they heat it and you can cook for
a lot of people it's great for breakfast, great for
so we're using that more and more because of how
many people you can feed at once off of a
scott and they're just super easy to clean. It's away

(49:02):
from everything. Everybody gets to stand around it when you're cooking.
It's fun to eat off of when you're you know,
prepping dinner, and it's kind of gathering place when you're
using one. They're they're pretty cool too.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
But but the heat source is just any any canister stove.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
Yeah, like a propane bottle.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
It's like a propane bottle. On the bottom, it's like
a jet boil. Think of a jet boil that's hung
under a harrow disc from a tractor and uh, it
heats it right, and so right in the middle, at
the bottom of the of the disk is the hottest
and then as you move food away from it, you know,
to the edges, it cools off. So you can like, ooh,

(49:41):
that's getting a little too done. You can push it
off to the edge and they're very.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Okay, so cool. So it's not quite the bowl that
a walk is. It's a little shallower so that if
you move stuff to the sides, it'll stay there.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
You're not like flipping this thing. No, uhuh got it?
Huh yeah? How much is it weigh? Cool?

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Man? Maybe less than ten pounds? They're not you know,
you get you get a tripod leg system that stands
under it, so you got a few legs and it's
great for groups.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
We've been in the trailer. We've been using the it's
like the pit boss flat. It's like a griddle basically,
it's a two burner griddle that runs off propane that
just sits right on the like a tabletop, and that
thing is yeah, that works, that works super good. And
I was gonna say real quick too. Jet Boil came
out a couple of years ago with the propane stove.

(50:38):
They call it the Genesis, okay, and it runs off
of it runs off of propane and it's like two
just basic burners you can think of, and they fold
together when you're, uh, when you're not using them, packing
them away, so they fold down smaller than like a
flat regular two burner, like a Coleman type.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Gotcha. Yeah, that's cool. Jet Oil is great brand. If
you haven't looked into them, they make good stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, but man, I gotta say I just their standard
like original jet boil. I feel like if you run
that thing next to the MSR reactor. Are you familiar
with that stove?

Speaker 2 (51:20):
I think I've been around one of them. Yeah, yeah,
I bet.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
I would say that it boils water in a third
of the time. Wow, I'm not joking. And especially I
don't know if it has something to do with, like
you said, the mix in the canisters, and maybe there's
more propane. I don't know if there's a I don't
exactly know what's it's iso buttane, right is usually what's
it's in the canister. But somehow it seems like those

(51:49):
jet boils, at least the versions that we used to
use a lot on meat eater trips, they would just
fail miserably as the colder it got. I mean, we
you'd sit around trying to make coffee for a group
of six and you'd be like, you know what, guys,
we gotta go hunting. We just don't have enough time
to you know, boil water for more people. Where I
feel like those MSR reactors, I mean, you crank them,

(52:11):
you don't even have time to go take a pee
and come back and the water's boiling over.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Oh I'm gonna check into that. I would for sure.
I was gonna say, isn't it funny that how we're
in twenty twenty three, at the modern era of time
and we're still like obsessing over boiling water. Yeah, from
the dawn of time, all of these things cooking and

(52:36):
all of it's been amazing, like and we're still refining
all of this stuff. It's amazing what's out there now.
But it's still at the top of mind for us
as adventurers out there. How do we cook and make water? Yeah,
pretty much. And I mean there's a gazillion ways to
do it. There's lighter ways to do it. I mean
there's I think Jordan and I were talking about it recently.
There's the like an alcohol stove, right, I don't know

(52:57):
if that there There isn't a lighter But again, you
better have time on your hands if you're going to
sit around waiting for those alcohol stoves to boil water. Yeah, yep,
you're gonna sit back and relax for a while and
wait for that thing to do its job. Yeah. You
can't age a little bit too.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
Yeah, you can't just like get up and be like, oh,
we're gonna we need to get out of camp in
twenty minutes, so we can be on the glass and
to it in time for first light and then hope
you're gonna make coffee and water for oatmeal. It's just
it ain't gonna happen, you know. Nope, nope, all right,
let's get into just like I want to hear your
take a little bit on food because it sounds like
you're packing for that for this Africa trip.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
I had no clue that you could actually pack for
that many people just in three rigs. You said eight people,
three rigs, right, yep? Ten days, ten ten, ten days?
And that's is that between frigerator, refrigerators and coolers or
how are you storing that much fresh food?

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Sure? So we only run with refrigerators refrigerators in a vehicle.
Of course, they take their own power supply. There's logistics
behind running refrigerators and trucks that are very well documented.
It's very easy to do, but it is a thing.
You got to have backup battery, backups and the ability

(54:18):
to charge them like solar and things like that that
kind of come into play. If you're parked for a
long time, if you're driving every day, your batteries are
getting charged by your alternator, and you're topping off your
house batteries and just like a camper and you park
for the night and it runs off that stuff and
by tomorrow you're charging again. But let's just talk the
actual function for a second. So refrigerators are very efficient

(54:44):
with space because they don't require ice. So a lot
of times the weight of a refrigerator fully loaded, you'll
actually have a lot more food in a refrigerator compared
to a cooler that you have to fill with ice
and then put your food in, and then the thick
walls to keep that ice, you know, from melting, keeping

(55:09):
it as efficient as possible. Now, a refrigerator just runs
a compressor and keeps things at temperature. So that because
we run refrigerators, we want to we run a wide
range of sizes from fifty five court up to I
think we have a seventy court in one of our
trucks right now. You can put a whole lot of

(55:30):
food in those guys. Okay, So yeah, so one we're running.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
If you're having a hard time imagining how big a
seventy cort refrigerator is, just think about a sixty five
yetti up on its tall end side right lengthwise standing there.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
And now put all the food in it without any
of the ice. Right, that's a lot more Food's a lot. Yeah,
it turns into like having to pack I would say
meatball math, I'd say it's half half of the space
is taken by ice. If you run deep dried ice
or whatever, yeah, you can might maybe get that down,
but probably half of that volume is ice. So we're running.

(56:11):
Think how many coolers of space we're running in just
those three fridges. It would be like running six coolers
right at the same.

Speaker 3 (56:21):
Well, what's your go to for food? Like if you
can go into a store, Like, what do you guys
like to default to?

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Ah Man? So we we debate this all the time.
So the one the things we seem to always cook are,
let's see, grilled cheese sandwiches. For some reason, we're always
making that. Uh, Tacos are a fan favorite. Spaghetti is
a is a favorite of all of ours. But we're

(56:48):
making all kinds of stuff now between these things because
we have the we have the ability with these fridge
freezers to have frozen food we can and that helps
us in our ten days time. We're not keeping some
of those meats and produce non frozen for that long

(57:08):
where we have one of ours that is dedicated as
a freezer, so we have ice and ice cream and
all kinds of stuff if we want. Five days, six
days into our trip in Central America, we drove all
we went from Baja all the way down to Panama
and all the way back and never got into this
one ice compartment and we had packed a pint of
ice cream been and Jerry's. It was the saddest thing

(57:30):
ever because we didn't eat it at the bottom. When
we got to the Darien Gap. We hauled it all
the way home and ended up giving it to like
the Holiday Inn receptionist because we're flying out the next day.
We packed this thing this whole time. This you know,
so we can keep ice cream good for months in
these systems, so we can we can cat pack all

(57:52):
kinds of stuff. Wow, So I want.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
To dive off real quick. You touched on. You've got
to have a good power source keep those fridges going.
Can you give a rundown of what that is, what
that looks like?

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Sure? So these refrigerators run off of twelvel just like
your dome light or yeah, anything in your truck, your
twelvel cigarette lighter sockets. They need a heavier gauge wire
because they're pulling more ampriage than those things. But it
runs off. The simplest way to explain it is that

(58:29):
you have a power line and a ground line that
run off your battery and to where your fridge is
plugged into, and then you tap into the fridge through
that and then it's fused obviously for safety near the battery.
But that refrigerator runs off the capacity of that battery.

(58:52):
So if it's a start battery, you got to be
careful because if you run your refrigerator too long, it
could deplay the ability to start your vehicle. That's why
a lot of US Overlanders carry secondary house batteries or
a dual battery system.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
So let me, I'm kind of surprised you don't do
like a goal zero or something like that.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
So the goal zeros are a good way to go
as well, especially if you don't have a full time build.
If you're kind of using your truck as a daily
driver and you want this ability to power a refrigerator
for the weekend and then the rest of the week
you need to do something else with it. Goal zero
systems are great for that. You still probably need to

(59:39):
think about how you can charge it in the field,
especially if you're not able to charge it off the truck,
so that's when solar kind of kicks in or whatnot.
But almost all those systems on the goal zero side,
you can plug them into your truck and charge them
while you're driving, and that's a good simple way to start.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
Yeah, So the extra batteries that you guys carry or
you'll still have a standard car battery like we all do.
That that doesn't change. Or do you have a different, better,
more expensive battery in in the you know, in the
engine compartment and then as well you have something else
just so you have more I guess, more power stacked up.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Yeah, the answer is we use all kinds of systems
like that, different I guess both. So sometimes, uh, for example,
we have a third Gen four runner out here that
only has a start battery. We put a better, deeper
cell battery into it. Think of a battery like a well.
So depending on the battery, you how much water is

(01:00:43):
in the well. You know, you put a bigger battery
in there, you can deplete the power more before it
won't start the car, so you need a bigger battery
and it'll hang on longer. Sometimes we'll do that with
the start battery, but then we'll supplement its power by
putting a solar panel on the roof that charges that
when we're not running the truck, and that's managed by

(01:01:07):
different power systems like look into red ARC systems on
how to do all that. That is hands down the
best systems out there that allows the vehicle or the charger.
It's called a battery charger controller that will manage. Okay, oh,
I have solar power coming in, I can charge that

(01:01:27):
start battery while it's sitting here. Oh, now I have
alternator power coming in. I can charge that start battery
off the alternator because that's the better source right now,
and that keeps those batteries, those start batteries topped off
and that therefore I can run a refrigerator pretty much
all the time. I have one running out here continuously

(01:01:48):
through the summer, and it only has one battery because
it has a good solar panel, and when it's out
there sitting the solar panels just running the fridge essentially. Now,
if I want in our other trucks. We run a
lot more robust power systems because we're doing a lot
more with them. We're running in one of our trucks,
we're running two refrigerators, and in the other truck we're

(01:02:08):
charging all of our camera gear for our production to
make our show. That's drone batteries and cameras and go
pros and all kinds of stuff. We do not rely
on the start battery for that. We just keep the
start battery for that it's original function, and then we
put in secondary house batteries in the back of the

(01:02:28):
truck to run everything else. Got it. That's its own
podcast in itself at some point because it is so
you can get really into the weeds on how to
do that, but ultimately you need just need. The takeaway
is you need power to run a refrigerator, and you
need to be able to supplement the power or charge

(01:02:52):
it in some way. So how you decide to do
that is up to you. And like your habits, what
you're trips look like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Would you ever, because I know some fellas that I
used to guide elk hunting, and they would drive out
from the Midwest or even as far as Pennsylvania all
the way that to Colorado, and they would actually have
a trailer, sometimes in clothes, sometimes open, and they would
just have their regular old, you know, three or four
hundred dollars deep freeze and they would running off a

(01:03:24):
generator and basically they would just when it was time
to go home, stack all their elk meat in there,
you know, turn on the generator, get that thing frozen.
And it doesn't have to stay on because obviously you could.
You can have an insulative freezer and turn it off
and even on a hot day in September, it can
probably make it i don't know, ten twelve hours, and
then they would just start it back the generator back

(01:03:46):
up again and then and cool it back off. Is
that Do you guys ever run generators like that for power?

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
We used to run generators back in the day, but now,
I mean, we haven't run generators since like twenty seven
teen or something like that, because the power systems got
so efficient with solar and the batteries got so good,
especially once lithium came on the on the on the scene,
that we haven't needed generators now. It is probably one

(01:04:16):
of your cheapest, most versatile ways of keeping power to
your systems. You're a thousand bucks into a generator and
the gas to keep them running, and and but then
you have all the trade offs. You got to carry fuel,
you got to monitor them, and then obviously the noise.
It's just it's another thing. It's another engine that you

(01:04:37):
need to maintain. But there's nothing wrong with it. It
works great.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
It's just probably it's it's heavy, it takes up more room.
I'm guessing then some of these solar systems, right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Yep, yep. And it's certainly more cost effective to run
generators once you get into solar lithium batteries, the battery
management controllers, it's not a cheap endeavor. That's where it's
really built towards full time overland vehicles, because you're using
them in that function or in that capacity all the time.

(01:05:10):
It pays off. But there are simpler systs like the
Goal zero systems. You know, you get to camp, you
got your Goal zero battery bank in the back, and
then it has a solar panel that you walk out
into the yard and you put it down on the
ground and plug it into that. There are now very
good solutions on the cheaper end that would allow you

(01:05:31):
to not have to use a generator.

Speaker 4 (01:05:34):
Is there.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Let's just say for the guy's trying to do this
on the cheap. But you got me really interested in
going fridge versus cooler, And I'm thinking, man, there's a
lot of applications for this. I like the idea that
I don't have to keep the ice in there, so
I can probably because now a lot of times I
go camping with my family, I'm running minimum two coolers,

(01:05:55):
maybe three, you know, because I'll have a cooler just
full of beer and drinks, so it takes up a
lot of space, it's heavy. So you got me interested
in the fridge thing. Like, what would be the absolute
like cheapest way for the guy that's like, yeah, I'm
gonna do three to four camping trips, plus I got
a one or two hunting trips that I could see
myself using this on. What's the way to like get

(01:06:18):
out there and have a fridge kind of system going,
even if I had to take generator or it'd be bigger, heavier, whatever,
What's like the cheapest way to enter into fridge world?

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Yeah, I would say your Goal zero or equivalent. There's
other companies out there too, It's not just Goal zero.
There's Jackerie, there's a few others. Do your research on
what power bank box that you would want start there,
have a solar option to charge it, and then your
fridge is going to be I mean, there's a wide

(01:06:51):
range of We love National Lunas there out of South Africa.
They are probably the best bank for the buck. Dometic
makes a good fridge. Arbi off Road makes a good fridge.
There's a bunch out there and that those will all
plug into that twelvel battery bank from whoever you buy from.
That is the best way to go. If you're going

(01:07:14):
to use it constantly out of your one truck, then
getting into a fixed system where the fridge lives there
all the time would be your next step. And if
you know that that's just the way you want to
use it, then maybe you go right off to a
secondary battery or an upgraded battery in your vehicle with

(01:07:35):
a solar panel that's connected to your truck full time.
That will run your fridge in the vehicle full time.
The beauty of the Jackery and the Goal zero system
is you could build a base camp essentially that doesn't
rely on the vehicle being there because the power source
and the sun, and the fridge can live anywhere outside

(01:07:56):
of the vehicle. It's its own system. So there's advantages
to that. Are there?

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
Then fridges that don't have to be attached inside your truck.
You can just kind of treat it almost like a cooler,
just in and out of the bed. Yeah, all of
them would function that way. Oh yeah, when you start
mounting them in the truck, you're looking at how to
try to keep like all of ours are mounted permanently

(01:08:25):
in our vehicles, but they're they're put on crazy systems.
They're on what we call fridge slides. So it's a
drawer system that slides that fridge out from the back
of your truck over the top of the tailgate or
wherever you're using it, so it's easy to reach into.
We have fridge stove slides so that the fridge slides

(01:08:45):
out and then underneath that the stove slides out and
you're cooking and have your refrigerator all right there, and
then when you're done, it all just folds and goes
right back into the truck like a drawer system. They're insane.
It's oh so nwee, I got it. When you come
back I gotta come visit you just so I can
see one of these things anytime. We got all kinds

(01:09:06):
of them. So, yeah, we are getting into mounting those
fridges because that's the that's where we've decided we're going
to use that tool all the time, and so we
make it even better for us by permanently mounting it.
Those same fridges can be used sitting inside of a
tent or a wall tint with a jackery and a

(01:09:27):
solar panel outside. It would still function the same. Oh man,
you got me intrigued on the fridge deal. Probably I'm
probably gonna be intrigued until I see the price tag. Okay, well,
without going into price, but one last question on the
fridge is do they have one big enough that you
could get elt quarter into?

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Yes? Okay, wow, I think uh National Luna does they
have one that is just humongous? You would have to
bone it to some degree. Okay, but but yeah, I
would fit in there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
I think in that situation, if you're really you know,
off off the grid that far and you're like, you
have to get your meat cool, I usually don't like
to dbone by me, I think in that scenario, so
you could keep stay out there and keep hunting for
the other people in the party that I'd gladly debone
it and just stick it into that thing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
That's slick, man. Yeah, there's there's some pretty cool applications
towards the hunting lifestyle with a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
All right, we're saving an organization to last. Uh touch
on lighting real quick, any anything like specific you like?
That's that something that you use maybe that most people
like don't know about, like a special lantern or I
don't know, like we're I'm using some kind of some
form of LED rechargeable lantern these days? Is that the

(01:10:50):
program you're onto?

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Yeah, that's still the easiest point of entry into good
lighting is the twelve old USB rechargeable stuff. It's man,
it's got and so good, you know, over the last
five years. Beyond that, you get into fixed lighting that
you would tap into your vehicle's electrical system that allows
you to have long term running lights that are often

(01:11:14):
much brighter. So we use like National Luna touch lights
a lot. We use rigid lights. They have some smaller
what they call their pod lights that we can put
in certain locations. They're usually really bright and you can
get them diffused or spot or whatever. There's all kinds
of choices and even in different colors. But the National

(01:11:34):
Luna I ought to look it up what it is,
but it's just a touchpad switch and you can turn
them to red or white and with three or four
different dim settings and you can put that. Our goal
is to always be able to operate our galley systems
in our camp sites without a headlamp. We still use headlamps,
but that's the idea. And there's a time when that's

(01:11:57):
appropriate and when that's not appropriate. When you're around a
lot of the campers, you don't want to look like
the lunar lander, you know, there with everything lit up
and annoying everybody. There's a time and place for courtesy,
you know, where you just use your head lamp and
you know, yeah, you know, crowding other people with your light.
Let them have their experience.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Yeah, you still want to be able to see the stars, right,
you like to place up too much? The stars get
kind of dim.

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
Yeah. One of my favorite little UH lanterns was the
UH the snow Peak lanterns. They even have some of
them even have like a candle flicker function. Oh yeah, yeah, romanic, romantic. Yeah,
you and the boys out there with the flickering snowpeak lantern.
But you know, it can create a good ambiance, you know,

(01:12:44):
when you're looking for that type of experience. It just good.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Depends on what you're going for. It's all out there, okay,
last but not least organization and in there too. Jordan
wrote down water can containers. That's that's a good thing
to cover off on. Let's just do that too right
now at jordan souse. That's kind of that's related to

(01:13:07):
food and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Yeah, water is a it's a thing, you know, So
it's tricky. Yeah, so we like the you know, the
go to is the the the scepter Jerry cans, and
that's what the military. It's a staple inside the military.

(01:13:33):
You know. They're five gallons, they're really tough. They've made
their food grade plastic and they work great. You can
buy the cheaper stuff at like Walmart and things like
collapsible bins and all that. They typically fall apart at
the worst time and leave you stranded. So water is
such an essential part to a good camping experience that

(01:13:57):
I would say, don't go cheap, don't go down the
cheapest route, because it'll just leave you frustrated because the
plastics are bad and they break easily, and then that'll
that'll make you have to go home. You know. Another
great one out there right now is Domatic. Just came
out with their to see what it's called, but it's

(01:14:19):
a it's a jerry can of sorts that they hook
up a USB twelve OL pump two that you turn
on and off with your finger touch so sensitive to
your finger like your phone is, and you can turn
on the pump, turn off the pump, and it charges
by USB. Awesome. They're really awesome. If you're looking for

(01:14:40):
water filtration. At the same time, there is life Saver
jerry cans that are really cool. They you can put
in water that you need to filter and then as
you use it out of the jerry can, it filters
it in place. So if you use one of those,

(01:15:01):
just heads up you need to keep the filter wet
at all times and never let them freeze because you know,
just like any water filtration, don't let it freeze. It
breaks the filters and it's not doing its job anymore.
So and then that one you don't want it to
go dry, so you need to keep a little bit
of water in that once you start using them, they
need to stay wet all the time to keep that

(01:15:22):
filter happy so they they get there really cool too.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
And I'm guessing that yours in your overland rigs, the
water the jerry can's probably attached somehow, or there's a slide,
and it's probably in a position where you can just
open a valve and have water coming out right like.
You're not taking jerry can out sticking it on a
stump like I do in my camp.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Sometimes we are like CBI off road makes the jerry
can holder that sits on the back and until the
front runner. There's another cool jerry can. There's a front
runner jerry that has a spiket on the bottom of it,
and it can sit inside of a carrier and then
you know, it's like the gut pot if you recall those,

(01:16:07):
you know you can just go up to it and
fill it up right off the carrier right there. You
never have to move it, which is as we get
into our storage and organization, if you never have to
move anything to use something, then it's been done right.
And water is one of those things. It's always moving
it to where you need it. Our more advanced systems

(01:16:32):
are twelve olt pump systems that store the big tanks
underneath trucks and we put the spicket right where we
need it all the time, and then it's just done.
You know. But these are built into full time overland
vehicles typically designed for that function.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
So again for just for our listeners, you know you're
going out hunting for the weekend or camping for the weekend,
just Jerry can't slid into the back of the truck
and then just slide it out and place it somewhere
on a stump? Is that Is that still the best method?

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
Still? That's definitely the most resilient. It's the toughest. It's
it's a dumb system and it just works. Sure to
start going past that, you're getting into systems that kind
of that sometimes get complicated to make it work. It's
just funny how it's like a you know, plumbing is

(01:17:34):
a thing even in cars.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
Sure, sure, how uh, how do you calculate how much
water you need to carry?

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
Uh experience? I suppose to some degree depends on the
time of year, Like in the winter, we go through
a lot less water in the in the cooler months.
In the summer months, obviously we're drinking a lot more.
But then the dishes scenario, if you're using this water
for dishes, you're just adding half a gallon of water

(01:18:20):
per person per day for dishes, just to help understand
how much you should have for that. And then that,
I mean, that's got a lot of conservation built into it.
That's probably twenty percent over what you actually need. But
then you're not left without water, which is like we
said earlier, that's something that will cause you to go home.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
Oh yeah, one hundred. So I mean, do you I mean,
but do you have like a rough number in your
head where you're like, oh, me and the family are
going out for the weekend summertime camping in Montana? Five
gallons is gonna do it? Or is it like a
like a number per day? You're like a gallon per
day per person. If it's just me over the weekend,

(01:19:05):
a five gallon, Jerry, I can I can rock that
all the time?

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Oh yeah, especially if I take like a paper plate
or two, you know, to manage dishes. If it's my
family of five, twenty gallons over the weekend is more
than enough. I could even get by it. But that's
enough to like do a good heavy round of dishes

(01:19:30):
and make sure everybody's watered really well. You know, what
is the standard? Don't they say every person should be
drinking at least a gallon of water per day or
something like that. Anyway, So yeah, there's gonna be people
out there that says, well, you gotta at least drink
at least one gallon of water per day. I have
not done that in the last thirty years. So that's

(01:19:50):
not me. I hope that's you, but that's not me.
That's just not realistic for me. In real life application, it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Takes a lot of focus to put down a gallon
of water, even in a day of high exertion, like
even a full day of hunting down to dusk, if
you put down four quarts of water, I'm impressed.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
Yeah, me too. That's like you're paying attention to that. Yep. Yeah,
so water. The next thing is be able to get
more water while you're out there, so then you can
get into filtration systems. We have robust twelve ol systems
that filter water at like three gallons a minute, you know,

(01:20:37):
because you can get into because probably most of the
hunting world is using life straws to like MSR pump
systems or Catadine pump systems. Those weren't great for individuals
in the field, but when you start talking about you know,
I have a fifteen gallon water tank, Restalking that off
your pump isn't very practical. So so guzzle H two

(01:21:01):
O is a great little twelve volte system that will
fill up bigger tanks. There's other ways that allow you
to filter off of pump twelve volte systems. Essentially that
gets you to back up and run in with your
water so they you can stay longer. Stuff that I

(01:21:23):
didn't even know existed.

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
Yeah, what about organizing, like trying especially? I think as
we dive into water, you come into like a volume
deal where it's just a lot of volume, a lot
to store, a lot of weight. How do you approach that?
Just your organization packing, Like for your Africa trip, your packing.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
Has to be dial it does, and our Africa trips,
the big expeditions, we actually take less and less stuff.
We have only the necessities. Just like a backcountry hunt
you really like, Yeah, you weigh every decision should I
have that even though we have really good trucks and
they can haul weight. We make sure that we're factoring

(01:22:09):
every ounce to pounds. What is it ounces equal pounds,
pounds equal pain. It's the same for a truck. It
just creates more wear and tear on a vehicle, or
it causes you to be stuck more often or consume
more fuel. So those principles apply to the vehicle world.
But yeah, all of a sudden, I forgot your question.

(01:22:30):
What was your question?

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
Oh, just organization with all this stuff, Yeah, how do
you go?

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
Uro? So organization is huge. This is where most people's
went any vehicle. Probably most of your frustration comes from
if you're moving stuff to get to stuff that you
need all the time, then it's organized wrong. So in
order to just like our homes and our garages, in

(01:22:55):
order to make them functional, you really have to think
through how they're set up up. So we use If
the basic system is tubs, just a tub system. There's
good and bad tubs out there. The rubber Maid tubs
are probably the go to standard. The heavy duty ones,
the what do they call the packouts or something like that, Yeah,

(01:23:20):
those are those are great, but they're not great on
utilization of space. We want we want really square uh,
packing cubes of sorts. Uh So, packing cubes in fabric
is what goes inside of a lot of our cases.
And then our cases that we love right now are
Alue boxes. We've used them for years. They're out of Denmark.

(01:23:46):
They're just illumin they're they're like that James Bond case,
that the chrome aluminum case, you know, but they're super lightweight,
they are thin, and they do the job great. In
the plastic version of that, there is the South African
Ammo can and it's several companies have branded them different,

(01:24:10):
but there's like the front Runner makes it. They call
them their wolf packs. It's just a stackable, square, lightweight
cube case that they're fantastic.

Speaker 3 (01:24:25):
And they're extra burly latches.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
Yeah, really good latches, and a lot of these are dustproof.
If you want to go crazy, you get into pelicans.
But Pelican cases are oftentimes or far too they're too
much of a case that you know, you're kind of
wasting money and time, and they're not actually that great
on space either. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
I was going to say they kind of fall into
that action pack or category of like you're just between
the handles and the buckles and the wheels. I feel
like it's you're going to have a lot of air.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
Yeah, and everything that they have to do to make
them crush proof and really strong and all the ribbing
and reinforcements, that's what. It just eats up space. So
that's why the then nash or the sorry, the alley
boxes have just been a game changer for us. So
that's loose storage. You can get into fixed storage well.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
Real quick before we leave the loose storage. Yeah, just
tell me, you know, very generally, how many of those
are in the back of the truck and sort of
what grouping of gear is in each one. I don't
even know the details of what's what's in each one,
but is it I don't know, is it a little
kitchen in one and then underwear and clothes and the

(01:25:41):
other one? But yeah, run me through what's in those?

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
Yeah. So how we do our systems are all of
our clothes and personal equipment is in soft luggage because
oftentimes it's up in the front of the cab or
lives with us, or goes into hotels or you know,
it's got to travel with you. So we use a
Duffel bag. We use Vertex double bags for everything that
we use when it comes to equipment for the trucks,

(01:26:06):
we have fixed organization and then mobile organization handheld stuff.
So that's where the allee boxes come in. That's the
portable We can take them in and out of the
truck and put them where we need them in camp.
And then we have fixed organization, which is literally bolted
to the vehicle inside the vehicle. So in the alley

(01:26:27):
boxes the portable stuff. We usually have a dry box.
That's where all of our dry food is stored. Your cereals,
your granolas, your bread, bread boxes, things, tortillas, stuff, stuff
that doesn't need to be refrigerated, can't be crushed and
needs to be moved a lot, So a lot of
times we have a breakfast box because that's kind of

(01:26:49):
its own unique group of foods. And then we have
general food in other storage boxes past that, and then
we always have a galley box that's that comes out
and goes to wherever the kitchen's at. That's where our
dinner plates are, cups in our things, that silverware, cutlery,

(01:27:10):
cutting boards, that all sits in its own a galley
box or two, just depends on the group size. And
then uh then we usually have long term storage stuff
like you might be putting some of your dehydrated reserve
food in in those places. What else? And then and

(01:27:32):
then anything that needs to be portable and not used
very often. We call that a deep six scenario, like
you can be pushed all the way back to the
bottom of something and hopefully you never have to get it,
but if you need it, you need it. That would
also be in that loose category. And then from there

(01:27:53):
we get into fixed fixed assets of organization, and.

Speaker 3 (01:28:02):
That's got to be tough, like fixed trying to put
something fixed space wise, and a small vehicle has got
to be tough to figure out where to put it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
Yeah, there's a lot of good companies out there that
are helping with this. A lot of the hunter world
and the shooting world might be familiar with, like truck Vault,
that sort of a drawer system that goes in the
back of an AICV bolts down to the back. There
are five or six different companies out there that build
systems like that. Goose Gear is probably the highest end

(01:28:34):
light weight organization system there out of California. They came
from building a lot of stuff for yachts and now
they incorporated it into vehicle builds, so it's lightweight organization
utilizing drawer systems. Let's see, then there's decked. Decked makes

(01:28:56):
a great system for the back of Tacomas and a
ton and all the probably the big bed manufacturers of
the OEMs forwards Dodge everybody. They got to make them
for everybody, and that puts two good drawers under the bed.
There raises your truck beds platform and then puts two

(01:29:17):
drawers underneath it, which is great because that way you
don't have to be reaching for something to get to something,
and the drawer slides out, you access it and put
it back. They're fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
Do you feel the one thing that's always getting me
on those? And I've mostly just seen people with the deck,
but when I see them, I feel like, for the
room I see in each drawer there's two of them,
I'm always thinking there's kind of be a lot of
again air that's under that deck that's not being utilized
by those drawers. And I know that they have those

(01:29:47):
little kind of corner compartments that I guess we would
fall under your sort of deep six category. But do
you feel like over in general, those are a efficient
use of space?

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
So there's a trade off here. There is there space
versus efficiency. If would you trade some of your space
to have things be always easily reached or accessed, and
that all of us would say, well, you add to
some degree, and so you're fine. What you're getting at

(01:30:21):
with the deck system there is that you're like, it's
kind of right on the line where it's not kind
of worth all that efficiency for the loss of space.
It's somewhere you know you're getting there. There are other
companies that are they get they just get more expensive ultimately,
because Decked has really built a system that is kind
of for the people that they've been able to figure

(01:30:44):
out how to mass produce it in a way that
keeps it very cost effective and pretty stink and functional
for what it is, and you can go you can
go past it and get better efficiencies out of it.
It's just going to be more expensive. Got it Outback
Solutions from ARB probably Goose Gear is you're probably your

(01:31:06):
highest end and they have the way they've built their
systems maximizes all the space. But you'll you'll pay for
it for that because it's so custom.

Speaker 1 (01:31:20):
Got it Jordan, any other questions on organization.

Speaker 3 (01:31:27):
Man I don't think so, it's just like an ever
evolving thing.

Speaker 2 (01:31:30):
It seems like yep, yeah, finding the rub, identifying like
why am I always looking for this, and decide it
needs a new home. Where should it be? If I'm
getting things all the time, that's something that needs to
be close to me. And if it's something that I
hope I rarely need or I only need once a day,
you put it further away, you know, and you deepsix it.

(01:31:54):
And once you kind of get your rhythm and you're
thinking through your organizational systems, your life gets so much
better because it takes out all the drag and the
frustration of camp life out of your vehicle and turns
it into something that's actually pretty stinking fun because you're like, man,
this is working, this is cool, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:32:14):
So yeah, and you have all that stuff too, and
it's in your vehicle, so like when you pull back
up to the house, you basically just have your duffel
bag that you have to take in and then when
you're ready to go, you like toss your duffle bag
in any other like little gear things you need, and
everything else.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
Is exactly exactly. And on the organizational front, real quick,
I started leaving sooner on a weekend and then getting
back on a Sunday sooner so that I could prep
my next trip I spent. Instead of leaving later on
a Friday and staying longer on Sunday, I reversed it
so that I could prep my vehicle and my kit

(01:32:51):
so it was much easier to go earlier the next
time because it was done, and that organizational system really helped.

Speaker 1 (01:33:02):
I need to get I need to get better at that, man,
because right now my organizational system is get it all
in there and then we drive and basically all I
have to think about is just make sure that the
kids snacks are accessible, and that's usually that's a small
cooler like between the two of them and the back seat.
But also I like to at least keep one because

(01:33:24):
it's whatever you pack for them up there, it's not
gonna be enough, so there has to be the cooler
that's accessible in the back of the truck too. But really,
once I get to camp, it's like everything has to
come out. Yeah, but okay, last but not least, uh
you kind of you said we needed a good table
for a work surface for the kitchen, right, But for

(01:33:44):
most of us that are you know, car camping. You're
gonna have tables and chairs for you know, chilling, hanging out,
doing doing kitchen type stuff. So tell me where your
head's at with like, like, are there specific tables you'll
like specific chain And I also want to know on
a chip like this, when you're going to Africa, you
just said that you're really deciding what has to be

(01:34:07):
there and whatnot. Are you going to skip a chair
altogether and just be sitting on one of your AMMO
cans or your alley boxes?

Speaker 2 (01:34:16):
Yeah, it's actually a little mix of both. So we
have enough alley boxes that three of us can sit
on alley boxes and the rest of us have a chair.
The last trip in the Nordic series last year was Norway, Scandinavia,
Faroe Islands and Iceland, and we took enough chairs for
everybody and we ended up not using them all. It

(01:34:37):
was very rare that we were using all of them,
so we paired it down to five. And there's eight
eight of us on this trip, so every every night
will be musical chairs. Yeh, yep, a position of hierarchy
within the camp. Yeah, because yeah, because there are they're

(01:34:59):
naturally musical chairs. People are up doing this part of
that camp and of camp life, and oh he's doing dishes. Now,
Now there's a free chair because that guy just cooked.
Now he's sitting, you know. And that just allows us
to pare down our chairs. But which is just ultimately
weight and more clutter. And what's your go to chair?
Right now? There's two good go to chairs. I really

(01:35:21):
like the front Runner chair that folds down, and my
favorite camp chair is the easy On Canine chair. They're
out of South Africa as well. And then if you
want to go like really lightweight, that arii he Lnox
style fold up chair is pretty tough to beat too,

(01:35:43):
especially for space and weight.

Speaker 3 (01:35:45):
Nemo makes some really good ones now too that are
like the Stargazer chair and they fold down really small
and they're like a pretty like recliner type chairs, kind
of cool.

Speaker 2 (01:35:55):
If a chair is going to be big, it has
to be worth it. There's a lot of big crap
chairs out there, and so if that's the case, I'd
rather take a much more smaller, lightweight compact chair. That's yeah,
I might have to fold it up, but it just
goes away. So that's kind of where I'm at on chairs. Yeah,
it either has to be really good or lightweight. Tables

(01:36:17):
in the overland space has been like one of the
great debates, like who makes the best table? You know,
and there's a lot of different people people that make
a good table, But your cheapest entry table is the
lifetime table at Walmart.

Speaker 1 (01:36:34):
Oh thirty bucks. Oh, like just the plastic with the
folding metal legs.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's for the money and the
top and the cost. It's pretty tough to beat.

Speaker 3 (01:36:45):
They're big, and they make ones that fold hast now.

Speaker 2 (01:36:47):
Yeah, they're pretty awesome that you know, can't go wrong.
There nothing wrong with that. And different sizes too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:55):
So I got mine at Costco. I think it's the
same thing. It's a plastic table right with mettle legs
with legs.

Speaker 2 (01:37:02):
Here's the thing about tables, when you're back to the organization,
a table is typically the thing that gets put on
the very bottom. But it's the thing that you need
very at first. So when you get your tables dialed,
we have them slid under roof racks in channels. We
have them placed perfectly in the truck so that it's
the first thing to come out and the last thing

(01:37:24):
to go in. Because otherwise you're setting stuff down in
the mud, or you're having to clear things out to
set things there to get the table out there, we
are back to having to move stuff to get to stuff.
So tables are one of those things if you can
find a good spot where you can get to them
first and put them away last year winning And that's

(01:37:45):
why you get into more of the advanced, more Gucci
tables like from alue Cab or easy On or front Runner.
They all make tables that slide into or under roof
racks or in channels that you know because you have
all the space under roof racks usually, so all of
our tables are outside under a roof rack. You just

(01:38:07):
get to camp, flip the latch and slide that table
out and you set a table up.

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):
And could you get a like a system that would
hold something simple like a lifetime table in that same position,
or if you're going to go that route, you're going
to have to have a fancy table that goes with
that storage system.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
More than like, I mean, you could diy something I'm sure.
The problem is is that if you're going to put
them under roof racks, that clearance is so small that
you've got to get into really thin, lightweight, strong tables
to fit there. If you're going to put them on
top of a roof rack, well then that's just up
to you on your space allocation. You could strap them

(01:38:44):
on up there. There's I could think of a few
ways that you could have an l channel of some
kind and bolted to the top of a rack and
utilize the space up top. When it comes to like
tacomas and truck beds and all that, that gets tough

(01:39:08):
with a topper on it, it's a find of a
spot for a table, right, there's just no they're a thing.
They're big, they're bulky, but you need them.

Speaker 1 (01:39:16):
But if you just had one of those basic like
what do they call it, like a cargo rack type setup,
which I think is still a thing. I've been actually
thinking about that lately because on this on this latest
camping trip we did, I pulled out an old Touli
box and I thought, oh, I'll just put my lightweight
stuff in there and it'll work. And it did, but
it's still kind of it's not. It just didn't seem

(01:39:38):
like a great use of space, like the Turkey decoys
kind of fitting there, and the tents and the you
can't put anything too heavy in there, so tent sleeping bags,
turkey decoys. I think that was about all that made it.
But I just remember thinking like if I just had
a rack that was whatever the width of my my
topper and six or seven feet long, I think I

(01:39:58):
could just I could put a table in there. I
could throw all my duffels up there and just run
some straps over the top and call it good, and
I wouldn't be contained to the shape of that the
old TOOLI box is a rack just a thing where
you can just put a rack up there and kind
of throw whatever you want for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:40:17):
Yeah, racks are a big thing, especially in the overland world,
because we need more space, right, we don't have enough.
It really comes from the expedition side where and hunting
in a lot of ways falls into that expedition space
requirement because you got all this stuff that is required
to do the thing, right, like the decoys. Yeah, you're
not just camping anymore, right, Yeah, Yeah, So a roof

(01:40:38):
rack really comes into play much more over. The rocket
boxes and the tooley boxes and those are great for
you know, very specific application, but they do kind of
quickly run into their limitations. They're nice because they're clothes
and the lid flips up and you can grab the stuff,
but past that it's kind of uh, you need more space.

(01:40:58):
So a roof rack is is absolutely a thing. We
use easy On from a company called Equipped Expedition Outfitters
out of Salt Lake. We've worked with them for fifteen years.
They're super good. Love their racks. Prince u Rax out
of Idaho through CBI, they're really good. ARB makes good

(01:41:20):
rack systems, front Runner makes good rack systems, and a
lot of these companies have tied down systems that allow
you to put all kinds of different things inside their channels.
Roof racks have come a long way in the last
five years. Yeah. So once you go down that rabbit
hole of the roof racks, you'll be there for a while.

(01:41:42):
But it's pretty awesome what's available now. Dude, you you've
given me so many rabbit holes.

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
I've got rabbit holes for the next year after Hey,
after chatting with you twice.

Speaker 3 (01:41:53):
Yeah, so you can really go crazy with oh man,
you can go crazy with the systems, or you can
keep them liked. Pretty simple, yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:42:01):
So there's there's a you know, we love to bolt
things on and carry a bunch of stuff. But a
good friend of mine, Scott Brady, a founder of Overland Journal, says,
your truck has finished when you've taken the last thing
you don't need off of it, you know. And uh,
and that applies to so much of what we do, oh,
from the hunting world to like, Okay, that doesn't really

(01:42:22):
need to be in my pack anymore, even though it's nice,
it just doesn't need to be in my pack anymore. Yeah,
So that all applies here. But the good thing is
is there's so many cool solutions out there for car
camping now that people are using him like we do
to go around the world with their trucks, and they're
that there's never been a better time in the in

(01:42:42):
the history of man to use your vehicle for getting
out and exploring. Yeah, and it's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
It's I hope that people listening don't think, oh, I
don't have you know, tens of thousands of dollars to
dump into this.

Speaker 2 (01:42:54):
You don't have to.

Speaker 1 (01:42:55):
You can start just so small, like like we were
talking earlier, like literally tent and your basic camping stuff
and a juggle water and a cooler and you're you've
got the beginnings of it, and then all this stuff
you can just sort of dial in as you progress
through your your car camping uh uh, you know, experience,

(01:43:17):
and then maybe you end up being an Overlander one day. Yeah,
but cool Jordan, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:43:25):
Awesome, No, man, I don't have anything else. I mean
there's tons of avenues we could go down, but it's
probably enough for today.

Speaker 1 (01:43:33):
Yeah, thanks for your time, Clay. Clay, why don't you
take a minute and just plug X Overland. Tell everybody
where they can find the content that you're making, that
you're putting out there, that you guys are making. Gives
a quick overview maybe of of what's what's been recent,
like that Nordic trip, and then uh, you know when
when we can when we're gonna be able to watch

(01:43:53):
the Africa stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:43:54):
Yeah sounds great. So thank thanks everybody for listening to
what I have to say today. It's a privileged to
be on the PODCA cast again, and thank you for
the opportunity. You can find our stuff website Exoverland dot com.
We have a YouTube channel just look up Expedition Overland.
We also have a podcast called the X Overland podcast.
It talks all kinds of things about all of this

(01:44:14):
stuff in depth. Then our primary job though is to
shoot films, and so we tell stories of our big expeditions.
Last was, as mentioned, the Nordic series Traveled. It just
came out on YouTube. It is Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland,
the Faroe Islands and Iceland. And right now we just

(01:44:37):
sent trucks to Africa. We'll be shooting another ten part
series this summer and that'll come out this January is
our target. So winter, we're right when it's getting long
in the tooth for winter. They'll have some new content
coming out there for that, and we've got a bunch
of other cool training opportunities and things coming around. Stay

(01:44:58):
tuned for other information on that right now, stuff I
can't quite talk about just yet. But thanks for listening,
Thanks for having me on and I appreciate it. Guys. Yeah,
thank you, Clay. That was great.

Speaker 1 (01:45:08):
Thanks all right, folks, thanks for listening to another episode
of the gear Talk podcast. Unfortunately, Jordan and I have
a little bit of sad news. It's the last episode
of the current version of the gear Talk podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:45:25):
But don't worry.

Speaker 1 (01:45:26):
Jordan and I are going to continue to do a
bunch of gear related content for Meat Eater, but it
just turns out after eighteen nineteen episodes, it seems like
the gear stuff needs to.

Speaker 2 (01:45:39):
Be a little more visual.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
Yeah, and even though it's good to listen about it,
but it's better to listen and see. So stuff like
gearshed and Jordan, you do you know videos going over gear.
You don't really have like a name for your video,
but you just do kind of gear review type videos, right.

Speaker 3 (01:46:05):
Yeah, Yeah, I just been doing that, like what do
they call them, like a short form, And so we'll
be doing more of that. We'll see if I can
get my own little gear garage going or something something
like that to put a name to it. But yeah,
it I think people there are some people that really
like listening to this kind of thing, but there is

(01:46:26):
definitely a visual aspect to it that would add a
lot to actually being able to see what the heck
it is it we're talking about. So that's what we're
gonna that's what we're gonna do.

Speaker 1 (01:46:39):
Yeah, So thanks to everybody that's written in sent Us comments,
sentus questions. It certainly helps to bring you the best
content that you want when we get that kind of good,
good feedback, and it's been a huge help and continue
to do so, you know, hit both your and an

(01:47:00):
eye up on our DMS on Instagram. Don't use the
Gear Talking email anymore, but yeah, DMS on Instagram is
probably the best place to send in ideas about gear
related stuff that you want us to cover, and then
both of us can yeah make a little short form

(01:47:20):
videos covering off on that stuff. Like we're still both
gonna do some reviews on some soft shell jackets, some
soft shell pants. There's a bunch of a bunch of
stuff coming down the line. So yeah, just keep hanging
out on meat Eater and you'll be able to get
you'll find the gear content that you're looking for from

(01:47:44):
Jordan and I.

Speaker 4 (01:47:45):
So thanks Jordan and all the questions, Yeah, all the
questions and everything that people have sent in that we
haven't covered yet, those are all saved and so we
will be pulling off of those as well to help
make videos to answer those questions.

Speaker 3 (01:47:58):
So yeah, it has been fun. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:48:01):
That's right. You have now two podcasts under your belt.
I've got one under under my belt kind of too,
but the other one is really Steve's But anyways, it's
been fun to uh to do it with you. I
certainly learned a lot, especially these last couple of ones.
Uh talking about trucks. But uh yeah man, we'll uh we'll,

(01:48:24):
we'll keep at it. So yeah, don't fret if you're
out there, don't be too bummed out because you'll keep
getting the same great gear. Content from us is just
gonna look a little bit different. Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:48:37):
Awesome, Thanks everybody,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep.19: Guide to Car Camping with Clay Croft

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

Ep.19: Guide to Car Camping with Clay Croft

Stuff You Should Know