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Our Vehicle

Our Journey to our Overland Vehicle part 2

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by Darryl

So where were we?
Leaving for our 1.5 year journey in less than 2 months time and no vehicle. That was pretty much the state of things in mid to late December 2013.

Knowing that most custom vehicle manufacturers would have a 6-12 month delivery time, going new was not an option. So, I began looking through various internet sites such as expedition portal, eBay, Craigslist, etc…in the hopes of finding a pre-owned overland solution which would meet our requirements. I looked for about 3-4 weeks before reaching the following conclusions: a) there are plenty of vehicles for sale at any given time, b) everyone has their own idea as to what constitutes an overland vehicle, and c) there were no vehicles out there in our budget that we felt comfortable purchasing.

I am not a car geek or enthusiast. However, if I see something that I like, I do get excited. All of my adult life I have had a fascination with just two vehicles. They are the Toyota FJ and the Land Rover Defender. I have read about these vehicles over the years on how they are the workhorses used to support various expeditions throughout the world. If these vehicles could work through the rugged deserts of Africa and the high mountains of the Himalayas, then surely one of them could support a drive from Alaska to Argentina. No?

The Land Rover Defenders were last available in the US in the mid to late 90’s. So relatively speaking, they are quite rare in the U.S. and have a price tag to reflect that fact. Looking at the older FJ models was not any more attractive. It seemed that you either get a fixer upper for a low price or a restored vehicle for the cost of a modern day luxury vehicle. We had no time for a fixer upper and no interest in buying a utilitarian vehicle which had the price tag of a Lexus.

However, Toyota was still at the top of the list since they were known for both their reliability and strong legacy of expedition support. So I began looking at their modern day lineup. The Tundra, the Tacoma, and the FJ Cruiser all seem to fit the bill. The pickup trucks would give us the space we required to carry all of our gear and allow us to do some level of customization(water tank installed in the bed, slide out cooking environment, storage compartments) all contained within a camper shell. The FJ,while not having quite as much room as the pickup truck, was added to the list because of its off-road capability. Every review that I have read or watched always came to the same conclusion on the FJ. Good enough on the pavement, awesome off-road!

Autotrader and Craigslist became my new best friend as I searched the ads daily. Living in California does have its advantages because there are a lot of cars for sale…and many within our budget! Test driving each of these vehicles proved to be critical as both my wife and I would be driving the vehicle during our trip and would have to like the platform.

A good friend of mine had a Toyota Tacoma and allowed me to drive it around a bit. I really liked the size of the vehicle, but had some reservations on its spartan-like interior and whether the six cylinder engine would be up for the task. It just felt a bit underpowered and he just has the truck. Imagine the performance when weighted down with a camper shell, gear, water, etc…This ended up being a non-factor since my wife came away from her test drive with the Tacoma uninspired.

If we don’t like it, we won’t buy it. No matter how desperate we are.

So on to the Tundra. We looked at both versions. Absolutely love the ultra reliability of version 1. My neighbor has one with well over 250k miles on it. No issues whatsoever. I loved the sheer size and power of the newer Tundra (v2) and felt that would make an excellent vehicle. It was the double cab model, lots of power, and an extended bed. We both did a test drive. I loved it!      The wife? Well, let’s just say that she did not share my enthusiasm. Oh well…

So that just leaves the FJ.
We headed over to the local dealership to look at their used inventory and take one for a test drive. Impressions: Nice. Smooth engine. Good pickup / acceleration, decent amount of room inside, and a funky look to it that I really liked. Not bad, but the asking price was not in our budget. I liked it but had reservations about whether the internal space would be enough, but my wife really liked driving the vehicle. So we are now getting somewhere.

We would continue to research this vehicle option a bit more and look for an FJ within our price range.

By now it is early February and we still do not have a vehicle to support our trip. Our planned departure of February 6, 2013 has come and gone. In mid February I came across an ad for someone selling their FJ in the local area which met our budget requirements. We went to check it out and do the mandatory test drive. Everything looked good. We did not make an offer on the vehicle that day. We went home and immediately dumped everything we knew about the car into Kelly BB to get a sense of what the car was worth. Our offer would be based on these numbers. We called back the next day and made an offer contingent on the local Toyota dealership going through the car from top to bottom so that we could get an idea as to the current mechanical condition of the vehicle. The inspection identified a couple of minor items. No big deal. We got a repair quote from the dealer and reviewed it with the owners. They agree to accept our revised offer which took into account the repairs costs. We are now the owners of a Toyota FJ Cruiser.

Great, a car that can do anything and go anywhere, but we still needed a place to sleep. Remember, while the FJ may have some storage capacity and off-road prowess, it is not an RV and has no accommodations for cooking, sleeping,etc…so we still had our work cut out for us.

Towing anything was out of the questions since we wanted to keep the overall vehicle setup simple. Additionally, towing some type of living arrangement just meant one more thing that could go wrong (axle, tires, etc…) and finding replacements on the road outside of the US / Canada could prove to be problematic. A trailer was definitely not something we wanted to deal with and not something we would use after the trip. Therefore, not a good way to spend our money.

During my research on the trip, I saw images of Australian and some Europeans over-landers with tents on the top of their overland vehicle. I later learned these are called roof top tents (RTT). The Australians use this method of camping since the ground critters in their country can actually be quite deadly! I figured this approach may work out for us.

Online research showed two manufacturers which were relatively close to us. They were Tapui tents which is located in Santa Cruz,CA and Cascadia Vehicle Tents (CVT) out of Bend, OR.

Santa Cruz is only about 30 minutes from where we live so I called them to see what type of inventory they had immediately available. The answer was none. They were expecting a major inventory shipment in March/April and anything they did have was going to be used for early season trade shows.

The next call was to Cascadia Vehicle Tents. I was able to talk with the owner Craig. I told him our situation and he confirmed that they did not have any inventory for the tent options that we were considering. Like Tapui, they too were expecting a major inventory shipment in the March/April time frame.

I hung up the phone feeling totally dejected. We had no other leads or ideas for sleeping arrangements at that time (we were not willing to do the ground tent method). It looked like we would have to postpone the departure date of the trip again while we waited for the vendors to restock their inventory. This was not looking good.

About two hours later, I happened to check my phone and noticed a missed call from the number I had dialed for CVT. I called back to see what was up. Craig called back to let me know that CVT may have a demo model of one of the tent options we wanted at his showroom in Bend, OR. He was traveling at the time to some early season trade shows, but had left a call for one of his relatives to check availability. He said he would let me know for sure once he had confirmation. Later that day he called to confirm that they had the Mt. Rainier tent at their shop. Great, we will take it!!

One problem though, Craig was out on the road doing trade shows to promote his products and would not be back in Bend, OR for a couple of weeks. So we could not take possession of the tent until he returned. Just for reference, CVT is a small, family owned company. We made plans to be there in Bend, OR the first day of his return.

We arrived in Bend the night prior to our meeting and stayed at a friend’s house for the night. We met Craig first thing in the morning and began dismantling the tent which was being demoed on an old Toyota FJ45 in his showroom. We then re-assembled it on top of our FJ Cruiser. We were now the owners of a CVT Mt. Rainier tent.

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The power combo…FJ w/ CVT

We had some additional work done to the FJ Cruiser during the two week period we were waiting to go to Bend,OR to pickup our tent. A couple days after we purchased the vehicle we went to meet with Jeff Arabia at Arabia’s Overkill in San Jose, CA.
We wanted to have an additional battery installed on the vehicle and a inverter added so that we could charge our laptops, cell phone, etc…during our journey. Additionally, we asked them to remove the backseat and create storage compartments in the area behind the front seats and a fold out cooking platform which we could use when the rear door of the FJ was open. We brought the vehicle back a few days later for him to begin the work.

Even though this work was relatively straightforward, if you are in the San Jose, CA and need work done on your 4WD vehicle, I would recommend that you talk to him about your needs. He is a very knowledgeable person and has a great personality too!

Vehicle-wise we are all ready to go!! Finally!!

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Power combo in action…
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The calm before the storm

You are probably thinking that’s the end of the story, right?

Well, not quite.

So back in December 2013, I actually placed a call to XP Camper to find out their current production cycle times for a new camper. Unfortunately, it had not changed and was still at about ten months. My wife and I talked about it for a few days and decided to go ahead and put a deposit down which would officially put us in the production queue. We were given a delivery date of September / October 2014. So given that time frame, that would put us in the FJ Cruiser for the first six to seven months of our journey.

While I was searching for the vehicle which turned out to be the FJ Cruiser; in parallel I was also searching for a used one ton pickup truck that would be the platform for the eventual XP Camper build. In the U.S. diesel pickup truck arena, there are essentially three engines to consider: Ford PowerStroke, Dodge Cummins, and Chevy Duramax.

All are good engines. But from my research and discussions with the diesel experts in the area (Imler and Left Coast) the Cummins and Duramax engines were the most highly regarded overall. From the power stroke series, the 7.3L power stroke is highly sought after for both its reliability and performance. Other versions of the PowerStroke engine, such as the 6.0L,not so much due to potential reliability issues.

We ended buying a 2002 Ford F-350 7.3L V8 PS with 88,000 miles on it.

Why a Ford? It really came down to a couple of items.
The first was cost. Dodge and Chevy trucks have a much higher resale value than comparable Ford trucks. Great if you are the seller. Not so good if you are the buyer. The second was the 7.3L engine. As mentioned earlier, it is highly regarded and most diesel truck enthusiasts will tell you that the Ford engine designs post 7.3L production have not been on par with the 7.3L for both overall reliability and performance.

We found the truck on eBay in late December 2013. The truck was not being sold by a Ford dealer, but by what I will call a ‘2nd tier’ dealership. Not having previously dealt with this type of dealership before, I did my due diligence and searched the internet for customer reviews and BBB feedback. Everything I found on the dealership turned out to be quite positive.

The pictures linked to the auction showed the truck to be in very good to excellent condition. The truck’s location was in Southern California (SoCal). We live in Northern California. Distance-wise, it may sound close, but it is at least a 7 hour drive to the vehicle’s dealer location. Not wanting to travel that distance just be be disappointed or not purchase the vehicle, we hired an independent vehicle inspector from SoCal to check out the vehicle for us. The inspector would go over the car from head to toe and advise on current status, test drive performance, and provide additional photos of the interior and exterior. The report from the inspector came back a day or two later and was extremely positive. Only a couple of minor items were identified which we eventually reviewed with the vehicle dealership and they took care of them. I was feeling better about things, but still not eager to head on down to SoCal. I happened to be on Google Earth (or similar) and was looking at street view photos of the vehicle dealership. I happened to notice that there was an actual Ford dealership located near the vehicle dealership. I called the vehicle dealership and told them I was interested in purchasing the truck, but wanted to have a diesel specialist from Ford to inspect the it. The vehicle dealership agreed as long as I made the appointment and paid for the cost of the inspection. No problem!

Ford went through the car from top to bottom and remarked that overall the vehicle was in very good condition. Again, the issues which were identified were the same as the independent vehicle inspector’s. The vehicle dealership addressed all items which were highlighted during the inspection process.

We drove down to SoCal to look at the car for ourselves and take it for a test drive. Everything checked out just fine. We purchased the car that day and proceeded to drive it directly to Grass Valley, CA (XP Camper location) for drop-off. By now, it is late January 2014. Remember our planned February departure date? That is why we did not bring the truck back to San Jose, CA with us. We were in the process of moving everything from our house into storage as well as dealing with other last minute trip details. This was the only time we had available to drive to Grass Valley, CA which is a 4 hour drive from our home.

So by the time we leave for our trip, we will have a Toyota FJ Cruiser with a CVT roof top tent to use for the first 6-7 months of the trip and we have delivered a Ford F-350 pickup to XP Camper for our long term solution which is projected to be completed by September/October 2014.

Finally, no more thinking about and searching for vehicles!!

So, despite our original plan, we actually ended up leaving for our trip on March 8, 2014. We spent some time exploring Death Valley NP, Joshua Tree NP, Mojave Desert,and the Salton Sea area in California before making our way down along the Baja Peninsula to catch the humpback whale migration.

In the interest of time, we will fast forward a bit since this article is about vehicles and not the trip per se. Be sure to check out the other blog entries for actual trip details. 🙂

We took delivery of our XP Camper on July 10, 2014.

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…“Huh? I thought you said it would be done in the September / October time frame!”

I did, but…On April 16, 2014, my wife and I were sitting in a cafe in Loreto, Baja California Sur checking email. I received an email from the owner of XP Camper. In the email, he stated that there was a used XP Camper available and asked would we be interested in purchasing it as opposed to waiting for a new one? Heck yeah!! Going this route would save us both time and money. Our delivery date now pulls in from the September/October to June/July timeframe. What an unexpected surprise!!

We received the vehicle just in time to familiarize ourselves with it for a few days in the Tahoe National Forest before heading up to Bellingham, WA to catch a ferry to our next destination. ALASKA.

So, there you have it. The condensed version of our vehicle journey.

Next up: My impressions of each of our overland solutions (Sportsmobile, FJ/CVT combo, XP Camper)…

Our Vehicle

Our Journey to our Overland Travel Vehicle (part 1 of 5)

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by Darryl Williams

Disclosures: The following outline represents my opinion and is not meant to be inflammatory. All vehicles mentioned in the article below are fine vehicles in their own right. Some vehicles may suit you better than others. In the end, it all comes down to personal preference which is largely shaped by the way you travel.

After all the research, I can say safely the following:

In an ideal world, if we were only traveling in the US and Canada, I would probably go with a Class A diesel pusher with a capable 4WD vehicle in tow. One can’t beat this setup for the ultimate in comfort combined with the ability to go and explore the proverbial ‘off the beaten path’. 

However, since traveling the Pan Am highway requires a slightly smaller footprint, my vehicle of choice would be the MB Sprinter 3500 (extended body and height) with 4WD. However, since this vehicle option was not available in the US at the time time of our departure (or prior), this was not an option.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s go back to the beginning.

The idea of an extended international trip first came up in 2011. The idea originally started as a trip through the continent of Africa. The plan was to explore the entire West coast from Morocco to South Africa over a span of about 4 months.

The more I researched this trip, the more I did not feel comfortable with a couple of things.
* Civil / political / social unrest which can erupt at any time
* Required bribery as you cross the border from one country to the other

However, as I was researching Africa, I would tend to come across articles about adventures on something called the Pan-Am highway, the Alaskan highway, travels through Europe, and even travels through Asia. I started reading about some of those journeys and mentioned these possible alternatives to my wife. 
In the end, it was the Pan Am trip that intrigued us the most.

Once we knew we were going to to travel the Pan Am highway for at least a year, we needed a vehicle to support our journey. 

Naively, we began our search for a vehicle in late 2011 by attending RV shows in the San Francisco Bay area (as at that time we had never heard about expedition vehicles and the like). What I learned very quickly from these shows was that the traditional RV had all the comforts of home, but would not allow us to get off the beaten path…so I kept researching. Even though I had come across blogs of a few overlanders and some Pan Am journeys, the vehicle information (and options) really began to pour in when I came across a website called Expedition Portal. Now we were getting somewhere!!

So after lots of reading, I was able to define a minimum set of requirements for our vehicle as follows: 

  • Diesel engine for increased fuel efficiency and torque
  • Diesel engine which could burn the ‘dirty’ diesel found in Central and South America; manufacture date prior 2006
  • 4WD with sufficient clearance and a preference for manual gear box engagement over electronic on the fly 4WD; we would like to explore the unknown trails and backroads wherever we go
  • Manueverability; reasonable wheelbase for tighter areas
  • Reasonable storage for clothes, food. cookware, and other essentials to support our journey
  • Reliability; self explanatory
  • Serviceabilty; access to parts and mechanics to work on our rig in Mexico, Latin America, and South America

By late 2012 / early 2013, we had visited the following vehicle manufacturers:

  • Sportsmobile in Fresno, CA
  • Earthroamer in Dracono, CO
  • XP Camper in Grass Valley, CA
  • Provan / Tiger Adventures dealer agent near Napa, CA

We also attended the May 2013 Overland Expo at Mormon Lake, Arizona which is just outside of Flagstaff, AZ. We attended the expo because we wanted to see E-V-E-R-Y possible vehicle option before we made a final decision. We spent two days at the exposition. It was overwhelming, but well worth the time.

Here are some initial impressions from the plant tours and Expo…

Earthroamer: Very nice product and great attention to detail, but ultimately proved to be too expensive…even used! I kept asking myself ‘would you really want to go off-road with something so expensive?’

XP Camper: Interesting design twist in the pop-up camper category; manufacturer strongly recommends the 1 ton US pickup trucks as the vehicle platform with a preference for Dodge. XP is a relatively new manufacturer with two functioning prototypes at that time (V1 and V2).

Sportsmobile: In the expedition vehicle game for quite some time; there appears to be plenty of demand for both new and used inventory.

Provan: Nice products, but at that time they did not have a model which fit our needs. We were able to find a used vehicle, currently named the Bengal TX, but the sleeping area was not to our liking. The Siberian was well beyond our price point and their Malayan was just released and proved to be too small for our needs.

General thoughts: If you are in the market for an overland or expedition vehicle, I would highly recommend that you attend Overland Expo before making your final decision. You will see everything related to overlanding and expedition travel adventures. Literally everything.

So, after several discussions with my wife, we finally decided that the XP Camper would be our choice. We were so happy to have finalized the decision! 

However, after contacting the owner of XP, we learned that a submission of deposit in May 2013 would get us a truck in February 2014…that’s like 10 months!! To make matters worse, we were planning to leave for our trip on February 6, 2014.
Obviously this would not work since we wanted to use our vehicle during the summer and fall of 2013 for trips to the eastern Sierra of California and Oregon. We told The owner of XP that the timeline would not work for us and that we would be going in another direction.

Time for plan B. So we contacted Sportsmobile and at that time they had a 5-6 month cycle time for a new SMB. Better than XP, but still would not meet our requirements for use in 2013 use. So a new SMB would not work either. 

Time for plan C. We begin looking for a used Sportsmobile that we could buy and start getting familiar with right away. This was a great idea in theory, but in reality finding a used SMB in good condition proved to be more difficult than originally planned since anything we did find that we liked had either just been sold or was in the process of being sold. Ever hear the phrase ‘ A Day late and a dollar short’?

However, not to be deterred, we eventually purchased a used SMB in June 2013. 
The quick facts: 2006 6.0L diesel V8 turbo engine, Ford E350 Extended Body with pop-up roof, ’50’ layout , Quigley 4WD conversion

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Some quick thoughts on the SMB:

  • Great flow through design; we liked the ability to access the refrigerator and storage areas while on the go
  • Solid platform being the Ford E350
  • Reasonable fuel efficiency at 15-16 mpg; especially given the weight of vehicle
  • Highly rated 4WD conversion be it Quigley or Sportsmobile
  • Pop-up sleep area is very good for a single individual. In our experience, the area was too tight for 2 adults
  • Storage impacted if using rear bench as dual purpose seat and bed
  • Would advise on extended body (EB) E350 if you are tall or require more space
  • 6.0L diesel can be problematic; check V10 version and see if that meets your needs
  • Quality of materials and workmanship on SMB interior average at best
  • Limited space within the vehicle if you need to be inside during inclement weather
  • We did winter camping in the Sierras and when we used the included table the 2 occupants were trapped on either side of the table; one on bench seat, other on passenger seat
  • Great, go anywhere vehicle within limitations (i.e. overall height of vehicle, depth of water, etc…)
  • Service: Make sure your local Ford dealer is willing to work on such a highly customized vehicle or you can do the work yourself; Ford has no obligation to work on non OEM parts
  • Our truck weighed ~10,000 pounds. You can’t just take that to any garage /mechanic…think lift!!

We realized after about 6 months of ownership that we would not be taking the SMB on our Pan American highway journey. It had nothing to do with capability and everything to do with functionality. Our issues specifically had to do with the sleeping area and the interior layout. No matter how hard we tried we were never comfortable sleeping in the penthouse unit with 2 adults. It was just too small an area for us (especially since we have a California King bed at home). We only slept well when one of us slept in the penthouse and the other slept down on the rear bench.

As for the interior layout, it proved to be too cramped for us especially when we had to be inside the vehicle during inclement weather. Neither of these issues would matter much to us if we were to only use the vehicle for extended weekends or shorts trips. However, we would be living in this vehicle for a year (or possibly longer), we realized that these minor issues would become major issues very quickly.

So, what to do?  
It is now December 2013. 
We are slated to leave for our trip in February 2014
…and we have no vehicle. 

California, United States

FJ wrap-up…XP new beginnings

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July 10 – 21, 2014

We finally get our XP and we wouldn’t even get to spend the first night in it!

Our original plan was to have the XP for a few weeks to get comfortable with the rig and flush out any issues with either the truck or the camper before going to Alaska. Because of some of the delays we would have just two weeks to get to our ferry in Washington. We still had a lot to do in this short window giving us very little time to get to know our new home. After Marc handed us the keys we went to dinner in Nevada City and took inventory of what needed to be done before boarding the ferry. Our first order of business was to get the F350’s 100k mile service completed ASAP. In our experience it’s never just taking a vehicle in for service since they always find something else to fix. We didn’t have time to waste so we decided to find a Ford service department who could begin work the next day. The Ford Store in Gilroy had a 7 am appointment available the next morning. This meant driving our FJ and XP the three hours to the Bay Area once we finished dinner. We stayed in a hotel just minutes away from the dealer. Our first night in the XP would have to wait.

We dropped off the vehicle and were told that it would take a couple of days to do the service and finish work on the additional items that we knew about it. Later that day we heard from the service department. They suggested that we take care of a few more issues which added another day. We spent these days visiting friends and buying some gear for the trip that we couldn’t fit into the FJ. There was even some time for my favorite run in the Bay Area at Wilder Ranch in Santa Cruz.

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Perfect day for a run in Santa Cruz.
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This is my favorite part of this trail as we run along the cliffs overlooking Monterrey Bay.
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Darryl and I end every trip to Santa Cruz with a visit to Natural Bridges.

Now with our XP ready for the trip we were ready to move into our new home. After living in the FJ for four months, the XP feels like a palace! We now have a small kitchen with plenty of counter space to prepare meals. Everything runs on diesel so no more searches for propane canisters for the Coleman stove.

Our first guests were Cesar and his wife Brenda, longtime friends of Darryl’s. We gave them the ten cent tour of our XP which took just a few minutes. A quick spin around while standing in place is about all it takes to see everything! 🙂 There’s not enough room in the XP for a dinner party so we headed across the parking lot for dinner. Over dinner caught each other up the happenings in our lives. There was also plenty of talk about where to cross into Mexico and safe places to stay as well as places to avoid. As Mexican natives, Cesar and Brenda have been a wonderful source for us as we plan our trip into Mexico. We don’t expect to cross the border into Mexico until October but it’s never to early to start planning parts of the route!

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As soon as we picked up our truck from Ford we went over to our storage locker to transfer everything from our FJ into the XP and to pick up our cold weather clothes which we’ll need at some point in the upcoming months. Our next stop is to say good-bye to the FJ and leave it in storage until after the trip. The FJ was an awesome vehicle for us during the last four months. We had absolutely no mechanical issues with it and it handled all of our off-road adventures with ease. Although our XP will beat the FJ + roof top tent in the comfort category it won’t hold a candle to the FJ in the off-road capability category.

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Now with our FJ tucked away in storage and us settled into our new home we had one last stop to make before saying good-bye to California. Back in June I met Gypsy Vanner breeder Lynn Strauss of the Gypsy Rose Ranch at the Western States Horse Expo. After talking with her about the breed I asked if we could stop by her ranch in Lodi, CA to spend a little more time with her horses and take a riding lesson with her on a Gypsy Vanner. We would be driving by Lodi so I called her up and scheduled a time to meet the next day. We spent most of the following day at the ranch learning about the operations and meeting the horse. I fell in love with all of them!

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These horses were so friendly! As soon as we walked into their paddocks they all crowded around us to say hello.
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This little colt was a doll! If only I had a home for him I would take him now.
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I really love the look and disposition of the Gypsy Vanner.

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We had to make one more stop at XP in Grass Valley to have our rear window replaced and then we’re off to catch our ferry in a week out of Bellingham. We spent the night in the Tahoe National Forest after fixing the window. I really felt the elevation during our morning run the following day!

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At White Cloud Campground in the Tahoe National Forest.

We’re super excited about starting our adventure in Alaska. Just one more week in the lower 48 and we’ll be catching our ferry!

California, United States

“We’re movin’ on up” like George and Weezie!

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To give a little back story to this post, I have to start all the way to the beginning of our planning for this trip over three years ago. I promise to give the short version here and later we’ll document in more detail our journey to our XP Camper decision.

During the first stage of our trip planning we spent many, many hours researching and discussing our perfect vehicle for this trip. We decided on a Sportsmobile and made the big purchase last June, eight months before the start of our big trip and plenty of time for us to get comfortable with the Sportsmobile and prepare ourselves for almost two years of living in it.

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Unfortunately, after a few weekend getaways we quickly realized that the Sportsmobile wasn’t going to work for us. Now we have to quickly find a plan B since our start date was only three months away. We gave Marc at XP Camper a call and put in our order for an XP Camper. These campers are awesome but we would have to wait until October of 2014 to get it. We were expecting to start our trip the first week of March! We decided that it would be worth the wait and we would find an intermediate solution to take us through Baja then up to Alaska and we would stop by Grass Valley in October to pick up our new XP. So now we had to find something economical that would carry us through to October. An FJ Cruiser with a Cascadia Vehicle Tent was our solution.

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The roof top tent (RTT) was great in the warmer climates but we weren’t so excited about the experience during the colder, windier and wetter days. We started to worry about how comfortable we would be once we started heading into the cooler and wetter climates of Oregon, Washington and then Alaska. Then one day while we were in Baja we received a call from Marc saying that a used XP Camper was available and would we want to buy it!? This would be ready 8 weeks earlier than the new XP and we could have it for our trip to Alaska! We jumped at the opportunity and made some changes to our Alaska ferry and Denali camping reservations. Things are looking up!!

XP Camper is a small operation in Grass Valley and as such, the timelines are a little fluid. We were given about a 4-6 week time frame when the XP would be ready so we decided to spend much of this waiting time around California and Utah. Dates were slipping a bit so we finally decided that we should just start driving north and hit the Oregon Coast and continue on to Seattle so we wouldn’t miss our ferry. We couldn’t delay our Alaska trip any longer so if the XP wasn’t ready, we would just have to spend a little more time with our FJ and RTT.

And then we received the phone call!! Our XP would be completed by the end of the week! We received the call when we were in Astoria, OR so we made a quick U-turn to drive back to California and pick up our XP. We would only have 14 days to make sure that everything was in working order before getting onto the Alaska ferry but no more living out of a tent!!

We still had a long day ahead of us to get to Grass Valley, CA and pick up our XP Camper. There were more than 400 miles between our campsite and Grass Valley, CA, our destination for the end of the day. Fortunately, the miles were beautiful, driving through the Avenue of the Giants along highway 20. The smell of the redwoods brought back memories of mountain biking with friends through the Santa Cruz mountains in California. DSC04424

We stopped at a picnic area along what was once a river but now is a wide rock bed with a narrow stream of water that might be called a creek. Then later in the evening we had a very nice dinner at the Blue Wing Cafe in Upper Lake, California. We were surprised to see this cute little town just north of Clear Lake. We were expecting to find a run down little town for the seasonal angler and instead we found a cute renovated historic area. Our next stop would be the Holbrook Hotel in Grass Valley. We didn’t arrive until well past midnight. Although it was a long day of driving, I had a hard time sleeping. I felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve wondering what grand present Santa had waiting for me under the Christmas Tree!

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And then we finally got to see our new home for the next year!! We arrived at XP in the early afternoon. Marc and the team were putting the final touches on our camper as we walked in. I couldn’t wait to get moved into our new home.

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Finally we will have a place where I can cook a meal inside and place any leftovers in a real refrigerator! Actually, we have two refrigerators, one in the camper and one behind the driver’s seat in the cab. No more buying bags of ice and throwing away food because I couldn’t keep it cold enough. We have a wonderful little dining area at the rear of our camper where we can enjoy our meals in the comfort of the camper. And last but not at all least, we will have a wet bath! Although our storage capacity has almost doubled, Darryl is firm on keeping our gear at a minimum. No need to fill up every nook and cranny of the camper, and there are many!

Marc and Toni spent a couple of hours with us going over the details of the camper and how everything worked. Our plan for the day was to pick up the camper and then drive our XP Camper and FJ Cruiser to the Bay Area to do the big swap. Just before closing time, Marc was ready to move the truck out of the garage for us. He turned the ignition and nothing happened. We knew that there were issues with the battery but we thought that they had been replaced already. We already learned well before the beginning of our trip that things would not always go as planned and we would have to be patient with some of these curve balls. We waited for two new batteries to be installed and then drove to the Bay Area, a little later than expected, but we were so excited to have an awesome new home that our enthusiasm wouldn’t be dampened by a little battery issue!

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray” and that is what our journey has been but I wouldn’t change a thing! We have had and we are having an amazing adventure.

We have had the unique experience of living on the road in three different types of overland vehicles. We will document what has worked and hasn’t worked for us in each of these vehicles in later posts.