Wow, we owe you a lot of updates, readers, but today I want to jump ahead to a recent event, because I’ve got something on my mind. We attended Overland Expo East this year - our first time at OE. We tried to go to West in 2014, but you may recall that our Vanagon broke down at the New Mexico/Arizona state border, and we spent the weekend (and the following weekend) getting work done in Flagstaff instead of attending Overland Expo just a few miles away.

Fast forward to this year. No more Vanagon (I know, I owe you an explanation - another time!) - we went this time in our new 2016 Subaru Outback. One of the rules for Overland Expo East is that they’ll only allow 4WD vehicles (and motorcycles) to camp at the venue, because when it rains, it gets muddy, and 2WD vehicles simply can’t extract themselves in the wet. When we registered a scant four weeks before the event, the long-range prognosis had it looking good - but of course, a lot can change in the weather over several weeks. Still, we were hoping they’d let us slide with the Outback’s AWD - which according to many accounts is nearly as good as 4WD in the conditions we’d encounter.

As we were unable to take the vacation we’d scheduled earlier this year due to yet another Vanagon breakdown, we decided to take a few extra days ahead of Overland Expo and drive the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was on my bucket list, and generally enjoy the trip. It was going to be our only vacation this year. So on Monday, Sept. 28, we loaded up the Outback and set off when Kay got home from work.

On Tuesday, we started to hear noise about a hurricane. Neither of us had any inkling of it the weekend before OE, but apparently at the beginning of the week, tracks started to show Hurricane Joaquin impacting North Carolina. Well, bummer. Oh well - we were already on our way - so we’d just keep heading down and hope for the best.

Wednesday morning, we hit the Blue Ridge Parkway! Yay!

The dogs enjoyed the fresh air, the open windows, the beautiful temps and the frequent stops to enjoy the view and stretch the legs.

Our morning on the Blue Ridge Parkway was glorious (in spite of a 60-mile detour we had to make around a closed section of the road), but by afternoon, it was starting to get cloudy and gross again. By around 3pm, it was raining on us, and we had to make a call whether to camp in the rain or push on and try to find a hotel somewhere. I had booked us a camping spot on the BRP directly, but cell signal was spotty there, and we hadn’t been able to check on the hurricane’s progress.

Since our original plan had us showing up at Overland Expo on Thursday to set up camp and start hanging out with other travelers, we decided that the best option on Wednesday night would be to hotel it, get a reliable internet connection, watch the progress of the hurricane and make an informed decision on how to proceed. Plus, we were already going to be tent camping in the rain 4 nights at Overland Expo - we wanted to at least start off warm and dry. (Sally’s comfortable camping appointments are the biggest thing I miss from the Vanagon.)

Coming down off the Blue Ridge Parkway, the rain POURED on us. We were driving way below the posted speed limit because the roads were tiny and the rain was very heavy, limiting visibility and traction. The rain was coming so fast, and the ground was already so saturated, that it was running across the steep road in broad rivulets, making hydroplaning a real issue. Our new Outback has a front facing camera system called Eyesight, and the rain was so heavy that Eyesight couldn’t see and turned itself off.

On this particular stretch of road, we were VERY glad we had switched the stock tires on our brand new car to a set of Michelin all seasons that performed better in the rain - it gave us extra peace of mind in these sketchy conditions. Kay also commented that he was glad I was the one who was driving - I have a bit of a problem with heights, and curvy mountain roads with sheer cliffs on the side make me nervous - so Kay thought I was probably driving more cautiously than he would be, and he was glad given how poor the conditions had gotten.

Eventually, we made it down off the Blue Ridge Parkway and back to civilization. Snagged a hotel for the night, made an emergency run to Petsmart to buy some toys for the bored little dog (yes, we got a new dog - I promise more updates!) and settled in to check out the hurricane.

By Thursday morning, it looked like the hurricane wasn’t going to hit North Carolina directly, but was more likely to head up the coast. But it was setting up an unfortunate weather condition where tons of moisture was being siphoned off the storm and directed in a fat swath across South Carolina and parts of North Carolina. Asheville, where Overland Expo would take place, was at the far end of the weather pattern - but the forecast called for it to get something ridiculous like 8+ inches of rain over the weekend. And that was on top of the rain it had already been getting this week - we found out on Wednesday that it had been raining pretty constantly for nearly 5 days already.

S0 we were anticipating Overland Expo would be a mess. But we were already just an hour away, we had paid close to $500 to register, and we really wanted to check out various overlanding rigs and participate in some skills courses. So we opted to head on in and see what we’d find.

On Thursday, we took our time putting around, as camping wasn’t supposed to open until noon. We hit up an awesome BBQ joint, where they just happened to be filming a Food Network show that day. Worked very hard to stay out of the way of the camera and head on our way again quickly.

 

Dropped off the little dog at a boarding place a few miles from the ranch where Overland Expo was taking place, as she’s not great in crowds and is still learning manners. We brought Ben with us, as he’s better behaved, and I thought he’d be more stressed out by being boarded than by being at OE East.

Arrived at the ranch around 12:30 and checked in. We had to wait a bit by the check-in place while they decided if our AWD was good enough to let us in for camping. We overheard them talking to someone by radio: “Oh, it’s a Subaru Outback? Yeah, it’ll make it” - and off we went to set up our spot.

The rain drizzled on and off, but for the most part, we got our cozy little camp set up without incident.

 

 

Once we were settled in, we proceeded to wander around and check out the other overlanding rigs. We saw a Unimog when we came in, and we spent some time chatting with the people who drove it. They had an interesting little setup they’d custom built for dirt cheap on the back of their ‘mog, and it was interesting to see what they’d done. We saw a lot of Jeeps and LandRovers and other 4WD vehicles with roof tents, so we got to check out roof tents of various brands, and debate the pros and cons of a roof tent for the Outback. We even ran into a few other Outbacks camping a bit down from us - we weren’t alone!

One of the coolest rigs we saw was this Pinzgauer:

 

This little beauty was an Austrian military vehicle, and her owner’s actually the one who had her imported into the United States. We spent a long time chatting with him and admiring his build - he’s done a ton of work to create a very unique adventuring vehicle, which he’s had in some pretty gnarly places. He was definitely Our Kinda People. We talked with him about the Vanagon and our build experiences, and the vagaries of owning an old, unique vehicle, but apparently parts for the Pinzgauer were surprisingly not too hard to come by, and he did most of his own work.

Met another very nice gent who showed us his adventure trailer build. He had a really good setup, and took a lot of time to tell us about why he chose the particular brand of adventure trailer he picked - and how he used it. I was impressed, because he’d had his 4wd vehicle + adventure trailer up the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay, something that’s on my bucket list since we left on our Ushuaia trip in December and weren’t able to start from Prudhoe - and he’s also done the Trans American Trail with it. We really enjoyed chatting with him. Unfortunately, by our rough math, his highly modified 4WD vehicle + adventure trailer setup probably set him back by over $100k… which makes it not one of the options we’ll be looking at. If we’re spending that much on our new rig, we’ll go to a different category.

That pretty much sums up Thursday evening. Back under our awning, we boiled up some pasta for dinner and watched the rain come back, then hit the bed when it got too dark to see anything else. Alas, the awning collapsed during the night because we had set it up poorly (we’d actually gotten it to use with the Vanagon but it was our first time setting it up) and dumped a pool of water onto the tent. When we emerged from the tent on Friday morning, everything was a darn sight soggier.

This was the view from the front of our tent on Friday AM:

Vehicles had kept coming and going Thursday PM, and the rain continued, which meant that by Friday AM, the mud on the road in front of our campsite was already ankle deep in places. We quickly boiled up some water and made some oatmeal, then trudged through the mud up to the main gathering spot where Kay went inside to listen to opening remarks, and I stood under an awning outside with Ben. Dogs weren’t allowed in the main structure, so I stood outside and made friends with some other dog owners who were huddled around, while Kay listened to intro. When he came back out, I asked him what they had said, and he summarized it as some chirpy BS about how we’re adventurers, we’re hearty, and we aren’t going to let a little rain keep us from having a great weekend. From what I understand, there was very little or no info about the practical consequences of all the rain.

Opening remarks over, we headed to our first class. It was under a tent, and there were seats, but even though I arrived 5 minutes early, the seats were all taken, and even the standing room under the tent was taken. I stood outside of the tent, holding the umbrella in such a way as to try to keep Ben from getting too much wetter (although we did have him in a rain coat - but his head, paws, butt and tail were still exposed and soaking), and listened to the presenter ramble on about various types of recovery gear.

I suspected that many of the people who were in the nice, dry area *inside* the tent might not have actually been registered for that class, but saw the dry and decided to help themselves, while I stood out in the rain. Kay joined me a few minutes into class, after having gone all the way back to our tent (in the mud) to get work gloves for the class, and it turned out we didn’t even use them. We traded off holding umbrellas over Ben, which was an awkward exercise, and then I had to go have upset tummy in the nearby (wet) port-a-potty. More bummer.

Class over, we had learned the names of several types of recovery gear, and theoretical value of different types of gear. i.e. when you might want to use this type of gear, and when you might want to use that type, and how you inspect it for wear, things to think about regarding safety, etc. It was useful information, and the presenter was clearly very knowledgeable, but I didn’t get as much out of it as I had hoped. Although I suspect my experience was also marred by the standing in the rain and having to step away in the middle due to tummy upset.

After that class, we had an hour until our next class, so we decided to head over to the vendor village and see if we could find anything interesting. The rain continued, relentless. Poor Ben was a trooper, and kept trudging along in the mud with us, but he was completely soaked and ragged-looking. We walked around the perimeter, but didn’t see anything that was particularly relevant to us. We saw a lot of companies that sold overland rigs, but neither of us was interested in the types of overland rigs they were selling. We poked our heads into a few - some out of morbid curiosity, and some to be polite when people started chatting with us, but nothing really caught our fancy. We pondered buying a set of MaxTrax, as it seemed likely we’d need them to get out whenever we finally tried to get out of the ranch, but we didn’t really have a place to put them yet and I was against spending the money at that particular moment.

The one thing we’d really been hoping to see, though, was nowhere to be found: the EarthCruiser.

After wandering around the perimeter, we stopped and asked a helpful volunteer if he knew whether EarthCruiser had arrived yet. He looked them up on the map, and told us where we should find them, although he’d heard that some people had gotten stuck, and one company got into an accident en route, and he didn’t know if the EarthCruiser might have been one of the few who hadn’t made it yet. We thanked him and wandered off.

And Lo! And Behold! The EarthCruiser was exactly where he said it should be! (And guess what! Out of all the rigs there, the one that we had come to see is the one we didn’t take a picture of. But there are plenty of pics online - they’d brought the hard-sided FX model.)

They were just setting up after having pushed hard to make it, but Michelle from EarthCruiser graciously took the time to walk us through it. We poked around inside, asked her a few questions - but I really hadn’t come prepared with a long list of questions. We had mostly just wanted to check out the interior space and see what it felt like inside. On paper, the EarthCruiser looks perfect to us (except for the price tag, yikes) - but there’s no substitute for actually being inside of one and getting a feel for what life would be like, day-in, day-out, in a vehicle like that. We ended up chatting with her for longer than we had planned - she gave us some helpful info, asked about our travel plans, and made some recommendations for us based on what we’d want to do with it.

Long story short: we really liked it. We’ve pretty much decided that we want an EarthCruiser, so we’re going to go out to Bend, Oregon in 2016 to spend some time with the EC crew, check out the factory, hopefully check out the EXP, give some more thought to which model we’d like, and maybe price out the specific options we’d want so we’ve got a specific dollar amount to shoot for.

After seeing the EarthCruiser, we’d accomplished our primary mission in coming to Overland Expo East. We headed to where our next class was supposed to be taking place, but there was no-one there and no sign of where they might have gone. In the meantime, the rain had continued and the mud was getting worse. We overheard people saying that they were canceling a lot of the outdoor classes, and asking people not to move our vehicles. We had signed up for mostly outdoor classes, including several that required our vehicle, so we looked at each other and pondered what to do.

In the meantime, my “waterproof” Gore-Tex wanna be jacket had ceased to be waterproof, and my entire left side was completely saturated (because I was holding the umbrella with my right hand, and trying to keep Ben under it most of the time). Wet me = particularly susceptible to hypothermia, which we know from experience based on some of our motorcycle travel, so we grabbed some warm food and trudged back to our tent to try to get me dry and get some hot food into me. The mud had gotten deeper - Kay had spatters all the way up to his thighs, and my shoes and the ankles of my jeans were completely caked in mud. (This is what it looked like a few hours before this point - it was a lot worse by the time we sat down with lunch:)

I ate, but wasn’t warming up quickly enough - my energy levels had dropped, and I just wanted to take off my wet things and crawl back into the sleeping bag to warm up. The poor dog was soaked and ragged, and sporting a general air of dejection. While we ate lunch, we sat under our now-sad awning (it was loose and flappy after the collapse the night before) and watched high-clearance, 4WD Jeeps - very competent vehicles - getting stuck in front of our tent, completely ruining the roads.

The writing was on the wall.

By the time we were done eating, the rain had stopped, and we looked at each other and said “Quick! Let’s tear down the tent and awning before the rain starts again and get the heck out of here!”

So that’s what we did.

Within minutes of getting the tent and awning down and everything packed away, the rain had started again. The dry weather window had lasted just long enough to get our soggy selves and our soggy dog back into the Outback.

We started to drive out, fretting over whether or not the AWD + XMode on the Outback was capable of getting us out when so many 4WD vehicles were getting stuck. I made Kay drive, because I didn’t want to be the one responsible for getting us out and end up getting us stuck, and he thinks of stuff like that as adventure. We pulled cautiously forward. We slipped and slid in the mud. We got to a wider spot where we could go around the mud, and give at least some of our tires traction in the wet grass. We waited for a 4WD with trailer to get unstuck ahead of us, and while we were pulled over, a Jeep went zooming by in the mud - not giving any space to the stuck vehicle - and then ended up sliding sideways down the road.

(Idiots with 4WD who think they rule the world? They’re friggin’ dangerous.)

Thanks to Kay picking reasonable lines, and the AWD + XMode on the Subaru Outback, we slowly, carefully, without drama, drove out of the mud pit that was Taylor Ranch. On the way out, we passed a volunteer who warned us that if we left, we wouldn’t be able to come back in, as they were asking people not to move unless it was a dire emergency and they weren’t letting new people in. We confirmed our intent to be gone gone, and got the heck out of dodge.

So. We come to what’s on my mind. I’ve heard a lot about this year’s Overland Expo East since it ended. The people talking about it seem to be divided into two camps: people who stayed because they’re “adventurers” and you just roll with whatever gets thrown at you, and people who left or weren’t able to get in to Overland Expo East at all and were pissed off at the organizers.

I stand firmly somewhere in the middle. I make zero apologies and don’t give a single rats ass for anyone who says we aren’t “true adventurers” because we left early. With less than 24 hours there, we were cold, wet, filthy, the dog was miserable - all in spite of us taking reasonable precautions for rain. We had a rain jacket for the dog. We had “waterproof” jackets. (Hah!) We brought umbrellas. We’re no strangers to rain and being out in it. We’re the type of motorcyclists who travel in all weather, and we’ve spent many a day riding in the rain - so we’re not afraid of being wet.

But.

This was our only vacation this year. It was our prerogative whether or not we wanted to spend another 3 days standing around in the rain, and mud that was getting incrementally worse with every passing moment. With the understanding that many of the outdoor classes were going to be canceled anyway, and having seen everything we wanted to see of the rigs that had ventured to OE East, we felt like whatever we might be missing wasn’t enough to compel us to stay and endure the conditions at the ranch.

Further, I say that ANYONE who tries to make people feel like they’re not “real” adventurers because they stayed away, or left early, due to the extreme weather - are a bunch of elitist assholes.

Adventure comes in many forms, and many levels. Yes, the people who stayed are hearty souls who hopefully were prepared for the conditions, and hopefully they enjoyed themselves in spite of the weather. There are plenty of stories of people doing exactly that, and I say “Good on them!”

But that doesn’t mean the people who didn’t stay, or who didn’t come at all, aren’t also adventurers. Anyone who has a passion for exploring, pushing their own boundaries, stepping outside of their comfort zone, and getting out into the world - is an adventurer. You don’t need to be part of some elite few to deserve the moniker.

And the implication - which was even made by the organizers of Overland Expo during their opening remarks - that the rain just “drove away the wannabees” and “the people who are here are the *real* adventurers” - that’s a real shitty way to alienate members of the community. Particularly people who are just beginning to explore the idea of overlanding, and want to learn more about it, but might not have the experience or the gear to participate in an event as waterlogged as this year’s OE East. OR the people who did want to come, but were turned away at the gates without any prior warning - some after driving 1,000+ miles, etc.

*shakes head* As you can see, I’m really cheesed off at the way people are talking about this year’s Overland Expo East.

Also? I feel very strongly that the people running Overland Expo did a poor job of communicating with participants, both before and during the event.

Leading up to the event, they really should have been more transparent about the steps they were taking to deal with the rain, and what participants might face when they arrived. After the fact, I found out that it had been raining for days and they had been on-site for days prior to the event, trying to fortify the Ranch against the damage the water was *already* doing. Then, the fact that the hurricane kept funneling moisture directly into the area? A forecast for 8-10 inches of rain during the weekend, on ground that was already saturated? For Christ’s sake - cars that were parked for the day literally started sliding down the hillside because it was so unstable due to all the rain.

During the event, they should have done a lot better at communicating with participants, instead of pandering and trying to put a positive spin on things. We showed up for a class that wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and there wasn’t a sign or any indication of where we were supposed to go if it had been moved. And THAT class was under a tent to begin with, so I still don’t understand why it wasn’t exactly where we expected to find it.

We also had to overhear a bunch of people talking about canceled classes and asking people not to move their vehicles, instead of hearing about it direct from the organizers. And after the fact, I heard many people talking about how most of the classes went on as scheduled, so I still to this day have no idea what actually happened with classes. Were they canceled, or weren’t they? At one point during the day on Saturday, Overland Expo put out an update that they were asking people not to move their vehicles, and confirming that classes involving personal vehicles had been canceled, but they said very few classes had been canceled, yadda yadda. This should have been broadcasted WAY sooner, if we were already hearing things to this effect before we left on Friday morning.

There was a lot of kerfuffle about people being turned away on Saturday and Sunday. After the “unsafe parking situation” (I remarked to Kay about how that hill didn’t look safe for parking due to wet/mud when we checked in on Thursday - how did they not see that until parked cars literally started sliding down the hill on Saturday? *shakes head*) - some people reported that they were able to take Ubers or taxis to the ranch to get in to Overland Expo, while others said they got turned away even when they didn’t try to park onsite. The updates from the organizers themselves are ambiguous - they said on Saturday 10/3 that people who hadn’t already been checked in would be turned away for the weekend, even day pass visitors - but in the comments, someone asked if they showed up on foot if they could still get in, and the official account responded “Yes” - so many mixed messages!

In short, I’m really displeased with the way the organizers handled communication.

Yes, it was a sucky situation. It was an uncharacteristic amount of rain, and it put the organizers in a difficult position with all the unusual situations it created at the ranch. I think they probably did the best they could in a difficult situation (although I have a few quibbles with things that seem obvious to me and I feel they didn’t act proactively enough on) but my big beef with them is the poor communication, both before, during and after the event.

Post-event, all the official lines of communication were full of positive spin about how the people who did show up made the best of the event, in spite of the weather and poor conditions. They made one post that commiserated with people who weren’t able to attend or who had other issues getting onsite, etc. - with vague references to “working on solutions” for people who emailed or contacted them directly. Does this mean they were privately offering refunds to the folks who were upset enough to contact them directly? Or free or discounted admission next year? Or, or…? Who knows, because everything else from them after that was more happy spin about the things that did go on in spite of the rain.

I’m glad they did at least acknowledge that it was a difficult solution - in a single Facebook post, 5 days after the event - but I feel that was too little, too late. To the organizers of Overland Expo: you could have done better.