00:00:14 Speaker 1: 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 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. 00:00:55 Speaker 2: Right on. If there was one takeaway, that's one of the better ones, for sure. You know it's so calm. 00:01:03 Speaker 1: 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 been there and you're kind of expecting possibly having some times of food scarcity. 00:01:33 Speaker 2: 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 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. 00:02:12 Speaker 3: Okay, are you camping? 00:02:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, so we'll be in our expedition trucks for the next sixty days as soon as we show up. 00:02:21 Speaker 3: How'd you get them over there? 00:02:23 Speaker 2: We shipped them in containers from New Jersey to Durban, South Africa. 00:02:29 Speaker 3: Dang. 00:02:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, they've been on the water right now for forty five days. They're just about to get there. 00:02:36 Speaker 3: That's nuts. 00:02:37 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:02:38 Speaker 1: 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. 00:02:46 Speaker 2: 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 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. 00:03:17 Speaker 1: 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. 00:03:30 Speaker 2: 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 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. 00:04:02 Speaker 1: But every evening you sort of have a plan to land in a town or in a village or something where there's food. 00:04:10 Speaker 2: 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 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, 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. 00:05:10 Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, logistical nightmare. 00:05:13 Speaker 2: It is. It's all logistics, and that to me is really the fun because you're problem solving. 00:05:20 Speaker 1: 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. 00:05:33 Speaker 2: Right. 00:05:33 Speaker 1: 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 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? 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 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 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. 00:07:09 Speaker 2: 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 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. 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. 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 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. 00:09:00 Speaker 1: 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? 00:09:19 Speaker 2: 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, 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 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? 00:10:19 Speaker 1: 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. 00:10:30 Speaker 2: 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 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. 00:11:07 Speaker 1: No way to shut it down to keep the air from moving through you can. 00:11:12 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 stay up there, your pillows stay up there, and then yeah, you open it up, you put some poles in and crawl into bed. 00:12:26 Speaker 1: And I'm guessing that breaking it down is just as fast. It's a little slower. 00:12:32 Speaker 2: 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 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 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. 00:13:39 Speaker 1: 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. 00:13:49 Speaker 2: 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 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 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. 00:14:52 Speaker 1: 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 guys do shelter? 00:15:15 Speaker 2: 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 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. 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 need roofline to be able to put it up on the rack, you know. So that's kind of the middle ground. 00:16:28 Speaker 3: 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. 00:16:44 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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. 00:18:06 Speaker 1: 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 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. 00:18:46 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 you get there. Once you get into a system like that, it's tough to leave. 00:19:58 Speaker 3: 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. 00:20:08 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:20:08 Speaker 3: 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. 00:20:29 Speaker 2: 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 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 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. 00:21:22 Speaker 1: Sorry, when you say ice house heater, you're just talking about like a propane Uh, mister buddy kind of a thing. 00:21:28 Speaker 2: 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, 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. 00:22:14 Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm probably don't sleep with them on. Yeah, that's actually just don't sleep with it. 00:22:20 Speaker 2: 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 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. 00:22:47 Speaker 1: 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. 00:22:55 Speaker 2: You canna be like jelly. 00:22:57 Speaker 1: 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 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. 00:23:28 Speaker 2: 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. 00:23:35 Speaker 1: You just wouldn't know. You just slip into Yeah. Yeah, you just start dreaming and next thing you know, it's over. 00:23:43 Speaker 2: That's okay. 00:23:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, you know, in all seriousness, don't mess don't mess around with uh with that stuff, be safe about it. 00:23:52 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:23:52 Speaker 1: So I guess we're we kind of covered the regular tents, uh, rooftop tents, anything. 00:23:59 Speaker 2: 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. 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 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 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. 00:25:17 Speaker 1: 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. 00:25:34 Speaker 2: 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 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? 00:26:02 Speaker 1: 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. 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. 00:26:36 Speaker 2: 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. 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 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 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 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. 00:28:19 Speaker 1: 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? 00:28:31 Speaker 2: 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. 00:28:54 Speaker 1: 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? 00:29:15 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, it sounds awesome. 00:32:30 Speaker 1: Now, you didn't sell me on the rooftop tent, but you sold me on this deal. 00:32:38 Speaker 2: 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 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 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. 00:33:30 Speaker 1: 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 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 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. 00:34:21 Speaker 2: 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 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 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. 00:35:23 Speaker 3: 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 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 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 more often. 00:36:28 Speaker 2: 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 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 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. 00:37:20 Speaker 1: 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. 00:37:40 Speaker 2: 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. 00:37:56 Speaker 1: 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? 00:38:11 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 00:40:31 Speaker 1: 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. 00:40:51 Speaker 2: It would be a much better way to go about that. Yeah, no more if you get an aunting like that, no more. 00:41:01 Speaker 3: Do you have a mattresses that you really like to use? 00:41:05 Speaker 2: 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 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. 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 dang nice. They're nice. 00:42:14 Speaker 1: 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. 00:42:20 Speaker 2: 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. 00:42:35 Speaker 1: 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. 00:42:48 Speaker 3: I think let's finish with the organization. 00:42:50 Speaker 1: So let's jump over to cooking. Where do you want to start with with cooking and eating clay? 00:42:58 Speaker 2: 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. 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 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 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? 00:44:29 Speaker 3: Uh? 00:44:30 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 hard to use. You just got to know what you're doing. You know. 00:45:38 Speaker 1: 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 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. 00:46:08 Speaker 3: You're like pumping it up. 00:46:10 Speaker 2: You prime it, don't you Yeah, when you're when you're priming it. 00:46:14 Speaker 1: 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. 00:46:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, and they last a lot longer. 00:46:28 Speaker 1: Uh. 00:46:29 Speaker 2: 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. 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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. 00:49:13 Speaker 1: But but the heat source is just any any canister stove. 00:49:19 Speaker 3: Yeah, like a propane bottle. 00:49:20 Speaker 2: 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, that's getting a little too done. You can push it off to the edge and they're very. 00:49:46 Speaker 1: 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. 00:49:54 Speaker 2: You're not like flipping this thing. No, uhuh got it? Huh yeah? How much is it weigh? Cool? 00:50:02 Speaker 1: Uh? 00:50:03 Speaker 2: 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. 00:50:18 Speaker 3: 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. 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. 00:50:59 Speaker 2: Gotcha. Yeah, that's cool. Jet Oil is great brand. If you haven't looked into them, they make good stuff. 00:51:07 Speaker 1: 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? 00:51:20 Speaker 2: I think I've been around one of them. Yeah, yeah, I bet. 00:51:26 Speaker 1: 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 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, you don't even have time to go take a pee and come back and the water's boiling over. 00:52:16 Speaker 2: 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 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 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. 00:53:15 Speaker 1: 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. 00:53:37 Speaker 2: I didn't know. 00:53:38 Speaker 1: 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? 00:53:58 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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 food in those guys. Okay, So yeah, so one we're running. 00:55:34 Speaker 1: 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. 00:55:46 Speaker 2: 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. 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. 00:56:21 Speaker 3: 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? 00:56:27 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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 kinds of stuff. Wow, So I want. 00:57:56 Speaker 3: 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? 00:58:08 Speaker 2: 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 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. 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. 00:59:08 Speaker 3: So let me, I'm kind of surprised you don't do like a goal zero or something like that. 00:59:16 Speaker 2: 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 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. 00:59:58 Speaker 1: 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. 01:00:21 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 01:03:01 Speaker 1: 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 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 up again and then and cool it back off. Is that Do you guys ever run generators like that for power? 01:03:53 Speaker 2: 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 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 need to maintain. But there's nothing wrong with it. It works great. 01:04:41 Speaker 1: It's just probably it's it's heavy, it takes up more room. I'm guessing then some of these solar systems, right. 01:04:48 Speaker 2: 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. 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 to not have to use a generator. 01:05:34 Speaker 4: Is there. 01:05:35 Speaker 1: 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, 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 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? 01:06:29 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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 of the vehicle. It's its own system. So there's advantages to that. Are there? 01:08:02 Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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 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? 01:09:46 Speaker 2: 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. 01:10:02 Speaker 1: 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. 01:10:20 Speaker 2: That's slick, man. Yeah, there's there's some pretty cool applications towards the hunting lifestyle with a lot of this stuff. 01:10:30 Speaker 1: 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 program you're onto? 01:10:52 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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. 01:12:16 Speaker 1: 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. 01:12:22 Speaker 2: 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, when you're looking for that type of experience. It just good. 01:12:46 Speaker 1: 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 food and all that stuff. 01:13:10 Speaker 2: 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 filter happy so they they get there really cool too. 01:15:28 Speaker 1: 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. 01:15:46 Speaker 2: 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, 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 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. 01:16:53 Speaker 1: 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? 01:17:11 Speaker 2: 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 a thing even in cars. 01:17:36 Speaker 1: Sure, sure, how uh, how do you calculate how much water you need to carry? 01:17:56 Speaker 2: 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 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. 01:18:43 Speaker 1: 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, a five gallon, Jerry, I can I can rock that all the time? 01:19:09 Speaker 2: 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 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 not me. I hope that's you, but that's not me. That's just not realistic for me. In real life application, it. 01:19:57 Speaker 1: 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. 01:20:13 Speaker 2: 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, 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 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 didn't even know existed. 01:21:25 Speaker 3: 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. 01:21:45 Speaker 2: 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 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. What was your question? 01:22:31 Speaker 3: Oh, just organization with all this stuff, Yeah, how do you go? 01:22:35 Speaker 2: 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 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, 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. 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, 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. 01:24:25 Speaker 3: And they're extra burly latches. 01:24:27 Speaker 2: 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. 01:24:46 Speaker 1: 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. 01:24:56 Speaker 2: 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. 01:25:21 Speaker 1: 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 other one? But yeah, run me through what's in those? 01:25:44 Speaker 2: 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 we get into fixed fixed assets of organization, and. 01:28:02 Speaker 3: 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. 01:28:10 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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. 01:29:26 Speaker 1: 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 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? 01:30:00 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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. 01:31:20 Speaker 1: Got it Jordan, any other questions on organization. 01:31:27 Speaker 3: Man I don't think so, it's just like an ever evolving thing. 01:31:30 Speaker 2: 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. 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. 01:32:14 Speaker 3: 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. 01:32:29 Speaker 2: 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 so it was much easier to go earlier the next time because it was done, and that organizational system really helped. 01:33:02 Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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? 01:34:16 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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, especially for space and weight. 01:35:45 Speaker 3: 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. 01:35:55 Speaker 2: 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 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. 01:36:34 Speaker 1: Oh thirty bucks. Oh, like just the plastic with the folding metal legs. 01:36:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's for the money and the top and the cost. It's pretty tough to beat. 01:36:45 Speaker 3: They're big, and they make ones that fold hast now. 01:36:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, they're pretty awesome that you know, can't go wrong. There nothing wrong with that. And different sizes too. Yeah. 01:36:55 Speaker 1: So I got mine at Costco. I think it's the same thing. It's a plastic table right with mettle legs with legs. 01:37:02 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 get to camp, flip the latch and slide that table out and you set a table up. 01:38:11 Speaker 1: 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. 01:38:23 Speaker 2: 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 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 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. 01:39:16 Speaker 1: 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 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 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. 01:40:17 Speaker 2: 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 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. 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 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. But it's pretty awesome what's available now. Dude, you you've given me so many rabbit holes. 01:41:48 Speaker 1: I've got rabbit holes for the next year after Hey, after chatting with you twice. 01:41:53 Speaker 3: 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. 01:42:01 Speaker 2: 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 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 the history of man to use your vehicle for getting out and exploring. Yeah, and it's cool. 01:42:48 Speaker 1: 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. 01:42:54 Speaker 2: You don't have to. 01:42:55 Speaker 1: 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, and then maybe you end up being an Overlander one day. Yeah, but cool Jordan, Yeah. 01:43:25 Speaker 3: 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. 01:43:33 Speaker 1: 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 the Africa stuff. 01:43:54 Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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. 01:45:08 Speaker 1: 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. 01:45:25 Speaker 2: But don't worry. 01:45:26 Speaker 1: 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. 01:45:39 Speaker 2: Be a little more visual. 01:45:42 Speaker 1: 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. 01:46:05 Speaker 3: 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 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. 01:46:39 Speaker 1: 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 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 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 Jordan and I. 01:47:45 Speaker 4: 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. 01:47:58 Speaker 3: So yeah, it has been fun. Man. 01:48:01 Speaker 1: 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, 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. 01:48:37 Speaker 3: Awesome, Thanks everybody,