Over the years, we've gone to several Overland Expos, at three different venues. Our early visits were in the name of research. The first was spent trying to find a trailer that would work for us. We wound up with an Adventure Trailer Horizon, which we happily pulled behind the FJ for quite some time. We spent at least a few Expos looking for the ideal rig to live IN, (instead of on top of). That exercise eventually lead to our Earthroamer. The decision to get the ER took a lot longer, partly because there were so many choices and partly because any decision involved a lot of money. Eventually we did get #80 (AKA: Gus) and we've been very happy with that choice. However, one cannot help but get rig envy when attending an Expo. Everywhere you look are exquisite trucks that look, well, "overlandy". They also look clean, a condition that is fairly rare for Gus.
This Expo wasn't too different. Tons of cool rigs, especially vans. The "Van Life" thing has had a real effect, especially on Sprinters. There appeared to be many people doing conversions on Sprinters and there were many iterations of two and four wheel drive Sprinters. One of the nicest vehicles we saw was made by Adventure Trailer (albeit not a trailer) but a camper called a Habitat, which fits onto a pickup bed. Especially nice was one built onto a full sized RAM pickup.
We didn't spend a ton of time at the Expo, as for years now, we have been more interested in visiting with friends and making new friends. We camped at a location about 15 miles away, at the base of a couple of cinder cones. We were able to avoid the silliness that comes with camping next to thousands of people, yet had easy access to Expo and to the town of Flagstaff. Our campsite was staked out early by J and Val, who arrived a day before us, and joined by Merelyn and Dave. Josh spent a night, and entertained us by a (fake) campfire. Later, others came by to visit. It was especially cool to have Marion and Mai camp with us while they visited Expo. Later we had a surprise visit by Sherry, a Boulder friend who races sailboats and now lives in the Bay Area. She overnighted while driving from Key West to SFO. Just typing that makes me tired.
We had a great time hanging out, watching the dogs play, and catching up with our various travels. The weekend went by super fast.
I'm posting some photos of some of the stuff we saw at Expo, as well as a pic of the view from the top of one of the cinder cones.
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