This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend Overland Expo west. I had never been to Flagstaff before so I was excited to get to a new place and explore. I started the journey south on Wednesday morning with the plan to stay in a hotel downtown so I could walk around.
I have to admit…starting the riding season off with a 530 mile day was rough……I was beat by the time I got there. But after a quick shower I was ready to see the sights. I walked around downtown and stopped for a sushi dinner.
The next morning I planned to meet my friends, Enrique and Jessi at the entrance to the expo so that we could get our assigned camp spots next to each other. We were hoping that getting there early would get us a good spot close to the event. Unfortunately the camp area was filled from the back to the front meaning our extra effort of getting there early earned us a camp site that was literally as far away as possible from the event. O well. We got set up and then went exploring.
The event was mostly just a whole lot of walking around looking at cool stuff so I’ll just put a bunch of pictures here.
Thats pretty much all the pictures from the actual show…..unfortunately the weekend was plagued with rain and wind so I didn’t take as many pictures as I probably should have. I had a great time and saw more damn roof top tents than I’ve ever seen in my life. I enjoy seeing the newest technology and whats going on in the industry so I had plenty of fun despite the rain. We also took a bunch of classes that were quite useful. I did a few about blogging, website building, photography, and journaling that were awesome and we did a few together like first aid training and off road riding techniques. The off road riding class turned into a competition between us….who would drop their bike first. I lost. 🙁
The rain was supposed to turn into snow on Sunday so I got a hotel room……I hate waking up and breaking down camp in the rain.
The whole weekend we were making jokes about all the fancy gear people have and how most of it probably doesn’t get used. There seems to be a lot of “keeping up with the Joneses” when it comes to overlanding. I know the motorcycle crowd does the same thing but I would be willing to bet that at least 80% of the vehicles we saw never go anywhere other than these shows and the grocery store. We retreated to a hotel because we were sleeping in a tent and a hammock but we spotted 5 fully tricked out jeeps with sweet camp trailers in the hotel parking lot……I would have still been out there if I had that setup! At dinner that night we came up with the term “BROverlanders” and “BROverlanding” to describe the people with all the fancy gear that never gets used……I know…..we’re jerks.
I’m glad I got the room cause it did indeed start to snow and the rain continued all night and into Monday morning. I hit the road early knowing that I had 530 miles of rain ahead of me.
I actually ended up getting stuck for a while in a town about 3 hours from home. I got stuck in traffic at the scene of a big pile up and then it started snowing hard and I was creeping along in 2 inches of slush. I was way too nervous to take my hands off the bars and take pictures. I creeped along in 2nd for a couple miles and took the first exit I came to and sat in a hotel to wait it out. After about 2 hours the sun came out and I hauled butt the rest of the way home.
Excellent weekend in my opinion.