Vanlife or Overlanding? What’s better? We found our preference!
Welcome back to the Mountains 2 Seas weekly blog! This week we would like go over our road trip kit, our GFC truck camper and how we came to settle on this as opposed to our numerous other options, including why we DIDN’T do a van build.
We love camping and most of all we LOVE road trips! Since I was little, I’ve been camping. I cannot remember a time where camping wasn’t a part of my life. When Ash and I got together, our camping trips started as simple overnights and slowly grew into longer and more advanced adventures. We started out with a tent from Walmart (that didn’t last nor make the cut) to trying sleeping in the back of our FJ cruiser too. That was an experience, as we experimented with that while adventuring through Death Valley and needed a place to get out of the wind. All this to say, we fell in love with road tripping and having our car be our base camp.
Over the years, we continued to experiment with builds and sleep setups. We had a jeep wrangler for a bit that did well, but really only for ground camping. Ground camping is something we both really enjoy (Ashley too believe it or not) but having our kit in one place and being able to make and break camp simply and efficiently is one of our top priorities.
After the wrangler, we spent some more time ground camping, slowly expanding our kits and Ashleys experience as well. Then we saw rooftop tents come on the scene in force and we figured, we have the FJ, let’s try one of those!
That moment cemented our desire to road trip like overlanders, with our bed on our roof and our kit in our car. We could 4 wheel out to anywhere our miles could take us, make camp and just enjoy the adventure. Even camping in established campgrounds was great as we didn’t have to unpack everything just to enjoy a campsite.
After a while, a Tacoma came into our lives and we became a full Toyota family. We came by a Baja Rack on Craigslist and for once the rooftop tent had a proper home. Building the Tacoma into our mini overlander was an easy decision and didn’t need much work. The open bed made it easy to build out storage spots, carry extra gear, put wet and dirty gear away and kept the cab free for our pupper Rocca who went with us on every trip. She had her own spot, bed, fan and everything in the jumper seats.
As things do, life started getting busier and with the passing of Rocca, our road trips took a timeout. For my birthday last year though, Ashley took me overlanding on the island of Kauai to re-ignite that spark and we rented a rig from Hawaiian Overlanders and it happened to be an FJ cruiser with a different style of rooftop tent. One that we had seen but never really pursued due to price and the ever lingering question of “where do we put it?” It levered up to a little over 50 degrees and was the most comfortable rooftop we’ve slept in. We talked and knew it was time to get back into the overland game.
After that trip, we were both sold. We had looked at truck campers for contained builds before but hadn’t found one for our budget or style so we weren’t sure what we needed.
Fast forward a bit, and we linked up with a firefighter who was willing to part with his rig from his own tundra after realizing it wasn’t what he needed. We couldn’t believe our luck! The right rig, the right color, and the right price and we were back in the overland game!
We have been asked why we haven’t done a van as apposed to our truck camper and to be honest, we don’t have a good answer. A van would be amazing, but we honestly don’t have a place to put it, we still have businesses to run and need a daily driver for that, and we really love the freedom of utilizing our Toyota TRD in all weather conditions. We can head out into the wilderness and feel safe and secure knowing we have the tools in that truck alone to get us home safe. Not to say that vans can’t either, but we’ve not had the experience with a van that would sway us, at least so far.
There is a couple in our region that explore for a living called The Adventure Addicts that had a Tundra with an Alaskan camper that recently moved to a van build. Really cool couple that Ashley got to meet. We hope to meet with them sometime soon and ask them the in’s and outs of trading truck for van life. If we can land that meeting, we’re going to share it with you!
All this to say, Ash and I are overlanders for life. We love our truck builds and are so excited to take our (new to us) Tundra TRD to new places and continue the build to make it the right we’ve always dreamed of. A little bit of the FJ, a dash of the jeep, a hefty dose of Tacoma and some ingenuity on our side and we think we have the recipe to finish our dream build. Stay with us to see how it comes along. We’ll be trying a few things through winter too!
Have a Happy Thanksgiving, we hope to see you out there!
