Overlanding vs. Car Camping
Neither one is right or wrong, but let’s call it what it is.
Several years ago Scott Brady published a great article for Expedition Portal called “What Is Overlanding?”defining the terms and activities of Vehicle-Dependent Expedition”, “Vehicle-Supported Overlanding” and “Back Country Adventures”. I believe Scott has done an excellent job describing the difference between car camping, overlanding and expeditions.
Why get caught up in a name? As long as you are out having an adventure its’ all good, right? Sure it is. But I guess I feel like the term “overlanding” has reached a popular level where the term is over used when what most of us do is really camping. Again, the important part of the equation is that we are out and about and not sitting home watching TV. But to those adventurous souls who truly partake in an overlanding adventure for months or years experiencing remote locations and other cultures, I feel we belittle their achievements by including a weekend trip to the National Forest in our home state on the same level.
Long before the term overlanding gained popularity here in the US, I was wandering around and camping. There is one trip I remember that reminds me that running around in my vehicle searching for cool stuff to see and do is, and has always been, a part of who I am. Whenever I begin to question why I fight the norms of society and pursue my own path, I reflect on my high school senior week trip of 1984.
Graduation was over. I had a few days off from my job at the sporting goods store. Friends from school were at the beach. Added together, this could only mean one thing, road trip. I loaded up my 1967 Ford Mustang including fishing rods and canoe on top and headed east to the sun and fun.
I guess you could say I was not the normal city private school student, even back then I was gaining a reputation as an outdoorsman. I once took a fellow student on a dove hunt where I called in a few ducks with just my mouth not using a call, just because I could, or maybe it was when I got detention for using my turkey call in class. Either way my music was different than most in my class.
But as with most teenagers, I wanted to be like the others and normal, so I went to the beach to hang with my friends and party.
Arriving at the Ocean City boardwalk, I walked around until I found a few classmates. Soon enough I was hanging out at a friend’s house drinking beer and flirting with the girls until the late hours of the night. In the morning, I realized the scene was not for me. I gassed up the Mustang and hit the road.
For the next three days, I slept on picnic tables, ate hot dogs and beans, and fished, alone. I drove around Maryland’s Eastern Shore stopping at a few known fishing spots and explored new ones. This was a time before cell phones. During those three days my parents, or I guess looking back now I realize, no one knew where I was or what I was doing. I was traveling alone experiencing life and thinking of what was to come next in my life.
Was I overlanding, car camping, on an expedition or on a backcountry adventure? Call it what you may, I call it life. But in truth, what most of us do is basically just camping, and that is fine and a good thing. There is no reason to try and make a camping trip sound like more by calling it overlanding, just go and get out of the house.
