2013 Overland Expo

Details: By Shane Williams

Overland Expo 2013 - FJC Magazine The Overland Expo this year turned out to be quite the adventure for my 3 year old and I. You see, my lovely wife (and our Editor) Angie was planning on joining us at the event, and even spent three days in Ridgway to break up the trip a little (that’s a very good idea when you’re 7 months pregnant). Unfortunately, Angie got called back to Colorado Springs to work at the last minute, so it was Brenden & I for the rest of the journey.

Not wanting to fight the influx of campers like we did last year, we arrived at Mormon Lake early on Wednesday – to a completely empty field. It was actually kind of nice have a little freedom of movement to stake out the FJC/Tacoma camping area in advance. By noon on Wednesday, we had the Manley Explore model setup and ready for the event. We were able to spend a good bit of time exploring the grounds (Brenden is a budding Overland Rider with his Strider bike), and helping others get setup when needed.

By noon Thursday the calm, peaceful grounds became a whirlwind of activity. With over 110 vendors at the event this year, the excellent Overland Expo staff had their work cut out for them. Despite my official badge not making it to the event, registration went as well as can be expected and nearly all the vendors (and many, many attendees) were checked in by early Thursday evening.

Keeping the three year old entertained by looking at trucks and exploring works fairly well, albeit for a limited amount of time. Brenden & daddy spent plenty of time on a couple of mini-adventures into Flagstaff for supplies, and exploring some of the local hiking trails. I’ll also admit that giving the lad a break from the wind with his iPad inside the FJ happened on a few occasions, but he really is a trooper and with 4 countries (and over 40 airplane flights) under his belt, he travels very well.

Friday was supposed to be the big day for us: we expected huge crowds like we saw in 2012, and with so many vendors to chat with we figured it would be a challenge to see everything. We ended up spending quite a bit of our Friday visiting with the team from Expedition Overland at their booth, catching up on their new adventure and letting Brenden hang out with Clay & Rachelle’s oldest boy, Cy.

While there were plenty of people at the event Friday, it seemed a little slower than the previous year. It could be due to the odd way the grounds had to be organized. Since there were so many vendors this year, each of the main ‘rows’ between the roads in the vendor area was split. Instead of a vendor on each side of the row, an additional column was added down the middle to accommodate more vendors. It’s a good plan, and using railroad ties on one end to define the rows was a good step. Unfortunately, most attendees would rather walk on gravel roads than down a bumpy grassy area. As a result, the middle rows didn’t see much traffic at all, and many of the vendors used it as a parking area, further blocking access and restricting traffic. We’ve heard rumors that Overland Expo will be looking for a new facility for the 2014 event, and hopefully they can find something that’s a little larger and more vendor friendly (a little less wind would be OK too).

Late Friday afternoon we decided to do a real-time install of a BajaRack Utility Rack and Rigid LED light bar on Jim’s Tacoma (See June 2013 issue of Tacoma Magazine). After another quick trip to Flagstaff for a T-Mobile hotspot, we moved Jims truck to the BajaRack booth so the install could be tackled first thing in the morning.

Luckily Jeff Downer from Expedition Overland and the guys from BajaRack were on hand to help get both items installed, since I was busy manning the hotspot + cell phone to keep the live stream going. They were more successful than I and as it turns out, UStream from an iPhone in the middle of the mountains is not the best way to stream an installation. A few hiccups with the Rigid light were quickly solved by Valerie Douglas, and Jim’s new light was good to go.