To save you that hassle of endlessly scrolling and reading reviews on Amazon, here’s 11 different camp kitchen items we actually use on a day-to-day basis whenever we’re traveling our of our Land Cruiser Troopy.

We drove south through a narrow cactus-lined two lane road with no shoulders. Not just very little shoulders, there were literally no shoulders at all. The lane just ended. It was pavement, then a drop of 6-12 inches, then desert. We had no room to mess up. We had no choice. We had to stay alert…

Four weeks. Seven states. 4,500 miles. Thirty-one days on the road. Twenty-six days of wild camping. Zero bear encounters. Five total showers. But we’re finally back home. Stepping back into our house felt strange. Stepping into our home felt like stepping into an AirBnB. It didn’t feel like it was our place. It took a couple of hours of getting back into the rhythm of home life for that feeling to dissipate. Home for the past few weeks was our 1999 Mitsubishi Montero…

Two owner vehicle from Australia. It was a Ergon Energy utility vehicle from new until 1996. Second owner took excellent care of it. Never driven on the beach. Very well looked after. In prime condition. Shifts into gears beautifully.

Camp cooking gets a bad rap. It’s either known to be freeze-dried backpacker meals that require boiling water, premade food that can easily be reheated, or the usual hamburgers and hot dogs. There’s an air of inconvenience whenever the topic of cooking at camp gets brought up.

Karissa and I were peacefully woken up from our slumber by the sound of soft waves breaking on the beach. It was a distant, but gentle, pop. It was infrequent, but just frequent enough that, through our crusty, dreary, eyes, we were curious enough about it to poke our heads out the tent’s window.

Pop... pop... pop….

Our eyes strained to focus against the tent’s mosquito netting. But it didn’t take long for us to spot the source of the noise: a distant pod of whales playfully slapping their fins on the calm pink and purple predawn water. 

There’s no such thing as a perfect travel vehicle. It has quickly become a social media hot take to get those precious, precious clicks. Overlanding is a very personal type of lifestyle. No one truck, or setup, can be considered perfect for a wide swath of people with very different outdoor lifestyles, cultures, interests, or ways of living. Not everyone wants to rock crawl for endless miles to poop in a hole. Some prefer the calmer routes that lets them experience the world around them. Everyone brings something different to the table. Everyone has different needs, and check boxes. Just because the market is currently pushing everyone to own full-sized trucks with slide in, or flat bed, campers, does not mean that’s the way forward.

As an avid cook, I find building a relationship with your ingredients is incredibly important. These relationships form the more you use them. I quickly started to know what good, and not so good, products were and where to get them. The more I cooked, especially with any kind of animal protein, the more I wanted to be a part of the whole process —from hunt to plate.

When you cross the finish line of a marathon, you can finally take that first initial sigh of relief. Months of training for the race lead up to that very moment. You did it. You’re finished. You did a great job of getting there. You kept to your stringent training diet, you kept going to the gym, and you gritted your teeth and showed up to those Saturday morning 6am mileage runs. But, after receiving your medal, taking in a few much needed after-race refreshments, you know that’s when the hurt really starts. You take your trainer mandated ice bath, then a massage, and followed only by days of leg stiffness and pain.

We’ve been very fortunate with our two dogs, Kyia and Stella. They’re easy going and they very much look forward to outdoor adventures. Best of all? The two of them love being on the road. Here’s a few tips to keep your furry family members happy and healthy when they’re traveling on the road with you.

There’s nothing worse than stopping for lunch on a hot day to have a dry and unsatisfying sandwich. We’ve all been there. Here’s a few tips before the heading into the long weekend to have the most enjoyable sandwich as possible on those quick lunch stops along the trail or at camp.

Living in the moment is something I always find myself struggling with. We patiently waited for the winter weather, and our schedules, to align for our trip to Yosemite National Park. We’re always on winter weather-watch. We missed most of the big snow dumps this season, and was quickly becoming late season. Snow days were becoming rarer and rarer….

So, the dust has settled. We’ve finally come to the realization that this 1994 Land Cruiser Troop Carrier RV is actually ours, and not a figment of our imagination. It’s a real thing. Take a walk around the truck with us as we go through how the Troopy came to us from Australia, and how it was modded by the previous owner.

There comes a time when your not-so-serious hobby crosses the line into serious territory. You’ll know exactly when that happens. There’s this inner push to keep learning, and keep progressing forward. Cooking is one of those things. One day, you’re making spaghetti from a jar, and the next you’re in a kitchen for a few days prepping all of Thanksgiving dinner….

It’s been four weeks since we left our home. Four weeks of being on the road. Four weeks of eating meals from our truck. Four weeks of incredible scenery, unpredictable weather, and endless memories. Our home has become a faded memory at this point. Our future consists of what’s happening the next few hours, or, the next day….

Here it is. Our new rig. It’s a 1994 Toyota Land Cruiser Troop Carrier. It has come a long, long, way before it nested into its quiet parking spot in California. It was trucked across the land mass of Australia, boarded a giant ocean-going ship, floated around the major ports of Australia, toured the whole of South East Asia before making its way to China, Korea, and Japan before it made the huge leap across the massive pond.

Great Basin National Park doesn’t get the notoriety that it deserves. It is a national park that has its card stacked up against each other. It’s in the middle of nowhere with the closest decent sized town (Ely, NV) being an hour drive away. It’s a relatively small park (121 mi²) compared to its much more popular siblings like Yosemite (1,169 mi²), Yellowstone (3,471 mi²), and Death Valley (5,270 mi²)…

When someone asks you if you want to frolic around the arid deserts in the Southwestern United States in the middle of July, the answer is always a resounding “HELL. NO.” But, if that frolicking entails being chased around with big boy video cameras attached to big boy toys, the answer will always be a resounding “HELL. YES.”

We live and breathe camera storage. It is what we do. It’s how we pay the bills. It’s how we’re able to go on long extended trips across the continental United States. It is something that’s absolutely ingrained into our day-in and day-out. Next to our actual photographic equipment, the place cameras are taken out, and put away, see the same amount, if not more, day-to-day handling…

Our memories are bookmarked by the ebb and flow of colors that mark the thousands of sunrises and sunsets that we’ve experienced. Each recollection of an arriving, or passing, of our nearest star brings with it a flood of snippets of that day. The conversations. The laughs. The meals. The afternoons we’ve spent in the front cab of the truck because it was freezing and pouring outside. The oohs and awws from stumbling upon a vista worth ooh-ing and aww-ing over…