The Overland Rally

This past week we went up to Ellensburg for the Northwest Overland Rally. This was an event we've been planning on attending for over a year now, and we were really looking forward to it. It was put on by a whole bunch of really cool companies who sell/publish overlanding related stuff (as seen in this link), but most importantly, a lot of our friends from The Northwest Overland Society put a whole lot of work into making it happen, and it was awesome.

We arrived and set up camp. It happened at the 4W Ranch. It was the PERFECT location for it. A beautiful piece of property, with plenty of room for all of us, and a crystal clear creek to cool off in, and the owner was sweet enough to allow training exercises in different muddy areas of her property too... (they were filled in when we were done, to be clear.) If you need a place to stay in Ellensburg, I highly recommend this idyllic location.

Teamwork... The creek. Recently melted snow, in other words. SO SO SO cold, but felt SO SO SO good with how hot and dry the weather was.
The perfect family dinner.

About 1/3 of the Vendor Pasture.

We played in the creek every day. It helped so much with the heat. The creek was pretty fast moving, but it was shallow on the edges, and down from us it got wider and shallower, so we were able to play in this part of it with reasonable caution.
Kiki, riding the deeper middle area down. It was so cold, but she kept instinctively trying to swim normally in it with her face in the water, and then she'd pop her little face out again shrieking. We tried to get her to go down in floating on her back with feet in front of her Bear Gryll's style, but they've never floated on their backs in moving water before, and it was so cold, they had a hard time getting used to that idea.





The mornings were full of all sorts of great training classes. First Aid, Photography, Camp Cooking, International Overland Travel, vehicle recovery classes and Basic or Advanced driving courses to name most of them. We did our best to be relaxed as possible about what classes we attended, because running from one class to the next is stressful-and we've done a lot of overland travel and training already through NWOS. We ended up completely thrilled with the classes that we took--Photography, International Overland Travel, and we did the Advanced Course on one day. With the basic and advanced training, the range of drivers throughout the event was huge--you could definitely come to this rally and learn if you've never driven offroad before, if you wanted to drive harder trails, or if you've done it for years and are sure you're a pro, there was something for everyone.


Before we did the advanced trail run, we did a left foot braking exercise over huge rocks, logs, etc. We definitely appreciated the fact that we'd done a course with Bill Burke last year. Pretty much everything in this course was review for us, thanks to the CRAZY amount of stuff we learned in that three-day course. The thing about overland travel though is that review is never boring--just great fun! You never know when you can learn something new, and when you're doing overland travel, you can never know too much.


(P.S. Left foot braking over obstacles is fun. Right foot gas, left foot brake, and you can control your ascent/descent perfectly. It is not, however, recommended on freeways.)We have determined that no matter how many times we do them, creek/river crossings will never get old.

We found a muddy spot for training exercises. There were 27 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) vehicles on this trail run. WAY too many. That being said, the person teaching it did a GREAT job in managing that vehicle load. I would love to come to this spot again, since there were so many cars to get through we did the easy in/easy out route, it would have been fun to do some of the more difficult paths through it.


Land Rover Defender 110--(one of) our dream vehicles. This one was right-hand drive, and made my heart pitter-patter every time I was next to it. So pretty!

If I recall correctly, we were about 3/4's of the way back in the line-up.

Teaching our children stupid-human tricks back at camp. :-)

I need one of these.

And one of these, haha. These horses were a bit bent out of shape to be sharing their pasture with all the crazy humans.

I fell in love with the Auspit vendor's fire-pit he used to display his rotisserie. His products were very cool and I am definitely keeping them in mind for our backyard, should we ever get it done, but his western style fire-pit completely stole my heart.

Sweet Babies. They fell asleep every night before their heads hit the pillows!





WARNING: You may or may not find the rest of this post interesting. I'm blogging this bit for my own records, and our memories. Thank you.

I had great intentions of taking pictures of my plate every night, and blogging our menu for the trip. Mostly because I can never think of what to prepare for camping, and I thought it would be a good lazy way to reference back to what I've made on prior trips so I could be all cool-cucumber-prepared for future camping trips. That being said, I only remembered to take a picture the first night which was chili-dog night, which is something we have on almost every camping trip, because when I ask the kids what I should make for dinner, they always yell "CHILI DOGS!!" Yes, I realized I used too many commas in that sentence. Don't care. Anyway, I'm blogging my menu anyway, because it was really simple and every meal turned out great. That makes me SO happy.


First night--Chili Dogs (I used Bratwurst to mix it up a bit. It was ok. Don't know if I'd do that again.) Honey Dew Melon, and Strawberries.

2nd Night--Chicken, Saute'd up with Olive Oil, Leeks, Garlic, and Balsamic Vinegar, fresh ground pepper and sea salt=Good. With Yams, Parsnips, and Carrots, sliced and roasted at home in the oven, then bagged up with olive oil, garlic, and Salt and Pepper. Saute'd to reheat at camp. AMAZING. Honey Dew/Cantelope/Strawberries.


3rd Night--Lambchops (Prepared mostly this way, in camp.) I premixed the oil, garlic and rosemary in a bag, and then poured it in the skillet before I put the washed lambchops in--it was AMAZING. With Saute'd Fennel and Leeks and Garlic, in Olive Oil. Delicious. And of course, the previous mix of Melon/Strawberries.

Melon holds up so well after being cut, and is SO refreshing when it's hot and full of water, I highly recommend it for camping.

And, this is me, stargazing one night. I thought this picture was cool because it's SOOC--Frank adjusted the ISO for deliberate graininess, shone his green flashlight on me, and of course exposed it for a long time--I can't remember how long. Anyway, it turned out cool/interesting. :-) On the last day there was an Expedition Trophy. This was SO much fun. It was the perfect opportunity to practice all our skills. I have no pictures, because we were participating in it. But, I'll recount for the personal memories of it.

It started in a mudpit... you had to back in, get yourself stuck, and then the timer would start, and you could start working on getting out. We did really great on this one--Frank is a great driver (says his wife). I was actually a little bummed (not really) that we did so well, because they had MaxTrax we could have used, and I'd love the chance to try those thingies. So we got out of that in good time.


The next obstacle was a reverse course--Frank is surgically precise in reverse. So, I'm not sharing our secrets for skillful maneuvering of that one, haha. But we got through it pretty fast--it helps when the spotter completely trusts the driver, 100%. It also helps when the driver loves the spotter and needs the spotter to cook him his food, and wash his clothes. :-)

The next obstacle was a rigging/roping pull course... this is the one we lost the most time on. We weren't familiar with the gear. I think we could have done it faster with our own gear. But, that would have been a handicap across the board, except for the fact that several of the other people who were in the course were associated with MasterPull--haha! So, they were much more familiar with the equipment.

The next obstacle was a ammunition box with a series of bolts you had to use your own tools to get into.

The obstacle after that was a tight course with caution tape and large logs you had to drive over to get through without touching tape.

The obstacle after that was a zig zag rocky course that the spotter had to direct the blindfolded driver through, without touching the caution tape on either side. This one was fun, and actually less stressful than I expected it to be.

And the last obstacle was getting out of the vehicle and running down a hill to touch the finish line... a very rocky hill. Which is why I'm limping this week. Oh well.

I'd be lying if I said that I was completely thrilled with how we did. Because, I REALLY like to win, and try as I might to squelch my competitiveness, I tend to fall into the category that believes second place is the first loser. That being said, we really did awesome for it being the first time we've ever done anything like that, and we were happy at how well our teamwork worked for us on this course. We placed 5th, and we actually got the prize we wanted most of all-a subscription to The Overland Journal. So, we were happy. Doing these things fast isn't usually a goal--you want to do them safely first of all. So, in reality the speed portion of the Expedition Trophy felt a little weird.

So, that was our Overland Rally weekend, if you're still here. :-) It was a great time, and we're looking forward to next year. Special thanks from us to all the organizers and instructors. It was, most of all, a really inspirational time.