Out and About: Overland Expo 2012

I've been so busy playing catch up (mostly on sleep) that I nearly forgot to post about Overland Expo 2012! Better late than never, right?

OX12 moved to a new location this year - Mormon Lake, AZ. Being in Northern Arizona meant that the temperatures were cooler, there was less blowing dust, and we got to see trees instead of cactus.

TREES!

The Mormon Lake folks also allowed the OX12 folks to create a bigger and better off-road course for us to test drive around on. There were more driving classes as well with the bigger course, which was really fun. Overland Expo is always an invaluable source of information - you get to learn one-on-one from Camel Trophy participants and other people who have been living this for many years.

Conservation Driving Class

 The OX12 team also had some surprises in mind for us this year.

These barrels will come into play again later.

One of my favourite parts of the Expo is getting to see everyone else's rigs. Big trucks, small trucks, motorcycles, tons of gear, hardly any gear at all, everyone overlands differently. Its great for getting new ideas. We also reworked our own gear this year, trying to eliminate extra stuff that we really don't need and/or use. 

One of the bigger trucks - UNIMOG in action.

SuperTaco doesn't have a lot of gear - its still a work in progress. It always holds its own though and gets us where we need to be.

SuperTaco working some cross-axle obstacles.

Oh, and those barrels? After 10 hours of hard work strapping 30 of them together with rope, the crew floated a Camel Trophy Land Rover Discovery across a pond. No problem. You would think this was every day stuff for these guys, so nonchalant they are about it. 

Just your average commute to work...

We had lots of fun again, and plan on going again next year. The rumour is that OX13 will be in Mormon Lake again. Hopefully, we'll get a repeat of this year's perfect weather.

On the way home, we got an added unplanned surprise! We saw the annular solar eclipse! I hadn't even known about it ahead of time and just happened to see it while I was looking out the window on the drive. We were able to view the eclipse directly, due to the filter of smoke provided from the Gladiator Fire burning in the Bradshaw Mountains.

The smoke adds a very apocalyptic aura.

Another fun weekend in the books! More to come! (And I've been gardening again.... so another garden update to come soon!)