This Big Road Trip

[This Big Road Trip]

We are James and Claire Young, an Endurance Sports Coach and Family Physician respectively. Working, running, climbing and exploring our way around the world. We left home, Kelowna in British Columbia, Canada on January 1st, 2018 in our modified Dodge Ram 3500 and XPCamper.

This Big Road Trip

Are we overlanding? I guess. We do a bunch of trails and off-road, but our trip is focussed more on travel | adventure | culture than simply overlanding. We like cities as much as the great outdoors and will not pass up an AirBNB if that makes for a more enjoyable city trip. Life's too short to get hung up on nametags or conforming to a specific way of travelling. That said, we love a great camp spot as much as the next person and have taken the path less followed to get there, with just under 2.5 years on the road full time we have managed to knock out a few 'first ascent' camp spot on iOverlander too plus some we've kept to ourselves.

Find Us Online

We'll be posting updates from our trip but you can also find us and follow online at the following accounts:

Website: thisbigroadtrip.com

Instagram: instagram.com/thisbigroadtrip

Facebook: facebook.com/thisbigroadtrip

YouTube: youtube.com/thisbigroadtrip




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[This Big Road Trip]

Jan 2018 - June 2018 - The USA Segment

We leave Kelowna BC and head for the border. We'd been to the US South West every year, joining the other Canadian snowbirds to avoid the snow. Ironically, the snow was a major reason for why we moved to Canada in the first place!

Note the U-Haul truck we started the trip in. The truck was ready, XPCamper was running late. We had to leave our home with a bunch of plastic crates with what we thought might fit in the camper; they rattled around on the back of a massive u-Haul truck, which was the only vehicle we could rent to cross the border. We swapped the U-Haul for a Cruise America RV in Spokane. They needed it relocating for a re-furb, so we drove it one-way to San Jose for a 50% discount.

 

[This Big Road Trip]

July 2018 - March 2019 - Mexico & Belize

A random collection of Mexico and Belize clips, dragged from folders on our desktop and thrown together for posterity. We had never planned on creating video, which is a shame. Because now we wish we'd paid more attention to capturing these stunning countries with a bit of movement rather than still photographs. Anyway, enough of the excuses. If nothing else it shows a little of the diversity!

 

[jk6661]

Sounds like a fantastic trip! I didn't see a way to contact you on your blog, so I thought I'd try here. I'm curious about your choice of vehicle. Are you worried about serviceability outside of North America?

 

[This Big Road Trip]

Sounds like a fantastic trip! I didn't see a way to contact you on your blog, so I thought I'd try here. I'm curious about your choice of vehicle. Are you worried about serviceability outside of North America?

Yes and no. I am no mechanic, but I have spent 2.5 years travelling to where I am now. I have never seen anyone, even in the weirdest of vehicles, get stuck. (Edit: Friends of ours with a cracked Iveco windscreen who were worried they would not be allowed to enter US waited a few months in Oaxaca, Mexico for a screen due to import issues - if it was me I would have just gone to US and got it fixed there but they have infinite time so they didn't care) There is always a city, there is always delivery, always someone that can sort it. I know it's a topic people get quite bent out of shape about when in the US, but in real terms, it's not really a problem unless you are on a very tight schedule or very tight budget. In the US we'd just go to a mechanic. Here, if we have to order stuff, it just takes a week to arrive (present lockdown issues mean we couldn't get something shipped as easily but we are also not moving so .... don't need anything)

There is always a way. We have a big ICON Remote Reservoir Shock delivered to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. Process .... go on a forum, ask who can help, find a guy who lives there, get it shipped to him, he delivered on a motorcycle, makes friends, visit him at his house, spend an evening drinking rum and go out the next day for a meal.




I used to be massively anxious about something breaking down or going wrong. I am not any more. Sometimes the more awkward situation gets you the best travel experience. At expo there are plenty of gruff old guys saying "Yeah, but what happens if ..." but on the road there everyone just gets it fixed. I think this question is a bit like the usual safety question, you can invent situations beforehand but once you're doing it you realize that's it's not something people worry about.

Hope that helps.

 

[vintageracer]

So wonderful to see you doing what YOU ENJOY!

Asking "WHAT IF" is how most people spend their whole life!

It's EASY to find all sorts of reasons, issues or problems which makes it EASY TO DO NOTHING!

Doing NOTHING is a life wasted and full of regret!

 

[Pacific Northwest yetti]

Thanks for sharing I look forward to following along. I enjoyed my time in South America for sure.

 

[jk6661]

Thanks for the reply. I guess it helps that your truck isn't one giant computer like many new trucks/SUVs (e.g. the 2020 Defender). There's probably always someone who can fix a mechanical issue if you can get the part.

 

[This Big Road Trip]

Thanks for the reply. I guess it helps that your truck isn't one giant computer like many new trucks/SUVs (e.g. the 2020 Defender). There's probably always someone who can fix a mechanical issue if you can get the part.

True .... but if it's new it's - in theory - less likely to break down to start with. I think there it's a nice sliding scale of very old (easier to fix) a bit old (easier to find parts, easy-ish to fix) and new (less likely to break down, easy parts.)

My truck is, I guess, a bit of a mix of old and new. It has some electrics but also none of the diesel emissions stuff that can cause issues with non ULSD. But (there is always a bit!) lots of people have simply used the ************ diesel available in Central and South America with no issues; in including Tuck's Truck. Marcus is geeky-a-f (know anyone else with a circuit board printer in their rig?). He knows his stuff, builds planes for fun, and wrote this on ULSD issues, or lack of, for new vehicles: https://www.tuckstruck.net/truck-and-kit/the-truck-technical-stuff/fuel-issues/

The key takeaway is. There is no perfect vehicle and we have seen everything on the Pan Am from someone doing it in a Tuk Tuk all the way to the big MAN trucks. They all live to tell the tale

 

[This Big Road Trip]

So wonderful to see you doing what YOU ENJOY! Asking "WHAT IF" is how most people spend their whole life! It's EASY to find all sorts of reasons, issues or problems which makes it EASY TO DO NOTHING! Doing NOTHING is a life wasted and full of regret!

Thanks and, very true. It was actually all the wife's idea, she has a bigger travel bug than me.

By the way, that is some collection of vehicles you have!

 

[This Big Road Trip]

Thanks for sharing I look forward to following along. I enjoyed my time in South America for sure.

Thanks. Where did you go? I enjoyed your camper thread. Glad I am not the only one for whom leaks defy all the laws of physics!

 

[Pacific Northwest yetti]

Thanks. Where did you go? I enjoyed your camper thread. Glad I am not the only one for whom leaks defy all the laws of physics!

haha that one outside the dog sled race, that water line leak was a killer for sure. And it sure was cold. I remember having to fix the line, with the 40 gallon tank full in 26 degree weather in the Ace parking lot. I was thankful there was an ACE there though.

My other thread has a some of the updates from SA. I would like to spend more time down there, But Spent time in Baja Mexico, Bogota and Medellin Columbia, and took a motorcycle though Patagonia, Chile and Argentina. There are some short write ups on them in my explorations thread, i did not do them justice though. Im not much of a writer.

 

[This Big Road Trip]

December 2019: Colombia #1 - The Bridge

We jump forward over a chunk of Central America, heading straight to Colombia. Mainly because I have yet to do the video for Central America and we'd just done an amazing trail to some stunning, sketchy bridges, which we got some cool footage from. Incidentally, this is the same bridge that The Grand Tour drove over in one of their past episodes. They did the bridge the other way. We took the long route. A 6-hour trail through farmlands, smaller just-as-sketchy- bridges, marijuana fields with gun-wielding locals and a couple of landslides, one worse than the other. It was a fun day we shared with @kissmybay in their 70's blue VW Kombi (the Kombi did great, until the minute we got back to a paved road, at which point it's CV joint fell apart)

 

[nathane]

Nice vid. Buttock clenching stuff over the bridge. What do you reckon the load limit is?

Looks like the river would be an awesome paddle ?

 

[This Big Road Trip]

Nice vid. Buttock clenching stuff over the bridge. What do you reckon the load limit is?

Looks like the river would be an awesome paddle ?

Train Weight - Corrosion = Load Limit